Humble Wins the Date, Every Time

Are you quick to boast about your successes at work to a new person you're dating? Point out that you were voted "best-looking" in high school?  That you drive an Audi RS 5 Cabriolet?

 If you do, you're doomed.  Or so says a new study.  

 Newswise.com reports that researchers have discovered that prospective dating partners who were more humble were viewed as more attractive candidates for a romantic relationship than those less humble. In long-distance relationships, partners who are viewed as humble tended to recover more quickly after offenses than their less humble counterparts.

 "Researchers at Hope College, Georgia State University and the University of North Texas asked respondents to look over a fake dating profiles and rate them on a seven point scale on likability, friendliness, number of friends, fun, attraction, likelihood of going on a date and potential satisfaction with dating," the Web site says. In one study, respondents were asked to think about the prompt and define if they thought the author showed humility. In a second study, researchers wrote dating profiles that were more humble and less humble.
“What we found is respondents rated the very humble dating partner significantly more favorably than the less humble dating partner,” newswise quotes Daryl Van Tongeren, assistant professor of psychology at Hope College in Holland, MI. “We like being around humble people and, in a relationship setting, having a partner who is interested in further strengthening social bonds is consistently rated as important.”
A third study was developed to test the idea that humility may be important for maintaining and repairing relations."Results show that unforgiveness after an offense is greater in long-distance relationships than it is in proximal relationships," the Web site notes. "However, the unforgiveness can be tempered a bit depending on the humility of the individual."
I used to boast a lot.  When I first met my husband, I told him I was the greatest writer ever. (Experience soon proved me wrong!).  Now that I've won quite a few writing awards, I no longer say anything about my writing.  I let it speak for itself.  Is that humility? I don't know. 
Now that I have a kid, I have to be very careful once again.  It's so tempting to brag about his straight A's and test scores (sorry, I'm doing it again), when others are bragging about how smart their kids are.  
 But it certainly feels a better than embarrassing yourself all the time.

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