Master’s Thesis, 30 ECTS
The Programme for Master of Science in Psychology, 300 ECTS Spring 2020
Supervisor: Guy Madison
The effect of humor styles on mate value and preferences in an
online experiment
Anders Fredriksson, Henrik Groundstroem
Our heartfelt gratitude goes to our supervisor Guy Madison whose guidance has been of tantamount importance for us. We would also like to thank all who helped us spread our experiment online, not least the student counselors who kindly helped us reach out to students at Umeå university. Finally we would like to thank everyone who participated and made this study possible.
Abstract
Humor is likely to serve as signals of fitness in potential partners. Less is known about how different styles of humor affect partner attractiveness. This study aimed to test the attractiveness of the four different humor styles proposed by Martin et al. (2003) categorized according to being benign (affiliate, self-enhancing) or detrimental (aggressive, self-defeating). Participants were presented with a series of potential partners, much like on a dating site. Each partner was described by a portrait picture and a vignette, which included examples of one of the four humor styles. The participants’ task was to rate a number of items about partner preference (date, intercourse, short- and long-term relationships) and mate value (intelligence, health, social status and parenting skill).
A total of 170 women and 81 men between 18-40 years of age completed the experiment. The results showed significant effects on all measurements of partner interest and mate value for women with the aggressive humor style being rated as less attractive and lower in mate value than the other humor styles. For men there was a significant effect on two measurements on mate value (social status, parenting skill), showing that the self-defeating style was rated less attractive. The results support the notion that humor is used as a fitness signal, that this is used to a substantially greater extent by women, and that women find the aggressive humor style to be particularly unattractive in potential partners.
Keywords: Evolution, sexual selection, fitness signal, humor styles, mate value, partner preference
Abstrakt
Humor fungerar sannolikt som en signal på lämplighet i potentiella partners. Mindre är känt om hur olika typer av humor - humorstilar - påverkar attraktion till en potentiell partner. Den här studien syftar till att testa attraktiviteten hos fyra humorstilar föreslagna av Martin et al. (2003) som är kategoriserade som gynnsamma (vänskaplig och självhävdande) eller skadliga (aggressiv och självnedgörande). Deltagare presenterades med ett antal potentiella partners, inte olikt en dejtingsida. Varje partner presenterades som ett ansiktsporträtt i kombination med en vinjett som representerade en av de fyra humorstilarna. Deltagarnas uppgift var att skatta profilerna för partnerintresse (dejt, samlag, kort- och lång relation) och partnervärde (intelligens, hälsa, social status och lämplighet som förälder). Totalt utfördes experimentet av 170 kvinnor och 81 män som var mellan 18-40 år gamla. Resultaten visade på signifikanta effekter för alla mått relaterade till partnerintresse och partnervärde för kvinnor, där den aggressiva humorstilen skattades lägre än de andra humorstilarna. För män återfanns en signifikant effekt på två av måtten, social status och lämplighet som förälder, där den självnedgörande humorstilen skattades mindre attraktiv.
Resultatet stöder humorns roll som en signal på lämplighet hos potentiella partners, att detta är av betydligt större vikt för kvinnor och att kvinnor finner den aggressiva humorstilen som särskilt oattraktiv i potentiella partners.
Nyckelord: Evolution, sexuell selektion, signal på lämplighet, humorstilar, partnervärde, partnerintresse
The effect of humor styles on mate value and preferences in an online experiment
Humor is a very important part of being human. Laughter and jokes are playful behaviors that give us mirth and pleasure. Among the first things we do when we begin to interact socially as infants, is to laugh at the actions of other people (Martin, 2007). The concept of humor is found cross-culturally in all human societies, though what is considered funny varies (Martin, 2007). It is also something we seek in other people and in our day-to-day lives and relationships. Billions are spent every year on comedy performed by actors in films, sitcoms, theaters, and by comedians in stand-up shows. Having a sense of humor is regarded as very desirable, and not having a sense of humor is seen as tantamount to being boring and dull. As Frank Moore Colby (1926) put it:
“Men will confess to treason, murder, arson, false teeth, or a wig. How many of them will own up to a lack of humor?”.
Seeing that humor is such an important part of human life, one would think it has received a lot of attention in the field of psychology, but this is not the case. Freud viewed humor as an important mature defense mechanism, but otherwise humor has received little notice in mainstream psychology (Martin, 2007). A reason for this is that research on humor has been regarded as something that is not serious or worth exploring, and that it by its nature must be silly and unimportant (Martin, 2007). This has changed in recent years, and humor is now considered to be a legitimate topic for study and is attracting a growing amount of attention from researchers (Martin, 2007). Today there are a variety of areas included in the study of humor. We will first present a short overview of the role of humor in social relationships and the processes behind what makes something funny, to finally focus on the area of our study, the relationship between different styles of humor and attractiveness from an evolutionary perspective.
One area of research is how humor is used in social interactions, and the purpose and function of humor as an interpersonal signal. Laughing at a joke is a signal that you appreciate the company of the other person, and we laugh much more in the presence of other people than when we are alone (Martin, 2007). It also signals that one does not perceive the other person as a threat (Pinker, 1997). Chimpanzees make noises similar to laughter when they are involved in rough and tumble play (Martin, 2007). Children also laugh when they play with each other, a signal that the activity is playful and non-threatening (Pinker, 1997). Laughing while fighting means that it is not a serious combat and that everyone involved knows that it will not lead to injury.
We use humor in different relationships, but not all relationships. Using humor and joking around is regarded as something normal and desirable in close and friendly relationships, but is not necessarily accepted if used by a subordinate with his or her superior or when interacting with a police officer who pulled you over. The playful nature of humor means that it is a signal that you are comfortable with the person you are interacting with. Trying to joke with someone can be a way to see if your relationship is friendly and on a mutual level (Pinker, 1997). Humor however signals more than just friendliness. It's a sign of wit and a creative mind. How come some can create a funny twist on a situation? What makes something funny and are there differences in how people perceive and process humor?
