London - We may not necessarily be attracted to people who share our sense of humour. But good friends tend to end up laughing at the same things, a study has found.
It is this that helps friendships last, academics at Strathclyde University believe. Researcher Dr Simon Hunter said: “We were really surprised by the results. We’d thought that best friends would share a lot of their humour but at the start of our study this was not the case at all.”
In the first study of its kind, more than 1 200 boys and girls aged 11 to 13 were asked which classmates they were closest to.
They also answered questions designed to categorise their sense of humour into one of four types.
Affiliative humour involves telling jokes with broad appeal and is thought to bring people together.
By contrast, aggressive humour involves teasing others.This may be a popular strategy initially but could be isolating over time.
Those who favour self-defeating humour put themselves down to raise a laugh.
Fans of self-enhancing humour also poke fun at themselves but in a good-natured way.
The process was repeated six months later and the answers given by pupils whose friendships had stood the test of time were analysed. This revealed that, initially, best friends did not find the same things funny. However, if one liked affiliative humour, the other grew to enjoy it.
Dr Hunter said: “We did find that best friends come to share one particular style of humour, called affiliative humour.”
Daily Mail