A University of Colorado Boulder study has ranked Chicago as the funniest city in the United States followed by Boston and Atlanta.
Researchers said that Chicagoans scored the top marks for their witty banter, observational humor and for making fun of their fierce weather and the Chicago Transit Authority. "Chicagoan jokes mostly feature deadpan and quick-witted humor based on flaws and frustrations of living in Chicago," Arizona Daily Star reports.
Researchers said that finding homor in daily life situations complements the city's professional comedy scene. Chicago is well known for its improve and stand-up comedy.
"The result was a window into the humor profiles of each of the top 10 cities," Peter McGraw, study author and associate professor of marketing and psychology at Leeds School of Business, said in a statement. "Boston residents balance high-brow intellectualism with drunken rowdiness while Washington, D.C., finds humor in the absurdities of political systems. Portlanders are just plain weird."
McGraw said that different people perceive different things as funny. What might not seem amusing to one might be humorous to another. For example, jokes enjoyed at comedy clubs in Denver might be hard to get through a cartoon editor at The New Yorker.
For the study, researchers surveyed the 50 largest U.S. cities over a nine-month period to determine the number of visits by residents to comedy websites; number of comedy clubs in each city; ratings of nomad comedians by local audiences; number of famous native comedians; number of local funny twitteratis; number of local comedy radio stations and frequency of humor-related Web searches from each city.
"A city's humor score isn't just a measure of historic reputation or big-name productions," Adrian Ward, senior research associate at the Leeds School,. "It's a way of looking at the day-to-day lives of people in that city. A city's sense of humor is a living, breathing thing, created by everything from coffee shop conversations to Web videos shared between friends to the laughter that erupts at comedy clubs."
The researchers also surveyed more than 900 residents from the top 10 cities deemed hilarious by the algorithm created at Humor Research Lab (HuRL). The participants were asked about their preferred funny entertainment and favorite joke; to describe their favorite joke; whether humour was an important quality while choosing their friends and partners. Plus, they also undertook a personality test to evaluate their "need for levity."
Top 10 Funniest Cities in United States
1. Chicago
2. Boston
3. Atlanta
4. Washington, D.C.
5. Portland, Ore.
6. New York
7. Los Angeles
8. Denver
9. San Francisco
10. Seattle
