These five character traits are more attractive than your education or genetics.
Playfulness is one of the more attractive personality traits, psychologists have found.
Playful people are also particularly keen for their partners to be playful.
The playful prefer someone who is funny, laidback and creative.
The most five most attractive personality traits, though, are:
- kindness and understanding,
- intelligence,
- sense of humour,
- being fun loving,
- and having an exciting personality.
The signal that playfulness sends
Playful people enjoy teasing, wordplay, improvising and taking challenges in a lighthearted way.
They enjoy unusual things and are good at creating situations people can enjoy.
Playfulness seems to send a slightly different type of positive signal to men and women.
To women playfulness sends the signal that a man is not aggressive.
To a man it send the signal that a woman has vitality.
Dr René Proyer, the study’s first author, said:
“Therefore, this personality trait also seems important for the choice of partner — at least more so than the partner having a degree, good genes or being religious.”
The conclusions come from a survey of 327 young adults.
They were asked which traits they found desirable in a long-term partner.
Both men and women mostly agreed on the order of the traits.
However, women were more interested in a sense of humour and men in an exciting personality.
Dr Proyer said:
“Although we should be cautious while interpreting the data, this could be an indication that playful people are actually perceived as more attractive partners or that playfulness increasingly develops in the relationship.”
The study’s author write that playfulness may increase well-being:
“…individuals perceive playfulness as being beneficial to well-functioning romantic relationships by increasing the well-being of the partners, by maintaining the relationships’ excitement, and by conveying the each individual’s affection for his or her partner, and—more generally speaking—by more deeply cultivating the relationship.”
The study was published in the American Journal of Play (Proyer & Wagner, 2015).
