Is humor ability heritable? Our new study is the first to test this question—and we found a surprising result. No joke (well, kind of is). 18 tweets. Steve Stewart-Williams Geoffrey Miller William Costello Rob Henderson Razib Khan 🧬 ✍️ David Schmitt Steven Pinker cambridge.org/core/journals/…

A first-of-its-kind study set out to discover whether being funny is something you inherit. By testing twins on their joke-making skills, researchers found that your sense of humor might have less to do with DNA than you'd think. dlvr.it/TLrFhl

A review of my study on the heritability of humor in PsyPost.org psypost.org/is-humor-inher…

A review of my study on the heritability of humor in PsyPost.org psypost.org/is-humor-inher…

Intriguing new study on twins found that humor ability (coming up with funny captions to cartoons) has very low heritability, suggesting that environmental influences may be more important to comedy writing ability than other cognitive traits. cambridge.org/core/journals/… Gil Greengross

MZ twins are much more correlated in their self-reported humor than DZ twins, but external assessment of humor ability shows now difference at all. Seems like a clear case of environmentally driven DZ twin divergence on self-perceived behavior.

News podcast: Liz Thomas British Antarctic Survey 🐧 on ancient Antarctic ice; Michael Marks London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine on measles; Ben Allanach Cambridge University on CERN discovery; Gil Greengross Aberystwyth University on humour; and Cambridge University's Simon Taylor on nuclear reactors. thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/naked…

Nice coverage of my study on CTV News

People walk faster, linger less, compared to 30 years ago. They also use the streets as places to walk through, rather than social gathering. pnas.org/doi/abs/10.107…

אנשים הולכים היום מהר יותר, ומתעכבים פחות בדרך, מאשר לפני 30 שנה. הם משתמשים ברחובות כמקומות שמאפשרים הגעה ממקום למקום ולא למקום מפגש חברתי, מחקר חדש מצא. #פידתחבורה pnas.org/doi/abs/10.107…

A blog post describing my study, written by Nancy Segal, the top twin researcher in the world and a collaborator on the study. psychologytoday.com/us/blog/twofol…

Wit Happens: A Light-hearted Dive into the Science of Humour. A free public lecture on the psychology of humour at the start of Aberystwyth Comedy Festival. Friday, October 3. Tickets at abercomedyfest.co.uk/show/2025/dr-g… (via @machcomedyfest) Aberystwyth University Psychology at Aber