When it comes to dating, show her the funny

The difference between a guy who did not make Mary Frances Davidson laugh and one who did was two dates and a three-year relationship.

With the first guy, she wanted to talk about what happened in line at the grocery store, but he wanted to talk about God. The other one, however, pointed to his head during the first date and said "Not just a hat rack!" They're still together.

"When you take things too seriously, life isn't fun anymore," said 22-year-old Davidson, who works as a museum educator and lives in Tacoma.

Finding someone who makes us guffaw seems like a reasonable expectation when dating. Hilarity makes us happy. But dig a little deeper, and you'll discover there's some complexity to our search for the punniest of them all. Try asking men and women to define what a good sense of humor is. Why do we care so much if someone is funny?

"If you think of any social relationship, shared laughter is one of the markers of success," said humor expert John Morreall, a professor at the College of William and Mary in Virginia. "A person who tries to be funny and doesn't get a response from the other person, that's real failure."

Masters of the one-liner do well with the ladies. Hollywood is laden with examples. Actor Seth Rogen is undeniably hilarious, and his girlfriend is undeniably hot. Bob Guiney of ABC's reality series "The Bachelor" earned the chance to woo 25 women after proving his humor chops on camera. Women lust after married smart aleck Jon Stewart.

"If a guy can't make me laugh, it's just not going to work out," said 31-year-old Amanda Caines, who works in photography production and lives in Tacoma.

And guys, in turn, also feel the heat to make a woman laugh on a date.

"It turns out if you can't figure out how to poke fun at yourself it can get pretty serious sitting across from the person you just met," said Kirkland program manager Bruce DaCosta. "If you're going to be spending time with this person, unless you're locked up in Sing Sing together, you want to enjoy the event."

Laugh lines are good

In dating, humor commands attention, especially online. The best remarks seem effortless, but humor is one of those traits that is easy to covet and hard to get.

Vincent Chu loves the sharp, smart wit of comedians like Stewart, Stephen Colbert and Conan O'Brien. He is interested in women who share that sensibility and understand his sense of humor.

"There's nothing worse than a first date and you're being you, and they're not laughing," said the 26-year-old technology program manager. "That's such a terrible experience."

But when the humor clicks, the banter flows.

DaCosta, 59, remembers one date who teased him about the crack in the dashboard of his beloved 1987 BMW.

She asked: "What's with the crack? Can't you afford a new car?"

He laughed.

Jokes are like trial balloons that test compatibility, he said. When he jokes about the difference between the reserved Pacific Northwest and East Coast (you can learn someone's life history standing in line at the DMV), will she get it?

"I pick up a lot about what people's orientations are, sex, marriage, divorce, work, rearing kids and travel just from the way they respond to funny remarks or the way they decide remarks aren't even funny," DaCosta said.

A compatible sense of humor can move people past more superficial expectations for a partner, said Janet Siroto, a spokeswoman for dating Web site Match.com. Women are more willing to overlook deal breakers like age if the guy proves witty enough.

"You're pretty much golden if you can show, 'Wow, you're funny,' just through your profile," she said.

People probe for their comic match with written references testing whether someone likes Larry the Cable Guy or laughs hysterically at the dry wit of NBC's "The Office."

"It speaks to tastes, a person's pop-culture references or lack thereof," Siroto said.Caines prefers a guy who can go toe-to-toe with her own smart-aleck sensibility, which tends toward "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" and "Family Guy." She rolls her eyes at references to the Cartoon Network's surreal fast-food cartoon "Aqua Teen Hunger Force."

Her boyfriend is a ham and even worried early in their relationship about entertaining her when she had a bad day, she said.

"He felt he had to put on a show to pull me out of it," Caines said.

It's a boy, girl thing

And here's where we come to what a girl wants, and yes, what a girl needs. No, it is not the same as what guys mean when they talk about a good sense of humor. Men and women's definition of hilarity and high jinks don't always coincide.

Boys and girls are socialized early with distinct approaches to humor, said humor expert Morreall. Boys are encouraged to entertain and act out, while girls learn to appreciate a joke, not put on the show.

That dynamic is prevalent in dating. To put it bluntly, men want someone who laughs at their punch lines, while women look for someone who makes them giggle.

There are exceptions, of course, with the rise of female comics who have appropriated male humor, like the brash Sarah Silverman. Others have succeeded with a more feminine style, like funny but gentle Ellen DeGeneres. But in general, men are expected to be the funny ones.

"It's about risk taking, it's about leadership, it's about someone willing to go out there and make a statement," said Gina Barreca, an English professor at the University of Connecticut who studies gender and humor. "Those are traits we associate with masculinity."

Humor also is about power, she said. The person who has the last laugh is more dominant, and that is usually the man.

In a study published in the academic journal "Evolution and Human Behavior," psychologists Eric Bressler and Sigal Balshine tested graduate students with pictures attached to funny and nonfunny statements and evaluated the way it affected how men and women viewed each other.

They found that humor makes men more desirable to women but does not affect men's view of women.

"We found no evidence that men prefer humorous women as partners," they wrote in the article "The Influence of Humor on Desirability." But "women preferred humorous men as relationship partners, even when the humor they used was unsophisticated."

Men tend to like women who respond to their humor and banter easily, but do not necessarily want the woman to be aggressively funny, Morreall said. Which also means women can get away with being unfunny far easier than a man.

Seattle-based comedian David Crowe, 41, likes women who are playful and can improvise but admits he is drawn to what he calls "boring, serious women."

"I think it must be something about the challenge of trying to get them to laugh," he said. "Sarah McLachlan and Natalie Merchant drive me nuts, but they're like my dream girls. I know they would hate me, because they're so serious."

When he was a teen, Crowe recalled his idea of impressing girls was sitting on a couch with a friend and reciting Monty Python sketches. Even as a professional comic and winner of both the Seattle and San Francisco International Comedy competitions, he said women didn't approach him after shows until he was in his late 30s. He attributes it to his "Bob Newhart" stage persona.

But Crowe, who is divorced, recently dated another comic, a first for him.

"We just act ridiculous together and crack each other up," he said. "She looks like Natalie Merchant as well, but not so lugubrious. I think I've seen the light!"

Friendship vs. romance

A good sense of humor binds us, but even someone who makes you howl with laughter needs a little substance to sustain the relationship.

Jennifer Elkins, 27, likes a happy medium between a class clown and a dry wit. A stoic date can feel like pulling teeth, she said. Elkins, who works for a local winery, ended up dating one friend because she liked his sense of humor.

"In the end, your looks go and what else do you have?"

Davidson, the museum educator, says her boyfriend of three years loves to lighten up serious conversations with a joke, which she needs when she worries too much about issues in their relationship.

"It's a really good measure for how well you're going to get along with someone," she said. But "I wouldn't choose someone just because they're funny," she said. "You can have someone who's entertaining and funny who makes a better friend than a romantic companion."

Nicole Tsong: 206-464-2150 or ntsong@seattletimes.com