UNITED KINGDOM / AGILITYPR.NEWS / November 30, 2020 / Laughter, even in the face of adversity, is seen by many as an important icebreaker; a stress reliever! And often this could be said of dating. After all, the lonely heart advertisements of yesteryear were all seen to carry the acronym GSOH – a good sense of humour.

But given how everyone’s world has been affected this year by Covid, just how important is laughter and humour in the dating journey today, or have different things come into play? Manchester-based Select Personal Introductions - one of the UK’s leading dating and matchmaking agencies – has put together a survey, drawing on recent psychological research, to find out if the famous good sense of humour (GSOH) still matters.

As Founder of Select Personal Introductions, Alex Mellor-Brook states: “Whilst we’ve seen how humour has played an enormous role this year in strengthening emotional bonds when many have felt so disconnected, we wanted to find out if GSOH is still an essential trait in our life partner – from the first date on. Delightedly, the results of the survey delivered a resounding ‘YES’ to the importance of having GSOH in dating, with a 100% of participants agreeing. This figure emanated from a 106 clients that responded to the survey, ranging in age from 27-58; 68% being women and 32% men.

“This supports the evolutionary theory that suggests humour can be a low risk way of assessing the degree of interest that a potential partner has,” added Alex.

Furthermore, the survey also revealed that 57% of people have no problem with a lot of humour when on a date. So it seems that cracking a joke, especially online, is a good way of finding out where you stand. As research reveals, if the other person laughs naturally they’re into you. If they don’t or make a false laugh they aren’t!

But GSOH is not just an essential trait in first dates, it helps us to enjoy the whole dating journey. Humour moderates stressful life events – indeed exactly why we saw the huge incidence of pandemic viral jokes, with twitter alive with memes – loo roll, home educating and overeating. This left some people feeling confused about how serious they ought to be whilst in the midst of a pandemic, but indeed it is when we need to trigger our happy hormones the most – the commonality of laughing at things that happen in life is a game changer in alleviating stressful situations and bring balance.

It was therefore somewhat interesting to find that when participants were asked if they could cope without a GSOH in a partner ‘if everything else was good’ that 39% disagreed and 18% strongly disagreed. A surprising and far cry from the 100% saying it was essential in dating! Could this be that in light of the pandemic and changes in roles and relationships that people are placing more value on other attributes for long-term love; respect, compassion, integrity, empathy, affection and reliability?

So, in conclusion, spreading laughter through humour, to build emotional bonds in good and bad times continues to be a winner, but in an era where many partners are looking for much more than somebody that has a GSOH, we are likely to see people prioritise other attributes when dating or looking for love.