World-Science.net 14 Jan 2011 — “Pickup” lines based on humor tend to fall flat-but they do get the speakers rat­ed as rel­a­tively fun­ny and so­cia­ble, and aren’t dis­fa­vored by wom­en seek­ing brief li­ais­ons, a new study sug­gests.

The pair stud­ied the ef­fects of “flip­pant” lines such as “can I get a pic­ture of you so I can show San­ta what I want for Christ­mas?” Wom­en rat­ed men who used such open­ing gam­bits, as op­posed to oth­er types, as rel­a­tively high on hu­mor­ous­ness and so­cia­bil­ity, but low on trust­wor­thi­ness and in­tel­li­gence.

The sur­vey re­sults saw the “flip­pant” lines scorned by wom­en who were asked to im­ag­ine them­selves seek­ing a long-term mate. But for wom­en asked to think of them­selves seek­ing a short-term mate, the type of pickup line did­n’t mat­ter, the re­search­ers found: in­stead, the man’s per­ceived at­trac­tive­ness was the key fac­tor in the wom­an’s re­cep­ti­vity.

http://www.world-science.net/exclusives/110114_pickup.htm

So in summary: If women just want a fling, the quality of the pickup line doesn’t mean squat – but you better be attractive.