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The Use of Humor in the Workplace
Abstract
Humor is a common element of human interaction and therefore has an impact on work groups and organizations. Despite this observation, managers often fail to take humor seriously or realize its numerous benefits. Humor is more than just funny concepts; it represents a multifunctional management tool that can be used to achieve many objectives. This article describes how managers can use humor to reduce stress and enhance leadership, group cohesiveness, communication, creativity, and organizational culture. Specifically, we suggest humor styles that are best suited to realize these outcomes. Additionally, the effect of humor on organizational outcomes is moderated by individual differences such as ethnicity and gender. Much like selecting the proper tool from a tootkit, managers can select the appropriate humor style suitable for the desired organizational outcome, adjust for individual differences, and achieve positive organizational outcomes.
... When thinking about humour, most people think about fun and laughter, that is, about positive humour. And indeed, a lot is known about positive workplace humour and its positive effects (Romero & Cruthirds, 2006). For example, workplace humour can foster teamwork and team performance (Lehmann-Willenbrock & Allen, 2014;Mao et al., 2017), increase well-being (Mesmer-Magnus et al., 2012) and benefit workplace relationships (e.g., Pundt & Venz, 2017). ...
... These studies have all looked at positive humour, meaning humour that tries to bring individuals together and not disparage them. Many studies focusing on positive humour often disregard that negative humour also exists (Mesmer-Magnus et al., 2012) and that something perceived as funny by one person (e.g., a joke initiator) might be perceived as offensive by another person (e.g., a joke recipient; Romero & Cruthirds, 2006). ...
... Humour is defined as any communicative instance intended or perceived as being amusing, related to cognitive and affective reactions in the recipient (Romero & Cruthirds, 2006). Various (workplace) humour types are differentiated in the literature (Martin et al., 2003). ...
(Workplace) humour can have positive effects on interpersonal (workplace) relationships. However, sexist humour – a form of subtle discrimination that communicates disparagement or degradation at the expense of (mainly) women in a humorous manner – might be highly detrimental in various ways. Despite sexist humour being pervasive in the workplace, little is known about when, how, and why sexist humour impacts the recipients and their work relationship with the initiator. With two pre-registered studies, theoretically based on affective events theory and social identity theory, this research advances knowledge on the interpersonal effects and gender dynamics of sexist humour at work. In the experimental Study 1, 255 participants rated an actor telling a (non-)sexist joke. In the field Study 2, 170 participants recalled a (non-)sexist humour event they encountered at work. Both studies produced converging results: Recipients of sexist humour were less willing to collaborate with the humour initiator and perceived them as less competent; this was psychologically explained by elevated negative affect. These detrimental effects particularly emerged when a man (vs. woman) initiated sexist humour toward a woman (vs. man).
... According to Isen (2001), positive affect improves decision-making and problem-solving skills, resulting in flexible, inventive, and creative cognitive processing that is also thorough and effective. Past studies have also shown that that affiliative humor can reduce stress, enhance creativity, and increase trust among individuals, all of which contribute to more effective decision-making (Romero & Cruthirds, 2006;Tjosvold et al., 2004). ...
... Humor has also been found to be correlated with effective problem-solving (Zhou et al., 2021). In addition to directly assisting with insight problem-solving, humor may also positively impact insight problem-solving indirectly by promoting cognitive flexibility (Robert, 2016). Following Moore and Malinowski (2009), cognitive flexibility is the capacity of humans to modify their cognitive processing techniques in novel and unexpected situations. ...
... Indeed, studies have suggested that affiliative humor and intuitive decision-making may involve similar cognitive processes: Both depend on the ability to recognize patterns, spot contradictions, and form impromptu connections (Martin, 2019). These abilities enable us to identify subliminal social cues that confirm our intuition and formulate clever and quick-witted comments that are well-received by others (Romero & Cruthirds, 2006). ...
