Contextual Desirability of Strong Men Employing Affiliative and Aggressive Humor

Abstract

Women find men’s upper body strength highly desirable, albeit primarily within short-term mating contexts. This boundary implicates strength as possessing both costs and benefits in long-term and short-term mating contexts. The desirability of strength could be contingent upon whether the costs or benefits of strength are more salient through behaviors. Men’s humor style could be one modality to infer costs and benefits, namely their interest in affiliative humor relative to aggressive humor. This study represents a synergistic replication of previous work investigating the desirability of strength and various humor styles in mating domains. Women evaluated the short-term and long-term desirability of a prospective mate manipulated to appear physically strong or weak and described using affiliative or aggressive humor. We replicated previous findings implicating affiliative humor as desirable in long-term contexts and upper body strength in short-term contexts. However, no interactive effects between these traits emerged. Results indicate that women’s mate choices are multimodal and frequently involve evaluating the costs and benefits of various constellations of traits.