Humor production and processing
Producing humor is dependent on cognitive abilities and there are differences in the humor production ability between individuals (Howrigan & MacDonald, 2008; Greengross & Miller, 2008; Martin, 2007). These differences are to a large part due to intelligence and creativity (Greengross & Miller, 2008; Martin, 2007). To experience humor an individual must first perceive incongruity in a presented stimulus event (Martin, 2007). The first reaction to this incongruity is surprise followed by amusement and laughter when the incongruity is resolved. The ability to experience and produce humor draws from several areas in the cerebral cortex involved in language comprehension, social cognition, logical reasoning, auditory and visual perception (Martin, 2007). When something humorous is perceived, these cognitive processes stimulate emotional responses such as amusement and mirth. These emotions are generally expressed as laughter or smiling (Martin, 2007).
Sex differences have been found related to brain activation while exposed to humor. For instance Azim et al. (2005) showed that although men and women exhibit similar overall patterns of brain activation, women had a greater activation in the left hemisphere. This indicates a higher degree of executive processing and language-based decoding among females. Moreover, women exhibited a higher response in reward networks (the mesolimbic regions). This suggests that men and women process humor in slightly different ways. These differences are further established using fMRI (Kohn, Kellermann, Gur, Schneider & Habel, 2011; Chan, 2016). Chan (2016) found the same pattern of sex differences in humor comprehension as did Kohn et al., namely greater activation in reward networks and a higher level of executive processing by the involvement of prefrontal cortex among women. That study also suggests that women may recruit and activate more verbal functions, and deploy greater episodic memory retrieval for humor integration than do men. The study by Kohn et al. (2011) concludes that women show a stronger level of emotional processing and subsequent stronger activation in reward related networks than do males, ultimately leading to a higher rated subjective funniness of humor stimuli. However, the results that show higher subjective appreciation of humor among women than men are inconsistent with Azim et al.
(2005), who did not find any difference in perceived funniness between the sexes, suggesting that the differences are limited to processing of humor rather than the response to humor.
In conclusion, humor fulfills the criteria for a human universal, and exhibits sex differences as well as individual differences in both humor production, processing, and appreciation. Together, these observations indicate that humor evolved as an adaptive trait in humans, and the sex difference suggests that it is involved in sexual selection.
Sexual selection
The theory of natural selection proposed by Charles Darwin revolutionized our understanding of the processes behind the development and evolution of species (Buss, 2016). There are however certain phenomena in the natural world that could not be explained by this theory. The most famous example is the peacock with its extraordinary and lavish feathers. The mere sight of the feathers in the peacock's tail made Darwin sick since it seemed to contradict his theory of natural selection
for traits that benefit survival (Buss, 2016). That is, until he developed the theory of sexual selection. This theory could finally explain the ornaments, bright colors and extraordinary feathers present in animals, which seem to provide no benefit for the animal’s survival. Indeed, sexually selected traits often incur a direct cost to the individual animal's survival value (Miller, 2000a). By being able to have large and extravagant feathers the male peacock shows that he has resources to spare on a trait that does not lead to his immediate survival. This is true of other traits among animals that are not visually displayed, such as bird song (Miller 2000a).
Sexual selection creates positive feedback-systems that lead to certain traits being selected for (Miller, 2000a). It is hard to predict which traits will be sexually selected, but it can explain why certain bizarre traits become prominent in a population. From the incredible dance of the birds of paradise to the big horns of rams, sexual selection creates a feedback system for the most perfect dance or the most outstanding horns. These traits are sexually selected through mate choice (Miller 2000a). By choosing a sexual mate that displays a high amount of this trait (for example bright feathers in the peacock) the trait becomes more common in the population. This does not mean that the trait becomes equally distributed within the population, as it could then not serve as a selection criterion. Sexual selection can only occur if there is sufficient variation of the trait in the population, so that an individual that displays a higher amount of this trait is regarded as more attractive (Miller, 2000b). There is often competition within the sex to display this trait as a way of attracting mates. This does not mean that both the males and females of a species compete to an equal extent, but there is often a higher amount of competition for mating opportunities within one of the sexes. In mammals it is typically the males that compete for the mating opportunities with females, which means that it is more important for males to display traits that signal fitness (Miller 2000a). This is determined by parent investment theory, which posits that the sex that has a higher investment in the offspring is more selective when it comes to partner choice (Trivers, 1972). This is also true for humans with men and women having different preferences in relationships. Men have a stronger preference for short-term relationships and are less discriminating in their mate choice compared to women (Buss, 2016). For long-term relationships both men and women face similar reproductive challenges raising offspring together and therefore emphasize socially desirable traits in a potential partner (Buss, 2016).
Since the 1990s there has been a common agreement among evolutionary psychologists that humans developed large brains and high intelligence, not because of survival pressure, but to deal with the complex relationships in social groups (Miller, 2000a). This suggests that the human mind was formed due to selection pressure for social skill, and more particularly that this selection in large part was due to sexual selection. Living in a group with highly intelligent competitors meant an arms race for higher intelligence and mental fitness traits. Throughout human evolution there has been a shift towards displays of attractive traits that are shown through language, art, music and other displays of mental abilities (Miller, 2000a).
Humor as a sexually selected trait
Could it be that humor has been selected for through sexual selection? There are strong indications that this is the case. First, humor is sexually attractive, especially to women (Buss,
1988; Lippa, 2007; Lundy, Tan & Cunningham, 1998; Sprecher & Regan, 2002). Humor is a very sought after trait in a potential partner, and a good way to attract a mate, especially for men, is to use humor (Buss, 1988).
