Welcome everyone, welcome to the show.

This is my first-ever standup comedy set about

standup comedian research. It’s quite baffling, I know. Very meta, very peculiar. I can’t say I’ve
done anything like it, but I’m excited. You know, it’s kind of like if you worked for that one “For
Dummies” company; you know the one that makes the yellow books that teach you how to do
things. It’s like if you worked for them and on your first day on the job, they handed you a book
titled How to write a For Dummies book: For Dummies. That’s what this feels like right now, but
I’m sure it’ll go great.

A fun fact about this study is that it’s actually the first-ever quantitative study on humor,
which, personally I found to be very surprising. I always associated numbers with comedy, but I
hadn’t really thought about why. So, I did some digging within myself, and I realized it all stems
from this one interaction in second grade. You see, I used to tell lots of jokes in class, which
made all of my classmates laugh, but it also really pissed off my teachers. There was this one day
in particular when I took things too far. My teacher got up from her desk, slammed her book on
the table, and said “Aryan, if you tell one more joke today, I’m sending you to the principal’s
office!” I was quite frightened. So, I took that advice to heart and once I got home, I started
doing calculations. “If my sixth joke got me in trouble today, I will definitely not be telling a
sixth joke again. So, I should be fine with just five tomorrow.” That’s how I picked up the
concept of n-1 at only eight years of age, and it’s also why I’ve always associated numbers with
comedy. But yeah, I’m glad we got our first quantitative study on humor.

The study covered many bases. Every participant had to take four tests: A Personality
test, a Humor-Styles test, a Vocabulary test, and a humor-production test. Overall, I think the
researchers did a good job of collecting their data. The process makes sense to me. However,
there were a couple of decisions along the way that I'm not sure how I feel about. For starters, the
study referred to the results of the vocabulary test as a score of “intelligence” which is kind of
odd. I didn't quite agree with Vocabulary being the sole indicator of intelligence, and I had a
feeling that decision would not sit well with my friends at the UCSB College of Engineering
either. So I stood by the engineering buildings, collecting their opinions on the matter. After a
full afternoon of surveying, I found that the characterization of poor grammar with low
intelligence made engineering students feel, and I quote, “Really Really Mad.” Self-fulfilling
prophecy eh? I actually didn’t see that one coming.

The humor styles test that the participants took has four categories to it. There’s affiliative
humor, which is storytelling humor. There’s self-enhancing humor, which is basically humor to
cope with hard situations. There’s aggressive humor, which is humor that makes fun of people.
And Lastly, there’s self-defeating humor, humor where you make fun of yourself. The study
found that comedians tested higher across all styles of humor than college students. You know, I
can’t really say that I was surprised by these results. I sort of assumed that was the case going
into the study, a comedian's entire job is to be funny whereas a college student’s job is to skip
classes they are paying thousands and thousands of dollars to attend; Obviously, the comedians
are going to excel at humor.

For the comedians, The study showed that affiliative humor was positively correlated to
openness, agreeableness, and extraversion, but it correlated negatively with humor production.
Basically, what that means is it's hard to write a joke that everyone likes. The study also found
that self-defeating humor was correlated negatively with intelligence, which I find to be
hilarious. I don’t actually know of any standup comedians that actively roast themselves, but my
girlfriend definitely utilizes a lot of self-deprecating humor, so I was very excited to point this
correlation out to her. She did not find the fact to be nearly as entertaining as I did, and she was
quick to remind me that the only one to get into UCSB off the waitlist in our relationship was
me. You’d think I would be offended but honestly, I was just impressed. I know it must have
taken a lot of effort for her to put together such a clever comeback with her intelligence being so
low and everything. Unfortunately, that comment earned me a week on the couch.

For college students, Aggressive humor correlated negatively with conscientiousness and
agreeableness, but positively with neuroticism. I know the second part of that sentence sounds
like a positive “Oh sure Aggressive humor might mean you’re stubborn and lack self-awareness,
but at least you've got neuroticism” but no Neuroticism is actually a bad thing. It’s the
disposition to feel negative emotions, such as anger, anxiety, low self-esteem, emotional
instability, and depression. So people that employ aggressive humor are more likely to be
disagreeable, unaware, and mentally ill. I had no idea that just by employing aggressive humor,
you can end up like the average economics major. Looks like I’ll be steering clear of that one.

As a little bonus, the study also tried to predict what factors can lead to success for
professional standup comedians. They discovered that professional success was positively
predicted by affiliative humor and negatively by self-defeating humor. Honestly, that works in
my favor. I like to tell stories. There was this one time, I was consoling this girl who was crying
because of how poorly she did on a midterm. I didn't quite know what to say so I told her, “I
know this is gonna be tough to hear but, according to this study your chances of being a
successful standup artist are as low as your intelligence” Believe it or not but that girl was my
girlfriend, and that story was about how I earned myself a second week on the couch. Not my
brightest moment.