Punchlines trump pick-up lines in romance: study

When two strangers meet, the man's efforts to be funny are often met with laughter from the woman that reflect more of an interest in him rather than the joke and laughing together is a sure sign of a spark, according to a new study.

The research team set out to explore the relationship between humor and intelligence, and they now suggest men ditch their pick-up lines in favor of punchlines when they're looking for love.

"The idea that humor is a signal of intelligence doesn't give humor its due credit," says study author Jeffrey Hall of the University of Kansas. "If you meet someone who you can laugh with, it might mean your future relationship is going to be fun and filled with good cheer."

His paper "Sexual Selection and Humor in Courtship: A Case for Warmth and Extroversion," published in the journal Evolutionary Psychology, found no connection between humor and intelligence.

In the first of three experiments 35 participants reflected on the Facebook profiles of 100 strangers to understand their personalities, and Hall compared their assessments with questionnaires filled out by the Facebook users.

Extroversion -- defined as interest focused on others rather than oneself -- was the predominant characteristic shared by humorous individuals, surprisingly more so than intelligence, according to the study.

Strangers honed in easily on whether or not the other was extroverted, and the study found little difference in the number of jokes women published on their Facebook pages as opposed to men.

In the second experiment, almost 300 students shared their academic performance records with Hall and expressed their feelings on humor and courtship by responding to a questionnaire.

Here, Hall found no connection between intelligence and humor, yet again he uncovered a relationship between humor and extroversion.

His next question pertained to the role of humor in romantic attraction and for his third and final experiment he recruited 51 pairs of single, heterosexual students who had never met.

Given their privacy, each pair of strangers was asked to talk for 10 minutes and then remark on their conversations in a survey.

Hall concluded that the more attempts a man made at humor that solicited an enthusiastic response from the woman indicated a likeliness that she was attracted to him, yet the reverse was not true for women who tried to be funny.

In conclusion, Hall says that having a sociable and agreeable personality -- of which humor is an indicator -- is an important characteristic sought out by singles yet often overlooked, and that shared laughter could be a path to lasting love.