An effective sexually selected trait should be hard to fake and be an indicator of real fitness, such as physical or mental ability (Miller, 2000b). This is true for humor production, because it depends on important mental abilities such as intelligence and creativity, meaning that humor production could be a good fitness-indicator for these traits (Greengross & Miller, 2011; Howrigan
& MacDonald 2008). Humor production ability has indeed been shown to depend on both general and verbal intelligence, and this is in turn linked to higher mating success for men (Greengross &
Miller, 2011). Humor is also a highly social behavior. Humor has an important pro-social function and has been shown to indicate warmth and competence, leading some researchers to propose that this aspect of humor as a trait is more important than signaling intelligence (Hall, 2015). Others have suggested that humor has an important role as a relationship interest signal. By using humor a person shows that he or she is interested in a potential relationship with a partner, and humor is a way to assess if the other person reciprocates the interest (Li, et. al, 2009).
Another indication that humor is a sexually selected trait is that men and women value different aspects of humor as being important. Both men and women value a good sense of humor in their partner and report this preference to an equal extent (Bressler, Martin & Balshine, 2006).
Men however value that a partner appreciates their own humor production more than their partner's ability to produce humor, especially in sexual relationships (Bressler, Martin & Balshine, 2006).
For women it is the opposite, they have a strong preference for humor production in their partner and do not value the appriciation of their own humor production as that important (Bressler, Martin
& Balshine, 2006; Hone, Hurwitz & Lieberman, 2015; Tornqvist & Chiappe 2015). Men are also higher in humor production (Greengross & Miller, 2011). This means that humor is consistent with other sexually selected traits where it is important for males to display the desired trait, and for females to rate attractiveness according to the quality of the trait (Bressler, Martin & Balshine, 2006; Hone, Hurwitz & Lieberman, 2015; Greengross & Miller, 2011). So, even though humor has multiple social uses there are strong indications that humor, at least partly, evolved as a mental trait for signaling fitness through sexual selection (Miller, 2000b). Nevertheless, what is very funny for one person in a particular situation might be off-putting for another person or in another situation, which may partly be accounted for by different styles of humor.
Humor styles
Humor has long been seen as a uniform phenomenon that is essentially positive and desirable (Martin et. al., 2003) and signals pro-sociality and wit. Yet humor can also be used in aggressive and denigrating ways (Pinker, 1997). Laughter can indeed be something very threatening if you are the laughing stock of a crowd. Bullies can use humor as a way of attacking their victims and stripping them of dignity. Historically, laughter and ridicule has been associated with public executions and torture (Pinker, 2011). Humor can correspondingly be used at the expense of oneself, to gain approval by ridiculing one's own weaknesses and acting like a “class-clown”
(Martin et. al., 2003). Far from being a uniform phenomenon, humor is a multidimensional social concept that can manifest itself in different ways.
The different ways in which humor can be used has led researchers to propose at least four different humor styles, corresponding to common ways humor is used in everyday life (Martin et al., 2003). These styles correspond to two levels in two dimensions, namely benign versus detrimental, and whom it serves to affect through enhancing: oneself or others, as illustrated in Table 1.
Table 1
Classification of humor styles along the two dimensions
Benign Detrimental
Enhances others Affiliative Self-defeating
Enhances self Self-enhancing Aggressive
Note. Adapted from Martin et al., 2003
Affiliative humor is a prosocial way of using humor to enhance social relationships. The jokes and humor used are generally harmless and if the person jokes at his/her own expense, they do so while maintaining a positive self-image. People high in this kind of humor are generally perceived as being funny and extroverted, using humor to “grease” social interactions.
Self-enhancing humor seems to be a strategy for coping with adversities in life.
Acknowledging and seeing the humor in the quirks in everyday adversities helps the person deal with negative emotions, which Freud viewed as a healthy defense mechanism (Martin et al., 2003).
Both these styles are considered benign.
People who exert self-defeating humor are themselves the “butt” of the joke, which serves to increase their social approval. It is prosocial, but at the expense of denigrating the person who applies it. Joking about their own weaknesses possibly harms their self-worth. Self-defeating humor can also be used as a defensive denial to avoid negative feelings, in contrast to self- enhancing humor which applies as a coping mechanism.
Aggressive humor, finally, uses humor in a disparaging and down-putting way towards others.
It is used to enhance oneself by ridiculing others. This is the kind of humor that bullies use to attack their victims, where the aggressive behavior is concealed as being “just a joke”. It can be offensive to others by containing sexist or racist elements, for example, and not caring if people take offence (Martin et al., 2003). The two latter styles are considered to be detrimental.
On a neural level, humor styles have also been found to elicit different brain responses. Chan et al. (2018) used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to measure brain responses in participants when exposed to one-liners related to the four humor styles, as well as a non-humorous
control. A higher neural response was observed in response to humor styles that facilitates relationships (self-defeating and affiliative) compared to self-enhancing humor styles (aggressive and self-enhancing).
The four humor styles have been found to correlate with different personality measures. The two benign humor styles (affiliative, self-enhancing) are more health-promoting and are associated with higher levels of extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and openness, and to lower levels of neuroticism (Plessen et al., 2020). The two detrimental humor styles (self-defeating, aggressive) have, on the other hand, been found to be associated with higher levels of neuroticism and health-endangering behaviors, as well as to lower levels of agreeableness and conscientiousness (Schneider, Voracek & Tran, 2018; Plessen et al., 2020).
Humor styles and attraction
While it is clear that humor is an attractive trait, how is this affected by the different humor styles? DiDonato, Bedminster and Machel (2012) found that people rate the attractiveness of affiliative and aggressive humor styles differently in romantic relationships. Their results indicate that the affiliative humor style is preferred for prospective long-term relationships, mediated by the competence and warmth that this humor style signals, which is seen as important in choosing a long term partner, while humor style matters less for short-term attraction. That study only used two of the four humor styles, however, namely affiliative and aggressive, while excluding the self- defeating and self-enhancing humor styles.