This study explores the relationship between humor, creativity, rationality, intuitiveness, and decision-making quality, all of which are vital in organizational management and success. Despite the importance attached to decision-making, prior research has not fully addressed how humor and creativity interact with rationality. Drawing from psychology, cognitive science, and management studies, we investigate how humor and creativity jointly influence cognitive reflection and decision quality. Using a sample of 998 participants and employing a mediating-moderation PROCESS model, our findings indicate that rational individuals tend to make higher-quality decisions, with affiliative humor mediating this relationship. Furthermore, we observed that employees’ creativity levels moderated this relationship, especially among rational employees with high creativity, who made higher-quality decisions. These findings highlight the interconnectedness of humor, creativity, and rationality in decision-making processes, offering practical implications for organizational behavior and management practices. Understanding this interplay can provide a nuanced approach to enhancing decision-making processes in management, emphasizing the value of humor in organizational contexts.
... Important insights into organizational life can be found through the examination of unfolding micro-level practices (Felin et al., 2015;Nicolini and Monteiro, 2016) of workers (e.g. Roy, 1959;Romero and Cruthirds, 2006;Vaughn, 2008;Gherardi, 2012;Buch, 2016), including socially informed phenomena such as work-life humor (Lyttle, 2007;Jarzabkowski and Lê, 2017). Humor is a part of the cultural fabric of social orders (Fine and De Soucey, 2005;Wilkins and Eisenbraun, 2009) and serves as a vibrant and interpersonal act of social practice during the daily work and work lives within organizational environments (e.g. ...
... Humor is a part of the cultural fabric of social orders (Fine and De Soucey, 2005;Wilkins and Eisenbraun, 2009) and serves as a vibrant and interpersonal act of social practice during the daily work and work lives within organizational environments (e.g. Romero and Cruthirds, 2006;Nijholt, 2016;Tripathy, 2018;Rosenberg et al., 2021;Huber, 2022), yet humor is often dismissed by researchers in favor of a static explanation or story of the workplace (Lyttle, 2007). Humor is complex and can take many forms (Fine and De Soucey, 2005;Martin and Ford, 2018;Huber, 2022) and while humor within an organization may be enacted in multiple methods such as joking, manipulation and ridicule, the organizational outcomes from humor are aimed at group affinity through relaxation and stress reduction (Romero and Cruthirds, 2006;Huber, 2022). ...
... Romero and Cruthirds, 2006;Nijholt, 2016;Tripathy, 2018;Rosenberg et al., 2021;Huber, 2022), yet humor is often dismissed by researchers in favor of a static explanation or story of the workplace (Lyttle, 2007). Humor is complex and can take many forms (Fine and De Soucey, 2005;Martin and Ford, 2018;Huber, 2022) and while humor within an organization may be enacted in multiple methods such as joking, manipulation and ridicule, the organizational outcomes from humor are aimed at group affinity through relaxation and stress reduction (Romero and Cruthirds, 2006;Huber, 2022). Humor may also trigger changes in the brain and in the body's biochemistry and ultimately produce positive health benefits (Wilkins and Eisenbraun, 2009;Martin and Ford, 2018). ...
Purpose
Social practices of work humor among engineering workers are a lesser studied phenomenon. We examine the social practices of an engineering work team through acts of a peculiar form of humorous expression we identify as installation humor. In these cases of installation humor, an anonymous member of the team created a temporary, inappropriate, yet neutral installation of a physical object to amuse the other members of the team. We provide three mini-cases of installation humor; these installations appeared as the team subtly resisted a managerial initiative. We contribute knowledge to the practices of engineers at work and to the practices of resistive humorous expression.
Design/methodology/approach
Qualitative, full-participant ethnographic research with multiple data collection methods and utilizing abductive analysis. During the data collection, one of the researchers was a full member of the engineering team.
Findings
We identified anonymous, artefact-based enactments of resistive humorous expression, which we named installation humor. We identify and describe installation humor, which occurred at the intersectionality of work and self-expression and served as momentary artefacts symbolic of engineering worker resistance in a high-tech environment.
Research limitations/implications
Managerial awareness of the unfolding forms of worker-led, fleeting signals of resistance, such as acts of installation humor, would provide another dimension of perception for identifying salient signals surrounding the phenomenon of resistance to managerial-led change initiatives. Further research is needed on engineering humor in the R&D workplace to better understand the complexity and dynamics of phenomena such as worker resistance through humorous acts. We suggest future studies on forms of humor in the engineering workplace, including incidences of installation humor as they exist in other professional work environments and organizations, to understand common and shared practices across professional boundaries.
