A recent study has found that playfulness — which includes having a “sense of humor,” a “playful” attitude, or a keen and abiding love of “fun” — is among the most coveted character traits for potential mates, both men and women. A survey of 250 undergraduate students found that playfulness was the usually the most important thing people looked for in a long-term partner, probably because nobody wants to be yoked to a humorless asshole who insists on fortifying weekly readings of Goethe for the rest of their natural lives…
.. Men ranked “sense of humor” as the most important quality a woman could have, a trait followed closely by “playfulness” and “kindness” (“physical attraction” was pretty far down on the list, ranking ninth out of a possible 13 traits). It’s fun to speculate about what atavistic reasons make “playfulness” such an attractive quality, but the answer in this case is probably pretty simple — most people like to laugh, and, given the fact that a lot of modern people have at least a little extra not-running-away-from-feral-dogs time to joke around with each other, they’d rather while away the hours of their lives with someone who’s not a complete bore.
From Jezebel. Normally I scoff at these studies with their small sample sizes (ie. 250 is not a big number in economics) and their incessant use of undergrad students as subjects, but I think the results of this study ring true, so I’m behind this one. I love playful, Bill loves playful.
But it would be good to do these studies on someone other than undergrads every now and then because who knows, people might be different at different stages of their life? For instance, sometimes parenting lends itself to being playful but other times it leaves you a cranky, earnest mess – Bill and I like playfulness but maybe most other parents would rank ‘patience’ above ‘playfulness’?
And if you read the link you will find that the researchers are attaching the usual evo-psych conclusions to it, too – it’s all about the male plumage and female fertility. People, over it.
blue milk 
Is your first comment meant as a demonstration of confirmation bias or are you being serious?
I’m joking around. I’m saying I like the result so let it be true.
yeah I’m pretty sceptical about that study. Can’t help imagining that those 250 undergraduates are picturing someone pretty gorgeous ‘playfully’ laughing at salads or rolling in grassy meadows with puppies. Kindness generally trumps all other qualities in these surveys, for women and men, and a sense of humour is always high up there. And yet, so many people then end up with arseholes….
+1 to the scepticism. Like Julie, I think “playful” is just such a loaded (and ambiguous) word. So apart from the small and skewed sample, one has to wonder about the survey design.
Another reason to wonder about survey design: I always understood that asking people explicitly about the thing you want to know leads to them telling you what you want to hear. ie saying “what traits are most attractive to you?” when you want to know what traits are most attractive lead to people not being entirely honest, whether consciously (because they don’t want to seem shallow) or unconsciously (people are pretty good at fooling themselves eg “kindness and a GSOH are most important to me but OMG SIE’S SO HOT!”).
The description of the study in both Jezebel and the UK’s Daily Telegraph (h/t’ed by Jezebel) suggests that yes, students were asked to rank traits. So.
I haven’t even studied psych, but I can think of more subtle ways to find these answers. eg provide pictures + para descriptions of a personality (with different paras matched to different pictures for different survey participants, and/or with paras mixed and matched, and/or with pics of the same people but in different poses so as to “suggest” different personality traits) and ask people which person they would most like to meet, which person they would most like to have a relationship with, that sort of thing. Even just using pics, asking people to rate attractiveness and then asking them to choose 1-3 words (from a list) describing them would probably be better.
that’s absolutely right… the survey design is crap if it’s not telling you that physical attractiveness is right up there in terms of important traits. that alone is a giveaway. (and it isn’t necessarily that being the best looking is important, rather just whether one person is attracted to another is important.)
As a researcher and a three-time online dating veteran, I have many thoughts about these kinds of studies. One thing that I saw in a lot of (straight) guys’ profiles is that they think of themselves as ‘easygoing’ and ‘laidback’ and they usually say they are looking for someone ‘fun’ and similarly laidback/easygoing. (Reading this over and over made me want to redraft my profile to say I was a highly anxious overachiever who hated laughing and disliked walks on the beach.) I agree with you that these kinds of studies need to be done with different age groups with different lives. I knew I didn’t want someone ‘easygoing’ (or playful) (that’s code for ‘I haven’t thought about this at all’) and that I wouldn’t fit most people’s description of ‘fun’, I wanted someone stable, kind and interesting and I hoped I was those things myself. You’re playful with the right person.
Love that Hendo – “You’re playful with the right person”.