DiDonato and Jakubiak (2016) examined how participants used different humor styles depending on what kind of relationship they were pursuing, by having them imagine different scenarios and what kind of humor they would use. For short-term relationships they used both benign and detrimental humor (which they labeled as positive and negative). When they pursued long-term relationships they used benign humor, but restricted their use of negative humor. This is in line with previous research showing the importance of signaling warmth and competence to prospective long-term partners (DiDonato & Jakubiak, 2016).
A study by Ziegler-Hill, Besser and Jett (2013) had participants read descriptions of profiles using the four humor styles and then rate them on attractiveness. The two benign humor styles were rated as more attractive and the two detrimental as less attractive, especially aggressive humor. The fact that the aggressive humor style was regarded as less attractive could be explained by the fact that people displaying aggressive humor are viewed as possessing lower levels of warmth and trustworthiness, traits that are valued as important in partners (Buss, 2016).
The status of the person using a humor style is also found to affect their attractiveness.
Greengross and Miller (2008) examined the use and perceived attractiveness of self- or other- defeating humor, similar to self-defeating and aggressive humor. They found that men use more other-defeating humor than women (possibly to gain competitive advantage over other men). This supports a pattern of men using more other-defeating humor than women (Martin et al., 2003).
Greengross and Miller (2008) also found that self-defeating humor is regarded as more attractive for long-term relationships in people having high status, but not for people having low-status. They hypothesize that this could be because self-defeating humor constitutes a form of self-
handicapping as part of a costly-signaling strategy in sexual selection (Miller, 2000). They found no effect on short-term relationship attractiveness, in particular not for men rating women, counter to the usual pattern in sexual selection (Greengross & Miller, 2008).
The perceived attractiveness of a humor style can also be affected by the person's own humor preference. Similarity-attraction theory states that people in general are more attracted to people who hold similar values and attitudes as themselves (Byrne, 1961; 1997) as well as personality characteristics (Byrne, Griffitt & Stefaniak, 1967). The similarity-attraction hypothesis is one of the most well-known and widely accepted theories to come out of social psychology. Its practical use can be observed in some of the biggest dating sites, which try to match people together based on shared interests and attitudes. Evolutionary theorists have attempted to explain this phenomenon. For instance, Russell, Wells, and Rushton (1985) proposed that mating with a genetically similar other is evolutionarily beneficial because such pairings result in a higher percentage of one's own genes being passed on. With humor being an important part of mate value and attraction, it is possible that the similarity-attraction theory would hold true for humor styles as well. That is, similar styles of humor would to some extent be more attractive than differing humor styles. A study by Hahn & Campbell (2016) looked at similarity of humor styles in married couples and found a significant positive association between the humor styles of married couples.
The correlation was stronger in beneficial humor styles than detrimental humor styles. Other studies have failed to find a link between similar humor styles in partners and relationship satisfaction and thus it is unclear whether similar humor styles are important in relationships (Martin, 2007). What is evident is that an important aspect in relationship satisfaction is a positive appraisal of the partners humor, meaning that the partner is perceived to have a good sense of humor (Martin, 2007).
It is clearly evident that people do not rate all humor styles as being equally attractive, even though a lot still remains to be explored. Previous studies have used descriptions of the humor style used by profiles or a text vignette that describes a potential partner using a certain humor style. Simply describing a profile's humor use is however not the same as reacting to an actual joke. While experiments have assessed the attractiveness of different humor styles, few studies have included all four humor styles proposed by Martin et al. (2003). In the present study, we therefore used jokes from all four humor styles combined into short vignettes, and assessed how attractive they were considered in an online dating scenario by both women and men. By combining real jokes with real faces in an online-experiment we purported to create realistic conditions that are similar to those of real online dating platforms.
The purpose of this study was to evaluate the idea that humor serves as a trait for sexual selection and that different styles of humor are rated differently on mate value. Specifically, we examined a number of hypotheses that follow from evolutionary theory regarding perceived mate value and preferences, with regards to the four different humor styles reviewed above (affiliative, self-enhancing, aggressive, and self-defeating), type of relation (short-term vs. long-term) and sex (heterosexual men and women rate individuals of their opposite sex). This was done by asking participants to provide mate value ratings in a hypothetical partner choice situation. The
hypotheses tested were (1) Women will rate all partner preferences higher for the two benign humor styles (affiliative and self-enhancing) compared to the two detrimental ones (aggressive and self-defeating). (2) Men will also rate partner preferences higher for the two benign humor styles, but only for long-term relationships, not for short-term relationship interest, interest in sexual intercourse and dating. The final hypothesis is that (3) the two benign humor styles (self- enhancing, affiliative) will be rated higher in mate value (intelligence, health, social status, parenting skill) than the two detrimental humor styles (aggressive, self-defeating).
Method Participants
Participants were recruited through various social media groups on Facebook as well as through flyers on Umeå university campus. Participants were also recruited through e-mail via student counselors targeted at students from different programs at Umeå University. All participants were informed that they had to be between 18 and 40 years of age to partake. In total 554 began filling out the survey for 366 male profiles and 188 female profiles, and 174 male and 93 female profiles were completed, 267 in total. The majority that dropped out did so in the beginning of the experiment. Only the data from completed surveys were used in the analyses.
There were four participants in the male profile test that reported androphilia, and twelve participants rating the female profiles reporting gynephilia. These participants were excluded because they were too few to use in separate analyses, and because the hypotheses related to heterosexual dating. This reduced the number of participants included in the analysis to 251, 170 women rating profiles of men and 81 men rating profiles of women. The demographic information of the participants is described in Table 2. Relationship status and interest is presented in Table 3.