Practical implications
We advance and extend the understanding of humor as a social practice in the context of professional engineers in their R&D workplace and we identify humorous acts serving as a response to negative emotions (Huber, 2022) toward the organization related to a newly instated form of managerial control. This paper contributes to the studies of social practices of humor and emotions (Fine and De Soucey, 2005) in the engineering workplace (Buch and Andersen, 2013; Buch, 2016; Mazzurco et al ., 2021) as unsupervised activity at work (Gabriel, 1995), with the social practice of humor adopting a non-verbal form that we identified as installation humor. We named this specific form of humor that we observed as installation humor and defined its specificity and differences from more traditional methods of humor (t. ex. Fine and De Soucey, 2005; Martin and Ford, 2018), shop floor humor (t. ex. Roy 1959), workplace humor (t. ex. Rosenberg et al. , 2021) and engineering student humor (Holmila et al ., 2007; Bender, 2011; Berge, 2017).The results of this study also suggest that ethnography for studying humor as a social practice is useful in identifying micro-level occurrences of unfolding engineering humor, including humor as a form of resistance.
Social implications
The study of humor in high-tech engineering settings enhances the literature of engineering work (t. ex. Mazzurco et al ., 2021) and emerging humorous phenomena (Jarzabkowski and Lê, 2017). This case study highlights and extends the understanding of the non-technical competencies of engineers and the role of peer-to-peer humor in the engineering workplace as a form of resistance during managerial initiatives within an organization.
Originality/value
The study extends and contributes new knowledge to research on emotions and humor by engineers at work, including the identification of a peculiar form of humor used by the engineers. This study also contributes to nascent research on the social practices of engineers at work. The research material was gathered as a full-member ethnography, increasing methodological knowledge of researching a site from within.
... One of the aspects of communication is humor; it is an integral part of human interaction (Romero & Cruthirds, 2006). Research has shown that humor and positive emotions in the workplace have beneficial effects on employee well-being (Ünal, 2014;Guenter et al., 2013). ...
... Apparently, the absolute majority of employees wish for a positive and cheerful team, regardless of job title. In line with that, a growing body of evidence confirms that the use of humor in the workplace is associated with numerous positive outcomes (Abel, 2002;Morreall, 1991;Romero & Cruthirds, 2006). Humor strengthens group cohesion by psychologically reducing external threats (Francis, 1994), improves communication through positive emotions and reduced tension (Romero & Cruthirds, 2006), decreases stress (Abel, 2002), and promotes creativity and innovation (Morreall, 1991). ...
... In line with that, a growing body of evidence confirms that the use of humor in the workplace is associated with numerous positive outcomes (Abel, 2002;Morreall, 1991;Romero & Cruthirds, 2006). Humor strengthens group cohesion by psychologically reducing external threats (Francis, 1994), improves communication through positive emotions and reduced tension (Romero & Cruthirds, 2006), decreases stress (Abel, 2002), and promotes creativity and innovation (Morreall, 1991). In addition, humor can play an important role in leadership to either secure power or reduce the social distance between leader and follower (Romero & Cruthirds, 2006). ...
... The concept of 'humor' refers to the manifestation of content amusingly and entertainingly through the use of verbal and non-verbal communication (Martineau 1972). Further, it helps individuals look at the phenomenon from a fun perspective (Romero & Cruthirds 2006). Despite the importance of humor in different spheres of life, humor in workplaces has become increasingly popular because employees face intense pressure and complex challenges in a work environment (Brender-Ilan & Reizer 2021; Evans & Steptoe-Warren 2018). ...
... Overall, humor tends to facilitate individuals in reducing their stress and normalizing their behavior towards colleagues through their occasional participation in amusing discussions. Most of the existing literature links workplace humor with positive emotions (Romero & Cruthirds 2006) and performance outcomes such as creativity (Lang & Lee 2010), while a limited body of literature suggests how negative workplace humor leads to adverse outcomes in organizations (e.g., Chen & Ayoun 2019). ...
... Affiliative humor has the potential to enhance group cohesion within an organization. It strengthens relationships between members encouraging them to collaborate with and help one another (Romero & Cruthirds, 2007). In this way, it can be seen that affiliative humor promotes the utilization of external resources. ...
