Humor’s Effect on Long- Term Relationship Amongst Homosexuals

Introduction

Many studies have examined the effects of humor on interpersonal attraction and long term intimate relation amongst heterosexuals. In “Humor and sexual selection”, Robert Storey stated that humor is likely to be an interior positive quality, increasing an individual’s romantic desirability to members of the opposite sex. In “Effect of Humor on Interpersonal Attraction and Mate Selection”, McGee and Shevlin testified another aspect: mating selection for men depends more on physical attractions while women give higher ratings on a man with a good sense of humor to measure attractiveness and suitability of a long-term partner. Similarly, in “Humor appreciation in marriage: Spousal similarity, assortative mating, and disaffection”, Robert F. Priest and Melinda Taylor also explained a sexual difference towards humor and marital relationship: Men focus more on physical attractiveness. Contrary to all the studies mentioned above, in “Humor in intimate relationships: Ties among sense of humor, similarity in humor and relationship quality”, Barelds and Barelds-Dijkstra found there is no significant relation between sense of humor and relation quality of married couples. In a addition, in “Heterosexual romantic preferences: The importance of humor and physical attractiveness for different types of relationships”, Duane E. Lundy, Josephine Tan and Michael R. Cunningham valued other factors such as wealth, honesty, habits, education level or ethnicity over humor. Overall sense of humor has been tested by many researchers to have effect, to some extent, on heterosexual relationships, while there have been no studies reformed on whether it is a quality that is valued in homosexual relation. Therefore, the research question may be how does humor affect the mate selection amongst gays and lesbians? Research will be conducted to study dating websites for homosexuals. Data will be collected by observing the characteristics a homosexual man or woman desires in a...