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Drawing on a study of 254 undergraduates, it analyzes correlations among physical characteristics, demographic factors, attitudes, economic and educational background, church attendance, and ethnic or political identity with adult mate choice. It aims to extend earlier findings on humor by testing whether being playful and fun loving also shows assortative patterns.",{"@graph":69,"@context":122},[70,84,105],{"@type":71,"itemListElement":72},"BreadcrumbList",[73,77,79,82],{"item":74,"name":75,"@type":76,"position":8},"https://docshare.wps.com","Home","ListItem",{"item":78,"name":9,"@type":76,"position":14},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/",{"item":80,"name":40,"@type":76,"position":81},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/research-report/",3,{"item":83,"name":65,"@type":76,"position":19},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/playfulness-and-assortative-mating-research-article/591706/",{"url":83,"name":65,"@type":85,"image":86,"author":91,"headline":65,"publisher":94,"fileFormat":97,"inLanguage":63,"description":67,"dateModified":98,"datePublished":99,"encodingFormat":97,"isAccessibleForFree":100,"interactionStatistic":101},"DigitalDocument",{"url":87,"@type":88,"width":89,"height":90},"https://docshare.wps.com/thumbnails/playfulness-and-assortative-mating-research-article/591706.png","ImageObject",300,407,{"name":92,"@type":93},"Dipper","Person",{"url":74,"name":95,"@type":96},"DocShare","Organization","application/pdf","2026-10-30","2026-10-15",true,{"@type":102,"interactionType":103,"userInteractionCount":24},"InteractionCounter",{"@type":104},"ViewAction",{"@type":106,"mainEntity":107},"FAQPage",[108,114,118],{"name":109,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":111},"What is assortative mating and why is it important?","Question",{"text":112,"@type":113},"Assortative mating is the tendency to mate with phenotypically similar individuals more often than expected by chance. It can increase genetic similarity within groups and influence genetic and evolutionary outcomes.","Answer",{"name":115,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":116},"How does the study connect humor and playfulness to mate choice?",{"text":117,"@type":113},"The authors replicate earlier findings about sense of humor in mate preferences and extend them by testing whether related traits such as being playful and fun loving are also subject to assortative mating.",{"name":119,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":120},"What distinguishes positive from negative assortative mating?",{"text":121,"@type":113},"Positive assortative mating favors phenotypic or genotypic similarity, increasing genetic similarity and potentially raising risks like inbreeding. 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Influenced by many factors—physical characteristics like height and weight and demographic elements like behavior and attitudes, economic status and education, church attendance and ethnic identity, politics and personality—assortative mating has been considered with regard to having a good sense of humor but never to being playful or being fun loving. Based on a study of 254 undergraduates, the authors examine how these variables correlate with the search for desirable mates by adults and suggest the variables are indeed subject to assortative mating. Key words: assortative mating, fun loving, mate choice, playfulness, sense of humor, social homogamy  \nOne saying goes “birds of a feather flock together.” In contrast, another holds “opposites attract.” When it comes to selecting mates—as numerous studies have shown—humans appear to favor the first old saw over the second. That is to say, their mated pairs frequently share physical attributes, behavioral mannerisms, and psychological traits (e.g., Baniel 2018; Luo 2017) . Given the broad array of characteristics sought by individuals in prospective mates, playfulness and seemingly related traits—such as having a good sense of humor and being fun loving—may be qualities that prospective partners seek in each other. If so, playfulness may be subject to assortative mating, the tendency of individuals across animal species, including humans, to mate with others who share phenotypic or genotypic characteristics at frequencies we would not anticipate if such pairings were random (Jiang, Bolnick, and Kirkpatrick 2013; Robinson et al. 2017). Because a good sense of humor has been so frequently identified as a characteristic sought in prospective mates, the goals of our study are to replicate earlier findings with respect to sense of humor and to determine if  \n178  \nAmerican Journal of Play, Volume 12, Number 2 © The Strong [Contact Garry Chick at gchick@psu.edu](Contact Garry Chick at gchick@psu.edu)  \npresumably related traits—being playful and fun loving—are also subject to assortative mating.  \nAssortative Mating  \nIn 1886 Francis Galton wrote “men and women of contrasted heights, short and tall or tall and short, married just about as frequently as men and women of similar height, both tall or both short” thus indicating that height is “little entangled with considerations of nurture, of the survival of the fittest, or of marriage selection”(251). Galton’s observation appears to have been premature, however. In 1903 Karl Pearson and Alice Lee, using Galton’s data, found correlations between the heights of husbands and wives of r = .28 and approximately r = .20 for arm span and forearm length (although conceding that these might be due to stature). Soon after, in 1908, George Hardy, a British mathematician, and Wilhelm Weinberg, a German physician, independently developed the principle of genetic equilibrium, showing that allele [one of two or more variants of agene—eds.] and, therefore, genotype frequencies remain constant with random mating in indefinitely large populations. Specifically, Hardy (1908) disputed the commonly held view that dominant alleles would tend to increase in frequency atthe expense of recessive alleles while Weinberg (1908) derived a general equilibrium model for a single gene with two alleles. The Hardy-Weinberg principle, or Hardy-Weinberg Equilibrium, holds that two alleles, designated A and a which occur with frequencies p and q, will, with random mating, generate genotype frequencies of p2, 2pq, and q2. Hence, if p = .7 and q = .3, AA = p2 or .49, Aa = 2pq or .21, and aA = q2 or .09. Assortative mating does not result in the ","cbCailN1z7z6C9Qt","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCailN1z7z6C9Qt","pdf",290072,38,"English","# Playfulness and Assortative Mating\n## Assortative Mating\n## Positive and negative assortative mating","[{\"question\":\"What is assortative mating and why is it important?\",\"answer\":\"Assortative mating is the tendency to mate with phenotypically similar individuals more often than expected by chance. It can increase genetic similarity within groups and influence genetic and evolutionary outcomes.\"},{\"question\":\"How does the study connect humor and playfulness to mate choice?\",\"answer\":\"The authors replicate earlier findings about sense of humor in mate preferences and extend them by testing whether related traits such as being playful and fun loving are also subject to assortative mating.\"},{\"question\":\"What distinguishes positive from negative assortative mating?\",\"answer\":\"Positive assortative mating favors phenotypic or genotypic similarity, increasing genetic similarity and potentially raising risks like inbreeding. Negative (disassortative) mating favors dissimilarity, increasing heterozygosity and reducing some ill effects of inbreeding.\"}]","Playfulness and Assortative Mating - Research article | PDF",1792073034,96]