Aim of the Study: This study examined mindfulness and humor styles as correlates and predictors of personal growth initiative (PGI) in undergraduate university students of Lahore, Pakistan. Methodology: Purposive sampling strategy was used to obtain data from 300 students (150 = men; 150 = women) between the age range of 18 and 22 years in five different public and private universities in Lahore. Demographic sheet, Trait Mindful Attention Awareness Scale (Brown & Ryan, 2003), Humor Styles Questionnaire (Martin et al., 2003), and the Personal Growth Initiative II Scale (Robitschek et al., 2012) were used to measure the variables. Findings: The results identified a significant positive relationship of mindfulness and adaptive humor styles (self-enhancing humor and affiliative humor) with PGI in undergraduate university students. Maladaptive humor styles (self-defeating humor and aggressive humor) had a significant negative relationship with PGI in undergraduate university students. Mindfulness and humor styles significantly predicted dimensions of PGI in undergraduate university students. Conclusion: The findings provide further evidence for mindfulness and adaptive humor styles as an important resource for PGI.
... Affiliative humor has the potential to enhance group cohesion within an organization. It strengthens relationships between members encouraging them to collaborate with and help one another (Romero & Cruthirds, 2007). In this way, it can be seen that affiliative humor promotes the utilization of external resources. ...
... In addition, other research underscores the role of humor (Romero & Pescosolido, 2008;Plester, 2009) and gamification (Dale, 2014) in promoting a fun environment in the workplace. Humor, broadly defined as any expression eliciting a positive cognitive or emotional reaction, serves as a collaborative tool, stress buffer, and social interaction enhancer (Romero & Cruthirds, 2006). Aligning this definition with various forms of enjoyment implies that humor from colleagues constitutes a subset of the coworker socializing aspect of enjoyment. ...
The attention and interest in fun work have exponentially increased among practitioners and academic communities. This phenomenon replaced the old-fashioned view that created a rigid climate in the office. Many employees have adopted a fun work culture to improve employer branding and employee experiences and retain their talents. Using bibliometric techniques, this study aimed to capture the trend of research in fun work and identify research streams in fun work derived from the critical topic distributions of the fun work academic literature. We performed word co-occurrence analysis, author network analysis, and publication analysis. This study identified four streams in the science of fun work: activities to make work fun, a fun work environment system, positive effects of fun work, and support for fun work. The research trend and research streams in Fun Work provided insight for researchers to find potential issues to address in future research. They revealed the interactions as well as connections among researchers in fun work.
... Humor's appropriateness is also influenced by cultural, social and situational factors (Frymier et al., 2008). Workplace settings may demand a balance between professionalism and levity, requiring individuals to gauge the appropriateness of humor based on organizational culture (Romero and Cruthirds, 2006). Similarly, certain topics, such as sensitive or taboo subjects, may render humor inappropriate in various settings. ...
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine whether the use of humor in one-shot online negotiations affects the chance that the target of the humor will accept the offer. This study/paper proposes two competing hypotheses in this specific context: humor could be perceived as impertinent and thus decrease offer acceptance, or it could be perceived as friendly and thus increase offer acceptance.
Design/methodology/approach
To test these hypotheses, this study/paper conducted an experimental scenario study among 589 participants in a negotiation about selling a wardrobe on an online marketplace. Participants took the perspective of the seller, and this study/paper compared a condition in which the buyer used a joke versus a condition in which the buyer did not use a joke.
Findings
The use of humor by a buyer significantly increased the chance of offer acceptance by the seller. Without humor, 62% of sellers accepted the buyer’s offer. With humor, 82% of sellers accepted the offer. Further analysis suggests this is explained by the buyer being perceived as friendlier in the humor condition relative to the no humor condition. There were no effects on perceptions of buyer’s impertinence.
Practical implications
The findings indicate that humor is beneficial for buyers in a one-shot online negotiation. On the flipside, this implies that sellers should be cautious about being manipulated into accepting inferior deals by buyers who use humor in one-shot online negotiations.
Originality/value
The significant increase in the number of transactions on online marketplaces (such as AliExpress or eBay) justifies having a fresh look at the role of humor in one-shot online negotiations that are at the core of such transactions. Research in this domain is relatively scarce. In particular, there is no study that specifically tests whether humor is beneficial or detrimental in one-shot online negotiations. This study/paper extends the existing literature to the area of one-shot online interactions characterized by psychological distance.
