Male Humour Use and Its Effect on Desirability in Women

Abstract

It is quickly coming to be accepted in our society that a sense of humour is a desirable trait in men. While there are a relatively small number of studies in the area, those looking at humour have found strong correlations between humour and increased attractiveness, but only for women rating men. There has been little work done on what types of humour in particular women are attracted to. In this study women rated the attractiveness of men on a scale of 1 – 10, based on a photograph and an accompanying vignette. Humour was manipulated so that the vignette contained either no indication of humour, or one of three humour types – performance-based, sarcasm or self-deprecating. It was found that the humorous men were rated as significantly more attractive than their non-humorous counterparts. From the three humour types studied here only performance-based humour had a positive effect on desirability. It was also discovered that demonstrated humour, where the vignette contained an example of the men’s humour, had a positive effect on attractiveness, whereas humour that was simply suggested or based on the opinions of others had no significant effect on the attractiveness scores assigned to the men.