Fran Morfesis

1/24/2006

The influence of humor on desirability

Eric R. Bressler & Sigal Balshine

Although humor is both a prevalent and highly valued social trait, there has been little study of its ability to increase fitness (from the Darwinian perspective).

Previous Theory, Miller:

Psychological traits in humans provide information about underlying genetic code and therefore are used by others to choose appropriate mates.

This “sexual selection” implies that:

  • Men would be more humorous than women

Mcghee, 1979

Robinson & Smith-Lovin, 2001

  • Since human reproduction often relies on long term relationships, sexes are more equally discriminative of partner quality and therefore preferences should be similar.

Feingold, 1992

  • Ancestral men would be less likely to be so selective in order to monopolize the productive potential of as many women as possible.

Lundy, Tan and Cunningham, 1998

Procedure:

  • Two individuals, equally attractive, shown 8 times each with accompanying phrases (humorous or non-humorous).
  • Person 1: 8 non-humorous statements
  • Person 2: 5 non-humorous and 3 humorous statements
  • Then subject was asked to rate this person on humor (manipulation check), desirability, how fun, friendly, popular, confident, independent, honest, and trustworthy they seemed.
  • 2 conditions: same or opposite sex.

Analysis:

  • Factor analysis found 3 factors explaining 68% of the variance in preference.
  • Socially adept
  • Independent/Confident
  • Trustworthy/Honest
  • Then they analyzed whether the humorous person was most often associated with these preferred traits.

Results:

  1. Humor was successfully manipulated
  2. Only women viewing men chose the humorous individual as more desirable more often than expected by chance (t(60)= 5.79, p<.0001).
  3. Humorous individuals were chosen as more socially adept (t(209)= 9.02, p<.0001) and less likely to be chosen as intelligent (t(193)=-3.84, p<.0001).
  4. Women were disinclined to attribute trustworthiness to unattractive and humorous faces as compared to attractive humorous faces (F(1,202)=7.19, p=.008)

Discussion:

  • Humor can positively affect desirability of men when being evaluated by women.
  • Not a “halo effect”.
  • Negative correlation between humor and intelligence seems to conflict with Miller, however, these may be two different types of “intelligence”
  • educated vs. general intelligence
  • The fact that Humor was still preferred makes the findings even more convincing.
  • There is not an equal role for humor among the different sexes
  • Different type of procedure (less sensitive)
  • May vary based upon short vs. long term mating (interpretation)
  • Men and women may mean different things by “good sense of humor”

Future research?

  • Examine different types of humor
  • Gender differences in what is considered a “good sense of humor”