... Thirdly, leader humor essentially constitutes an intentionally created event by the leader that triggers a cognitive dissonance, leading to excitement and amusing responses. When employees comprehend and derive joy from leaderinitiated dissonance events, it not only facilitateslogical leaps but also enhances cognitive resources and stimulates creative thinking through cognitive restructuring (Romero & Cruthirds, 2006). In summary, these resources stimulated by leader humor collectively foster the emergence of employee innovative behavior. ...
Previous studies have found that leader humor exerts an impact on employees’ affection and cognition, thus promoting innovative behavior. However, the effectiveness of leaders in activating employees’ motivation to innovate through the expression of humor, especially in stressful situations, is still unknown. Drawing on the Conservation of Resources theory and Emotional Contagion theory, we explore how leaders use humor to stimulate harmonious passion of employees and promote innovative behavior under two typical stressful situations of high performance expectation and team relationship conflict. The cross-level moderated mediation model is tested using data collected from 458 employees and 99 supervisors in 10 manufacturing companies in the Yangtze River Delta region of China. Our findings reveal that leader humor positively affects employee innovative behavior by fostering greater harmonious passion. Additionally, we discover that the effect of leader humor on harmonious passion is enhanced when employees are faced with higher performance expectation and greater team relationship conflict, which in turn generates more innovative behaviors. Our study focuses on the social attributes of leader humor, enriches the research on leader humor expression in stressful situations and unveils the effective pathway to promote employee innovative behavior from a motivational perspective.
... For starters, laughter acts as an impressive means of establishing rapport. Shared laughter creates a positive atmosphere, breaks down barriers, and promotes individual bonding (Romero & Cruthirds, 2006;Bippus et al., 2020). Also, laughter serves as a powerful nonverbal cue, conveying messages such as joy, camaraderie, and agreement, thus enhancing communication and understanding among individuals (Grammer, 1990). ...
... On the other hand, a non-quantitative DMP might also increase trust in AI, because it could increase the humanlike perception of AI (Li & Wang, 2023), and make it easier to understand AI's recommendations (Herlocker et al., 2004;Mahmud et al., 2022;Romero & Cruthirds, 2006;Yeomans et al., 2019). When a chat AI adopted informal language, people were willing to use it (Li & Wang, 2023), because with this design, people perceived the AI as a human-like social agent (Araujo, 2018). ...
... "A pleasurable affect followed by laughter", "a cognitive state of mirth", or "non-serious social incongruity". All reflect an ever-lasting effort to define humor (Gervais & Wilson, 2005;Meyer, 2000;Romero & Cruthirds, 2006). Although there is no agreement on a widely accepted definition of humor in the literature, it has been suggested that it includes carrying an incongruous meaning which might amuse others or self (Martin, 2007). ...
Humor style, which involves both adaptive and maladaptive forms, refers to the ways people use humor in daily life. Maladaptive humor styles (self-defeating and aggressive) can be risk factors for various mental disorders, including depression and anxiety. In contrast, adaptive humor styles (affiliative and self-enhancing) are perceived as resilience factors and buffer the negative impact of other risk factors. Cognitive flexibility reflects a capacity to come up with alternative interpretations and resolutions to demanding situations while perceiving them as controllable. Although the connection of high cognitive flexibility with low depression levels has been consistently documented, its interaction with trait-like factors received limited attention. The current study aims to explore the moderator role of humor styles in the association of cognitive flexibility with depression. Data were gathered from 436 (320 women) participants aged 18 and 70 (M = 35.4, SD = 9.18) through scales assessing humor styles, cognitive flexibility, and depression. The results revealed that the interaction of affiliative humor style with cognitive flexibility was significantly linked to the individual differences in depression levels, highlighting that affiliative humor is functional if individuals have difficulty approaching problematic situations from different angles. However, a similar pattern was not observed for other humor styles.
... The benign violation theory of humor (BVT) contemplates the scenario in which humor is used as a coping strategy to moderate uncivil situations. Humor can be defined as any form of amusing communication that generates positive emotions and thoughts in individuals, groups, or organizations (McGraw and Warren 2010; Romero and Cruthirds 2006). Furthermore, humor has become a subject of increasing interest within marketing contexts (Béal et al., 2023;Malone III, 1980). ...
