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Social attractiveness and how much we like someone are, to a large extent, determined by the person's communication patterns. We tend to enjoy conversations more with people who express homophily (Byrne, 1971), are more socially skilled (Jones, Freemon, & Goswick, 1981), and are physically attractive (Chaiken, 1979). Humor or wit is an important component of communication competence (Duran, 1983, 1992) which appears to be related to social attraction as well (McGhee, 1989).
The orientation to communicating in a humorous vein may be especially important when initiating and in early stages of relationships. In more fully developed relationships humor, like physical attractiveness, may play a less important role, giving way to deeper disclosure and maintenance communication. But on an acquaintance level, humor is likely to be related to liking, both through its relationship with other personality variables and its perceived enactment.
The purpose of the following study was to investigate how humorous communication may serve relationship development. First, we examined the relationships among humor orientation, loneliness, and verbal aggression. Next, we examined how acquaintances view the propensity to be humorous, and rate the social attractiveness of the other person.
Humor and Relationships
Humor Orientation
Humor is recognized as an important behavior used to achieve interpersonal goals (McGhee, 1989). The use of humor during interaction is noted as both a necessary and effective social skill used to obtain social/interpersonal competence (Foot, 1996; Kane, Suls, & Tedeschi, 1977).
Humor plays a significant role in the development of children's social skills and oftentimes enables children to initiate relationships with their peers (1989). Children who are less skilled in the communication of humor may not achieve their interpersonal goals. More specifically, Murstein and Burst (1985) assert that "entertainingness" is an important dimension of friendship which is directly related to the production of humor. Thus, individuals who can not be entertaining through the use of humorous communication may also have more difficulty in making friends and becoming popular in their social circles.
Humor orientation has recently been identified as being positively associated with communication competence (Wanzer, Booth-Butterfield, & Booth-Butterfield, 1995). The Humor Orientation Scale (HO), (Booth-Butterfield & Booth-Butterfield, 1991) measures "individual differences in the predisposition to enact humorous messages" (p. 32). Specifically, those who score high on the humor orientation scale...