Messenger A sense of humour is an attractive trait. There is abundant cross cultural evidence that shows that being funny makes you more desirable as a mate, especially if you are a man. But once the initial flirting is over, and you are in a romantic relationship, how large a role does humour play? For dating couplesuse of positive humour for example, using humour to cheer up your date can positively contribute to relationship satisfaction. The use of aggressive humour, on the other hand teasing and making fun of your partner has the opposite effect.
The research shows women like men who make them laugh, and men akin to women who laugh at their jokes. Women tend to prefer men who make them laugh, whereas men attend to to prefer women who laugh by their jokes. Consistent with this, Robert Provine analyzed more than singles ads and found that women were add likely to describe their good humor appreciation ability whereas men were add likely to offer good humor assembly ability. Why is humor sexy? Amusing people are smart, and smart is sexy. Via Mating Intelligence Unleashed: The Role of the Mind in Femininity, Dating, and Love : Gil Greengross and Geoffrey Miller found in a sample of university students that all-purpose intelligence and verbal intelligence both predicted humor production ability writing captions designed for cartoonswhich in turn predicted lifetime add up to of sexual partners a proxy of reproductive success. They found, however, so as to males showed higher average levels of humor production ability, which is coherent with the sexual selection perspective. As of these results, Greengross argues that a sense of humor evolved at slight partly through sexual selection as an intelligence indicator.