Just when you thought you had enough things to worry about in your love life, here’s another: your sense of humor. And not just whether or not you have one, but what your specific taste in funny says about your personality.
The fine folks over at eHarmony found that both men and women report that a great sense of humor is the most important thing they are looking for in their match. “Women’s ratings of a man’s humor was significantly associated with their ratings of the man’s intelligence and warmth, showing that women see funny men as more intelligent, positive, and upbeat,” a blog post[*1] on the subject said. Men, on the other hand, use humor as a tactic of competing with one another in hopes of catching the eye of a romantic interest.
Looking deeper, researchers identified 4 different types of humor: affiliative, self-defeating, self-enhancing, and aggressive. Each has unique characteristics:
- Affiliative: When people think “sense of humor,” this is what they’re thinking of. Affiliative humor involves telling jokes and making funny comments that are not at the expense of anyone. This type of humor is used to nurture relationships between people, to bring groups together, and to create a light-hearted, entertaining atmosphere.
- Self-defeating: People with the self-defeating humor type amuse others at their own expense. They make themselves the butt of their own jokes in order to gain approval from others (and they’ll even laugh along when others put them down).
- Self-enhancing: Those who use self-enhancing humor find the funny in everything, and typically deal with challenges by looking on the bright side. Self-enhancing humor can be used as a method of coping with adversity, to prevent negative emotions from taking over.
- Aggressive: The name says it all. Aggressive humor can include teasing, sarcasm, making fun of others or putting others down. It’s a hurtful kind of humor used to manipulate and alienate others. People who use aggressive humor can often have trouble holding back from saying things they find funny, even if they’re insensitive.
We each use all four types of humor in combination, but probably have a preference for one or two. Based on researchers’ findings, what that preference is could say something about your personality:
- People who use any affiliative, self-enhancing, and aggressive humor more were found to be significantly more intelligent.
- Affiliative humor users were also found to be significantly more secure in their relationships, value their friendships more, and be less athletic.
- Users of self-enhancing humor were found to be significantly happier in general than those who don’t use this type very often. They were found to be more confident in themselves, to feel more fortunate, and to be more satisfied with themselves overall.
- Individuals who use self-defeating humor are more likely to develop close relationships with others and are not afraid to show their true selves. However, they were also found to be significantly more anxious, depressed, and neurotic, as well as less confident in their own physical attractiveness.
- Aggressive humor users are significantly less kind and caring, more neurotic, more bossy and dominating, less confident in their physical attractiveness, and less likely to want a close relationship with their partner. They may also be more intelligent and more interested in sex, but the cons outweigh the pros in this case.
For more on the dating site which conducted this study you can read our review of eHarmony.