Table 2
Table of participant demographics
Women (n) Percentages Men (n) Percentages Age
18-20 17 10% 3 3.5%
21-25 67 39.5% 25 31%
26-30 57 33.5% 31 38.5%
31-35 13 7.5% 12 15%
36-40 16 9.5% 10 12%
Education
Elementary school or similar 1 0.5% 1 1.5%
Upper secondary school (2 years) 2 1% 2 2.5%
Upper secondary school (3-4 years) 67 39.5% 32 39.5%
Folk High School or similar 4 2.5% 3 3.5%
University (3< years) 36 21% 15 18.5%
University (3≥ Years) 60 35.5% 28 34.5%
Occupation
Working 42 24.5% 28 34.5%
Studying 119 70% 50 61.5%
No employment (searching) 4 2.5% 2 2.5%
No employment (not searching) 1 1.5%
On sick leave 3 2%
Other 2 1%
Table 3
Table of participant relationships status and interest
Women (n) Percentages Men (n) Percentages Relationship status
Long relationship (over 6 months) 102 60% 40 49.5%
Relationship between 1-6 months 13 7.5% 2 2.5%
Short relationship (under 1 month) 1 0.5%
No relationship 54 32% 39 48%
Relationship interest
Long relationship 133 78% 64 79%
Short relationship 9 5.5% 7 8.5%
Not Interested 28 16.5% 10 12.5%
Design
Two online surveys were created using Limesurvey, one for rating male and one for rating female profiles. The surveys consisted of 12 items, each showing a face and a text vignette likening that of a real dating profile. Each item had 11 response items that had all to be answered. The vignettes appeared in an individual random order for each participant, and were furthermore randomly combined with one of 12 faces. Each text vignette expressed one of the four humor styles with two different jokes or puns. Each humor style was furthermore represented by three different vignettes, so as to decrease the risk that the specific jokes or puns as such caused possible effects on ratings. No joke occurred more than once for each participant. This meant that we had a 3 vignette x 4 humor style design creating a total of twelve individual items that the participants rated. Each item featured a portrait picture of a person of the opposite sex of the rater’s. The randomization of both vignettes and faces was to eliminate order effects across participants, and to make effects of vignettes (the variable of interest) independent from the effect of faces (a variable not of interest).
Materials Vignettes
Jokes were collected from various websites on the internet using Google with keywords such as “jokes”, “funniest jokes”, “jokes in dating”. Over a thousand written jokes were judged and sorted based on criteria related to how well they fitted with one of the four respective humor styles (affiliative, self-enhancing, self-defeating and aggressive). These jokes were then translated to Swedish. A survey was created with what we considered the 10 most suitable jokes from each humor style. Each joke was rated on perceived funniness as well as on how well it corresponded to each style on Likert scales (1-10). The order in which the jokes were presented was randomized to avoid the order of the jokes influencing the rating. The survey was answered by 14 participants (8 men and 6 women) recruited through convenience sampling. By considering the jokes absolute level of rated funniness, discarding all that were rated below 3, as well as their association to the intended humor style, 24 jokes from the original 40 were left over. These jokes were then paired to make a short vignette. In total 12 vignettes were created by pairing two jokes from the same humor style with a short statement between them intended to further emphasize the way the person uses humor. These vignettes were used as the stimuli for humor style that paired together with a face created twelve individual profiles for the experiment with either male or female faces.
Visual stimuli: Faces
Twelve female and twelve male faces were selected from the Chicago Face Database, an open-source database intended for use in non-commercial scientific research (Ma, Corell &
Wittenbrink, 2015). All faces have been pre-rated on attractiveness on a seven point Likert scale (1-7). Both the female and male faces were chosen according to that they were rated as being in the average attractiveness range. All female faces used in the experiment were pre-rated between 3-4 with a mean value of 3.38. The age of the female faces used varied between 22.4 and 28.7 with a mean age of 24.91. All male faces were pre-rated between 3-4 on attractiveness except for one that was rated 4.08, which was included due to the fact that there were only 11 male faces rated between 3-4 in the database that fit the criteria to be used in the experiment (showing different facial expressions). The mean attractiveness rate for the male faces was 3.43. The age of the male faces varied between 20.8 and 31 with a mean age of 25.18. All faces used showed a facial expression with a closed mouth smile. All faces were given names in the experiment chosen from the Swedish statistical database list of most common first names in Sweden. The names were chosen from the 30 most common male and female names. Names which were judged not to be common in the age group the faces represent were excluded.
Background questions
In the beginning of the experiment the participants answered background questions regarding demographics of their age, sex, education and current occupation. These questions were included to provide demographic information of the participant population. In the end participants were asked to answer if they are in a relationship and what kind of relationship they were interested in at the moment (whether or not they currently were in one). These questions were included to enable post-hoc analysis if the results would be hard to interpret or showed peculiarities.
Dependent variables: Mate value
Eleven questions were used for rating the profiles. Nine of the questions have been used in previous research on sexual selection for traits in humans (Madison, Holmqvist & Vestin, 2018).
The first four questions (1-4) are similar to how relationship interest and mate preferences are measured in previous studies on attraction (Singh, 1995; Furnham, Moutafi & Baguma, 2002;
Schulte-Hostedde, Eys, & Johnson, 2008; Madison, Holmqvist & Vestin, 2018); 1) How interested would you be in going on a date with this person? 2) How interested would you be in having a short (under one month) relationship with this person? 3) How interested would you be in having sex with this person provided there were no unwanted consequences? and 4) How interested would you be in having a long (over 6 months) relationship with this person?
Questions 5-8 measure traits found to be linked to mate value (Buss, 1989; Gangestad &
Simpson, 2000; Sugiyama, 2005; Madison, Holmqvist & Vestin, 2018): (5) How intelligent do you think this person is? (6) How good health do you think this person has? (7) How high social status do you think this person has? and (8) How good a parent do you think this person would be?
Question (9) How physically attractive do you find the person? was intended as a manipulation check for the physical attractiveness of the face in the profile. Two final questions were related to humor, one that rated perceived funniness: (10) “How funny do you think this person is?” and one related to the way the profile used humor: (11) “How appealing do you find the way this person uses humor?”. These two questions were included to assess how the perceived funniness of the profile influenced mate value, as well as the extent to which the humor style corresponded to the humor preferences of the participant.