Description: This paper applies various key theories to propose a comprehensive conceptual framework for understanding consumers' and bystanders' perceptions and managing online incivility within the digital realm. ABSTRACT This study explores the benign violation theory of humor (BVT), fairness (justice) theory, social information processing theory (SIPT), cognitive theory, and with online consumer incivility to identify bystanders' perceptions and manage uncivil behaviors through digital brand-moderated strategies. This study identifies theoretical insights and formulates propositions for brand-related outcomes regarding online incivility.
... When the humour producer is male and the humour is offensive, such as sex-based jokes or racist comments, males are more likely to enjoy such humour compared to females (Hofmann et al., 2020). Referring to Romero and Cruthirds (2006), gender differences in humour use are described. They suggest that males use humour to emphasize similarities, while females use humour to build solidarity. ...
Health and well-being are crucial for achieving the United Nations’ sustainable development goals. Given growing concerns about workforce well-being and its impact on work-related stress, there is a rising recognition of the significance of validating relationship-oriented human resource practices at work. This study aims to investigate how humour in the workplace acts as a soft cultural factor in human resource management (HRM), impacting psychological well-being and green engagement, while exploring potential gender differences. The study is quantitative in nature and adopts a cross-sectional design. Data were collected through a self-administered questionnaire from 298 employees working in the banking and finance, education and IT sectors in Pakistan. The results indicate that positive humour significantly predicts both employee green engagement and psychological well-being. Employee green engagement was found to mediate the relationship between positive humour and psychological well-being. Additionally, the study reveals that the impact of positive humour on employee green engagement is more significant among male employees compared to their female counterparts. This research contributes to the soft HRM literature by highlighting humour as a factor for relationship-oriented practices, validates the concept of employee green engagement and offers novel insights into the direct and indirect effects of positive humour on psychological well-being.
... Humor can also stimulate collective action in observers because the use of humor itself is linked to power perceptions. For instance, humor is used by individuals to improve their own status in a group (Bitterly, 2022;Duncan, 1982;Holmes & Marra, 2002b;Tapley, 2006), and is an important tool for effective leadership (Meyer, 2000;Romero & Cruthirds, 2006). Dunbar et al. (2012) showed that humor was used more by powerful people in social interactions, whereas quiet and humorless speech style was shown to be used in conversation by individuals with low power or status compared to their conversational partners (O'Barr & Atkins, 1980). ...
Research has shown that subversive humor may be used to challenge existing societal hierarchies by confronting people with prejudice. Expanding on this literature, we hypothesized that humor would create two simultaneous and offsetting psychological mechanisms: increasing collective action motivation by signaling speaker power and inspiring efficacy and decreasing collective action motivation by reducing negative emotions towards men as the powerful group. We tested our hypotheses in two experiments, conducted among self-identified women. Study 1 (N = 374) compared videos featuring a comedian (subversive humor vs. non-humor vs. unrelated humor) and Study 2 (N = 224) utilized vignettes depicting a woman’s response to a sexist workplace interaction (subversive humor vs. non-humor vs. amenable response). Subversive humor (vs. unrelated humor/amenable response) increased group efficacy and subsequently collective action intentions. Simultaneously, and as an offsetting mechanism, subversive humor (compared to non-humor) reduced negative emotions toward men and subsequently lowered collective action intentions. Our results call into question the efficaciousness of humor responses to inspire women observers toward collective action for gender equality and emphasize the need for a deeper understanding of humor as a tool to promote action for equality.
... Affiliative humor has the potential to enhance group cohesion within an organization. It strengthens relationships between members encouraging them to collaborate with and help one another (Romero & Cruthirds, 2007). In this way, it can be seen that affiliative humor promotes the utilization of external resources. ...
... Literature has established that humour significantly fosters divergent thinking, enabling employees to visualise and identify previously unnoticed patterns (Pundt, 2023). This, in turn, encourages the exploration of novel ideas without imposing limitations on their thought processes (Romero and Cruthirds, 2006). The process of IWB often entails the reinvention or complete redirection of an idea. ...
Purpose
Proposing a strengths-based perspective for innovative work behaviour (IWB), the purpose of this paper is to explore character strengths (CS) as antecedents to IWB. Extending the literature and operating in the framework of positive organisational behaviour, this paper considers creative self-efficacy a crucial link between CS and IWB. The role of growth mindset and learning organisation in facilitating IWB, presented as a conceptual model, contributes to the theory in this field, aiding in developing an overarching theory to understand IWB.