Procedure
The participants were first directed to a website with information regarding the experiment.
On this website there were two links to the two experiments, and they were asked to choose the link that best corresponded to their interest in dating men or women, which redirected them to the survey that ran on Limesurvey’s server. The first page of the survey gave information about the experiment, critical parts of which covered that (1) they were going to view profiles of people and then rate them according to a number of questions (2) that these questions were related to dating, romantic associations and the profiles qualities, and (3) that they should imagine that they were single and interested in dating, whether or not they were in a relationship. After this they were asked to fill in an informed consent, and the demographic background questions found in table 2.
Then they were presented with the first profile with the vignette presented with the face beneath.
An example of a profile with a vignette is presented in figure A1 in the appendix. The participants were asked to name which profile they saw from a list of the twelve names. This was so that the data would show which face the participant had seen in combination with what vignette. They rated each profile according to the eleven questions described under mate value. This was repeated until all twelve profiles had been presented. The last part of the experiment consisted of the two questions regarding the participants’ relationship status. The whole session took approximately
15-20 minutes to complete. The results of the surveys were analyzed with IBM’s Statistical Package for the Social Sciences, v. 24.
Ethical considerations
All participants were informed that they had to be over 18 years old and therefore of legal age to give consent for participating in the study. All participants signed an informed consent in which they agreed to participate in the study and were informed that they were free to withdraw from the study at any time. All data was treated confidentially and analyzed at a group level, meaning that no individual can be identified from the results.
Results
The vignettes were rated similarly within their respective humor style with the exception of the aggressive jokes in vignette 1, which was rated substantially higher than the other two aggressive vignettes. This effect was associated with this vignette being considered funnier than the two other ones. When this first aggressive vignette was excluded this did not change the main effect and therefore the vignette was included in the analysis. The rated funniness of individual vignettes and the four humor styles is presented in Table A1 in the appendix. There was an overall pattern where the men had higher ratings than the women, especially relationship interest, a pattern consistent with previous studies where men and women rate the attractiveness of potential partners (DiDonato, Bedminster and Machel, 2012; Ziegler-Hill, Besser & Jett, 2013). Part of the differences in rating between men and women could also be explained by the perceived average attractiveness of the faces used in the study which was higher for men than for women. The men rated the female physical attractiveness of the profiles quite similarly to the pre-rated attractiveness level, 3.18 compared to 3.38 in the Chicago Face Database (Ma, Corell & Wittenbrink, 2015). The women, on the other hand, rated the male faces lower than the pre-rated attractiveness levels (2.58 compared to 3.43).
There was also a substantial variation in how the individual faces used were rated on physical attractiveness. The most attractive male face Johan was rated with a mean of 3.42 while the least attractive male face Jan had a mean rating of 1.88. For the female profiles the most attractive profile Sofia had a mean rating of 4.28 with the least attractive profile, Helena, being rated 2.22.
The results of the rating on physical attractiveness for the different male and female profiles are presented in table A2 and A3 in the Appendix. A side effect of how the randomization in our experiment worked, being completely random, led to certain combinations of visual- and text stimuli showing up more than others which could potentially influence the results. Our analysis, however, is based on aggregating the three vignettes within each humor style, and reporting mean rated physical attraction for each humor style across faces with potentially different attractiveness.
In effect, systematic effects of the randomization are highly unlikely. Nevertheless, we analyzed the vignettes separately and found that one in particular was rated as much funnier than the other 11. The analyses below were therefore conducted in different combinations without this vignette as well as without the most attractive faces. Because this did not affect the pattern of the results as they bear on the hypotheses, the final analyses included all conditions.
Each dependent variable was subjected to a 3 (vignette) x 4 (humor style) repeated measures within-participant ANOVA. The complete results from the ANOVA are reported in Tables A4 and A5 in the Appendix. For women the ANOVA showed significant differences between the rating on the four humor styles for all dependent variables except for Facial attractiveness. For men, there were significant differences dependent on humor style for Social status, Parenting skill, Funniness and Humor preference. These main effects are depicted in Figure 4.
Figure 4.
Mean ratings as a function of humor style for men and women. Error bars depict .95 confidence intervals. Significant effects (p < .05) are indicated with asterisks.
Returning to the hypotheses regarding interest in different relationships and mate value, the first hypothesis was that women would prefer the benign humor styles in all potential relationships.
The repeated measures ANOVA showed that there was a significant difference between the ratings of the different humor styles for women in all relationships. For Date interest, Intercourse interest and interest in a Short-term relationship the results showed that the main effect was that the aggressive humor style was rated lower than the others. For Date interest (F3, 507 = 7.16, p = <.001, η2 = .04) the post hoc Bonferroni test showed that the aggressive style was rated significantly lower than the two benign humor styles. For Intercourse interest (F2.84, 480.1 = 3.75, p = .013, η2 = .02) the post hoc test revealed that there was a significant difference between the self-enhancing humor
style being rated higher than the aggressive humor style, but otherwise no difference between the other humor styles. The Short-term relationship interest (F2.84, 479.54 = 6.27, p = <.001, η2 = .04) post hoc test showed that the aggressive humor style was rated significantly lower than both the self-enhancing and the self-defeating humor style, but not the affiliative humor style. For Long- term relationships (F2.76, 466.18 = 7.02, p = <.001, η2 = .04) a post-hoc analysis with Bonferroni correction showed that the difference was between the aggressive humor style that was rated lower than all other three humor styles. So while significant results could be observed, they did not follow the pattern predicted in the hypothesis and instead showed that the self-defeating humor style was not rated lower than the two benign humor styles. The hypothesis was that both benign humor styles would be rated higher than the two detrimental styles. This means that the hypothesis was supported for one of the detrimental humor styles, but not the self-defeating humor style for women.
The second hypothesis was that because of differences in partner preferences for short-term and long-term relationships, humor style would not have an effect on Short-term partner interest, interest in Intercourse and Date interest for men but that it would have an effect on Long-term relationships. The analysis showed no significant difference on any of the dependent relationship variables dependent on humor style. The results failed to show a difference between the relationship preferences, meaning that the hypothesis was not supported for men.
The third hypothesis was that humor style would have an effect on mate value with the benign humor styles being rated higher than the detrimental styles. The analysis showed that both the men and the women rated mate value dependent on humor style, but women did so on more mate value traits than the men. A significant difference dependent on humor style could be seen in all four mate value traits for women; Intelligence (F2.88, 487.4 = 23.74, p = <.001, η2 = .12), Health (F3, 507 = 8.58, p = <.001, η2 = .05), Social status (F3, 507 = 9.39, p = <.001, η2 = .05) and Parenting skill (F2.67, 451.38 = 53.3, p = <.001, η2 = .24). The post hoc Bonferroni test for Intelligence showed that the aggressive style was rated significantly lower than the other three styles. For the rating of Health the post hoc test showed that the affiliative style was rated significantly higher than the two detrimental humor styles. The post hoc test for Social status showed that the self-enhancing humor style was rated higher than the two detrimental humor styles. There was also a significant effect with the affiliative humor style being rated higher than the self-defeating humor style, but not the aggressive humor style. Parenting skill post hoc test showed that there was a significant effect between all four humor styles with the affiliative humor style being rated highest, self-enhancing second highest followed by the self-defeating style and the aggressive humor style being rated lowest. For men there was a significant difference in two out of the four mate value traits. For the first trait Social status (F2.71, 216.82 = 5.84, p = <.001, η2 = .07), post hoc test showed that there was a difference between the self-enhancing humor style being rated significantly higher than the self- defeating humor style. For the second trait Parenting skill (F3, 240 = 5.65, p = <.001, η2 = .07) the post-hoc test revealed that there was a significant difference between the affiliative humor style that was rated highest and the self-enhancing and self-defeating styles being rated significantly
lower. Interestingly the aggressive humor style was rated second highest and there was no significant difference between the aggressive style and the other humor styles.
Discussion
The aim of the study was to examine how four different styles of humor affect partner interest and attraction in the context of sexual selection. The main hypothesis was that the two benign humor styles would be rated higher than the two detrimental humor styles on relationship interest and mate value. There was also a hypothesis that women and men would be affected by this in different ways because of differences in partner preferences between the sexes. The results from the analysis did not fully concur with the hypotheses, although a significant effect was found dependent on humor style for many of the variables pertaining to partner preference and mate value.
The first hypothesis was that women would rate the two benign humor styles higher than the two detrimental styles for all forms of relationships. This was true for women’s rating on one of the detrimental humor styles, the aggressive style, but not for the self-defeating style. The second hypothesis was that there would be a significant effect for long-term relationship interest but not the other relationship forms. For men there was no significant effect at all. These results were surprising since choosing a good long-term partner is important for both men and women. Whereas physical attractiveness is emphasized in short-term partners, socially appealing characteristics (eg.
warmth, intelligence, honesty) have been shown to be more important for long-term interest for both sexes (Regan, Levin, Sprecher, Christopher & Gate, 2000). Therefore a larger difference for long-term partner interest was expected, as detrimental humor styles have been found to be linked to a number of socially unappealing characteristics, such as unhealthy behavior, insecure attachment, lower social competence, lower relationship satisfaction, and higher levels of Machiavellianism and psychopathy, and to correlate negatively with agreeableness and conscientiousness and positively with neuroticism (Cann & Matson, 2014; Martin, 2007; Plessen et al., 2020). Furthermore previous studies have shown that humor style is a strong interpersonal signal where people using the detrimental humor styles are viewed more negatively, especially those using the aggressive style (Ziegler-Hill, Besser & Jett, 2013). The results in this study show that, at least for men, this is not necessarily the case. The third and final hypothesis was that the benign styles would be rated higher than the detrimental styles on mate value. Again the main pattern found was that women rated the aggressive style lower than the other styles, but effects could also be seen between the self-defeating style and the benign humor styles. This supports the notion that humor style can serve as a signal for mate value. For men the effect was that the self- defeating style was rated lower on social status as well as parenting skill. Interestingly the self- enhancing style was rated lower than the affiliative humor style with the aggressive humor style being rated second highest for parenting skill.
This study used all four humor styles, but classified them into a detrimental and a benign group. The main pattern found was that women rated the aggressive humor style lowest, whereas the self-defeating style was rated more similarly with the two benign styles. For men there were less differences between how the humor styles were rated, but the differences found showed that
the self-defeating style was rated lowest of the humor styles. This indicates that in the context of interpersonal relationships the classification into the two overriding benign and detrimental groups does not capture the full difference in how the four humor styles are perceived and that they should be analyzed at an individual humor style level. The men did not share the women's aversion towards the aggressive humor style. There were also sex differences in how funny the aggressive style was perceived as well as how this style concurred with the humor preferences of the men and women participants, with men rating the aggressive humor style higher than the women. This is consistent with previous studies showing that men are more prone to using other-defeating humor (Greengross & Miller, 2008; Martin et al., 2003; Martin, 2007).
The evolutionary theory of sexual selection stipulates that many mental traits developed as fitness signals. Humor in this context is a fitness signal mainly for intelligence that women should be more attuned to. The aggressive style of humor that was perceived as being the least attractive style by women was also the style where the women rated the profile as being least intelligent as well as least suitable as a parent. This is an indication that humor styles are judged quite differently on mate value and that not all forms of humor are equally good at signalling intelligence.