Design/methodology/approach
A narrative literature review was performed on the CS, IWB and positive organisational behaviour literature to adapt theories and develop propositions for the conceptual model.
Findings
This paper develops a conceptual framework proposing direct relationships between CS and IWB. This study posits creative self-efficacy (CSE) as the mediator between this relationship and growth mindset, learning organisation as the moderators for the link between CS and CSE and CSE and IWB.
Research limitations/implications
The paper presents a conceptual framework focusing on the positive personality traits of employees, precisely their CS. This study explores how leveraging these strengths can enhance their capacity for IWB. The suggested model also prompts additional research in understanding IWB.
Originality/value
To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the conceptual framework proposed is the first to explore the diverse individual differences factors and the role of contextual facilitation in enhancing employees’ IWB. This study contributes to the growing field of positive organisational behaviour and assists HR managers in tapping into employees’ internal resources. This paper’s theoretical and practical discourse can inspire future research and encourage a strengths-based view of workplace processes.
... The Post-90s employees are modern organizations in the active group, they are smart, hard-working, dare to think and dare to do. In the eyes of leaders, they have a quick mind and a strong sense of democratic innovation (Romero & Cruthirds, 2006); they are a strong "reserve army" in the stimulating competition of organizations. Therefore, it is hypothesized that the influence of leader humor on the behavior of Post-90s employees may be more significant. ...
The main reason for writing this book is my belief that in the face of unprecedented global challenges, leaders who exhibit the characteristics of humility, hope, and humor are better equipped to navigate complexity, foster resilience, and inspire trust. The modern landscape of leadership is characterized by volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity—often referred to as VUCA conditions.
In a world that at many times does not seem to have much humor, it is good to be reminded that the Bible tells us that it is not only acceptable to laugh, it is encouraged. While the Bible is clear in 1 Peter and in other places that we are to be “sober of mind,” it is just as clear in other places of the Bible that we are to be cheerful and ready to laugh. Now that I have covered the firsts of the “Three H’s,” humility and hope, it is time to move on to a characteristic that is not thought of very much when we look at leadership.
As I draw this exploration of humility, hope, and humor to a close, I think it is important to point out what I did not set out to do in this book. I did not intend to provide a complete theory or framework for a new area of leadership. Instead, I hope I have encouraged readers to evaluate their leadership in terms of these three terms.
So far in this book I have discussed the characteristics of humility, hope, and humor as discrete, unique tools for leaders to use. I will also look at these qualities individually in a later chapter, where I will discuss how they fit into leadership theory. In this chapter, I will argue that all three of these roles can be used by a leader together and that they can become the central part of a leader’s style. In making this argument, I will explain the relationship between all three, and I will provide examples of leaders who displayed these characteristics.
In the constantly changing landscape of leadership, the previously relied upon methods of leadership are becoming less and less adequate. Modern leadership requires a more nuanced approach, integrating personal qualities with professional talents. Among these qualities, humility, hope, and humor stand out as critical elements that can significantly improve a leader's effectiveness. These traits not only help leaders build strong, trusting relationships with their teams but also inspire and motivate individuals to do their best in support of the organization.
The purpose of the present research is to investigate the sense of humor and team cohesion in sports environments. The present research is applied in terms of purpose and quantitative in terms of method. The statistical population of the research is male adult group and individual athletes in the premier league. Group disciplines include football, basketball, volleyball, and handball, and individual disciplines include wrestling, taekwondo, swimming, and cycling. The statistical sample includes 17 athletes from 8 different disciplines, including coaches and athletes in group and individual disciplines of adult men in the Premier League. The stratified sampling method is random. In order to measure dependent humor, self-enhancing humor, self-enhancing humor, self-enhancing humor is measured from the 32-item humor questionnaire of Martin, 2003 with a 7-value spectrum. Average There is a meaningful difference between dependent humor , self-aggrandizing humor , aggressive humor , and self-defeating humor. . Finally , according to the tests , it was observed that humor and its components have a significant relationship with group cohesion and its components in sports. The results showed that humor and its components have a significant relationship with players' interest in their coach in individual sports. The result showed that the use of humor by the athletes does not increase self-esteem and the use of the coach Dependent humor (both positive humor styles) was associated with increased interest in the coach, while athletes ' use of self-actualizing humor (a negative humor style) was associated with decreased interest. The head coach was in touch.