Designing an experiment can be an arduous process fraught with pitfalls that can affect the intentions of the study in ways that, if not accounted for, can call into question the legitimacy of the results found. Does the experiment measure what it intends to? A legitimate worry regarding the design of the experiment is that the perceived funniness of the jokes in the vignettes would overrule the humor style when answering questions regarding sexual selection. Contrary to this it does seem that the style of humor used was influential despite how funny the vignettes were regarded. An example supporting this is the self-defeating humor style which was rated as the least funny by the men and the least funny together with aggressive humor by the women. The self- defeating style was still regarded as more attractive in sexual partners than the aggressive style for the women and the men did not rate it differently for partner interest compared to the other humor styles.
Another worry would be that the vignettes chosen to represent the humor styles would not properly represent each style as intended. It is hard to capture all aspects of a phenomena such as a person's humor style in a short vignette. This is partly the purpose of the pilot study conducted beforehand, where jokes were rated on funniness as well as humor style affinity and winnowed down to similar funniness and belonging to humor style. This was a necessary step to try to ensure humor style affinity. Other researchers have chosen to add a control question for humor style in their experiments (Ziegler-Hill, Besser and Jett, 2013) but in this experiment it was decided that a control question should not be added so as not to have the participants think primarily about the styles of humor during the experiment. A compromise could be to have the vignettes be shown again at the end of the experiment and have the participant rate how well they correspond to particular humor styles, but the survey was long enough as is. Having this dimension available during statistical analysis would be beneficial and could be worth implementing in future research.
Women rated male faces as less physically attractive than men rated women faces. This despite the fact that the faces selected from the Chicago Face Database (Ma, Corell & Wittenbrink,
2015) were chosen with pre-rated similarity across the sexes in mind. A difference compared to this study pertaining to the database and its ratings is that both male and female faces were rated by both men and women in the study and they did not provide any separated data on sex differences in given ratings. Given this, one can only speculate on what could have contributed to this effect.
There could have been a similar difference in the aforementioned article, where men’s ratings are higher, but there is no way to confirm this. What can be seen in our study is that women did systematically give a lower rating on all variables than men did, not only physical attractiveness.
There could also be cultural differences, since participants in this study were Swedish speaking, which could influence preferences compared to the American faces and participants used for the database. Another potential influence could be the context of the ratings. Since in this study the participants were asked to consider the profiles in the context of dating and as a potential partner, they could be judged more harshly than the pre-rating in the face database.
An important question to ask is whether the differences in perceived physical attractiveness of the visual stimuli used in the experiment between the sexes could have a confounding effect on the results. Regarding the main analysis of difference in humor style on different variables, the difference in rating should be negligible since the analysis is done within-group. There could however be an issue when extrapolating these results when comparing observations between the sexes and therefore the differences in ratings should be kept in mind when interpreting the results across groups.
A problem when conducting research is participant drop out. Online experiments have larger dropout rates compared to lab based research where there is more social pressure to complete the experiment than in an online format (Dandurant, Schultz & Onishi, 2008). Having a dropout rate could to some extent be seen as desirable as it ensures the full consent from the participant. Many participants prefer to drop out in the beginning of experiments, and that is easier to do anonymously online (Hoerger 2010). Dropout can to some extent be prevented by using financial incentives and asking for personal information (for example the e-mail address of the participant), none of which were used due to not asking for information that compromises the anonymity of the participants (Zhou & Fishbach, 2016). In this study a reason for dropout could be due to the length of the experiment. The participants had to rate twelve profiles on eleven dependent variables and could monitor the progress in the experiment. The participants could have seen the length and decided against participating in full. A limitation of our research is that we recruited mostly from a student population and more particularly amongst psychology students in Sweden. This means that the results can be affected by the preferences of this particular population, and that the results might differ if conducted on another population.
Since the study aimed to measure evolutionary theories inherent to human beings, there is an added pressure of eliciting as pure a response as possible with as little confounding influences as possible. This is admittedly a lofty goal which it is hard to control for, especially for a study that is administered online. Some things can be done however. First, we used actual jokes to represent each humor style rather than just a vignette with a description as seen in other studies (DiDonato, Bedminster and Machel, 2012; Tornqvist & Chiappe 2015). Second, we mimicked popular dating
sites such as Tinder in the layout of the stimuli, which should increase ecological validity. Third, we attempted to hide the true intent of the study, so as not to elicit values and social pressures of what is acceptable. Because of this, participants in the pilot study were excluded from participating in the main study.
A strength of this study is that it was designed in a way that enabled both the visual stimuli and the text stimuli to be completely random in regards to what order they appear and how they combine with each other to make a profile across all participants. This lessens the risk of systematic effects from differences in attraction across visual stimuli, which on its own can be interesting to study but not the purpose of this study. It also lessens any effect that can come with the ordering of stimuli, such as fatigue, which is controlled with a random order of conditions.
The experiment was an investigation into heterosexual partner preferences because of the evolutionary theories pertaining to mate strategies for the different sexes. This meant excluding participants that did not fit the description of the experiment. Future research could look specifically at non-heterosexual partner preferences linked to humor style as well as well as expand the research into participants with a non-binary gender identity as well as other HBTQ-groups.
Since humor is an interpersonal phenomena where the social context is very important for how the humor is perceived, the ecological validity is especially important when using humor as a stimulus. Future research could attempt to increase ecological validity even further by, for example, using audio recordings or video to present stimuli. Another area for future research is using vignettes that display a more varying degree of funniness as well as faces of varying attractiveness to control for effects by this. Different design choices could enable different analyses, such as Latin square, crossed, or counterbalanced designs.
In conclusion, this study showed that different humor styles affect partner interest in women but not men. Both men and women perceive mate value dependent on humor style, but women do it on more traits linked to mate value than men do. This supports the notion that women use humor as a fitness signal in potential partners and that different styles of humor are perceived differently in this regard.
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Appendix Figure A1
Example screencap of the layout shown to participants in the experiment, scrolling down they were presented with the rest of the questions.