The purpose of the present research is to investigate the sense of humor and team cohesion in sports environments. The present research is applied in terms of purpose and quantitative in terms of method. The statistical population of the research is male adult group and individual athletes in the premier league. Group disciplines include football, basketball, volleyball, and handball, and individual disciplines include wrestling, taekwondo, swimming, and cycling. The statistical sample includes 17 athletes from 8 different disciplines, including coaches and athletes in group and individual disciplines of adult men in the Premier League. The stratified sampling method is random. In order to measure dependent humor, self-enhancing humor, self-enhancing humor, self-enhancing humor is measured from the 32-item humor questionnaire of Martin, 2003 with a 7-value spectrum. Average There is a meaningful difference between dependent humor , self - aggrandizing humor , aggressive humor , and self - defeating humor . . Finally , according to the tests , it was observed that humor and its components have a significant relationship with group cohesion and its components in sports . The results showed that humor and its components have a significant relationship with players' interest in their coach in individual sports . The result showed that the use of humor by the athletes does not increase self-esteem and the use of the coach Dependent humor (both positive humor styles ) was associated with increased interest in the coach, while athletes ' use of self - actualizing humor ( a negative humor style ) was associated with decreased interest . The head coach was in touch.
Many brands periodically respond humorously to the content that other brands and celebrities post on social media. Drawing on three scenario-based experiments and a content analysis of humorous tweets based on their likes and retweets, the authors use the benign violation theory to understand whether using humor constitutes a benign (i.e., translating into amusement) or malign (i.e., translating into ulterior motives) violation. The success of a humorous brand-to-brand interaction (i.e., brand attitudes and purchase intentions) depends on its ability to generate amusement without causing customers to suspect ulterior motives. Study 1’s results reveal that customers respond more favorably when brands use affiliative humor rather than aggressive humor. Affiliative humor constitutes a benign violation that generates amusement, while aggressive humor constitutes a malign violation that leads customers to infer that brands have ulterior motives. Study 2 shows that aggressive humor partially compensates for its weaknesses over affiliative humor when brands target competing brands. Studies 3A and 3B reveal a reversed effect depending on brand positioning (top dogs versus underdogs). While underdog brands should always use affiliative humor, top dog brands could perform better by favoring aggressive humor (i.e., such brands could receive more likes and retweets without lowering customers’ purchase intentions).
Humour, a positive psychology (PP1.0) construct (Fischer, Carow, & Eger, Mistakes, Errors, and Failures Across Cultures, Springer, 2020) is a central component of resiliency. Having a sense of humour is a sign of human strength, intelligence, and psychological maturity (Abel, Journal: The Official Publication of the Ontario Occupational Health Nurses Association, 35(2), 32, 2016; Ghaemi, A First-Rate Madness: Uncovering the Links Between Leadership and Mental Illness, Penguin Books, 2011). Humour allows individuals to emotionally distance themselves from a stressful event in order to cope. Humour is considered as a crucial job resource for individuals across cultures. It has been further credited for several positive outcomes such as resilience and well-being (Billig, Not All Claps and Cheers, Routledge, 2018). The objective of the chapter is to present a critical review of the moderating role of resilience in adaptive humour styles (self-enhancing and affiliative humour) and well-being at work from a PP1.0 perspective. The findings of the study of Bhattacharyya, Jena, and Pradhan (2019, Journal of Health Management, 21(1), 160–176) indicate a significant association between the adaptive humour styles and well-being at work, with resilience as a moderator.
This chapter illustrates some of the complexities of workplace humour through comparing two different cultural contexts. Our ethnographic research approach across two separate studies has garnered nuanced humour examples from New Zealand (Western) and South Korean (Eastern) workplaces. In particular, we analyse humour observations where the humour provides insights to contrasting cultural assumptions related to hierarchical organisational relationships. Although the use of humour seems to serve some similar roles in both New Zealand and South Korean organisations, our analysis suggests that harmony is maintained differently depending on the organisational context. We argue that hierarchy has a significant impact on humour interactions and defines who can, or cannot, be funny at work.
Humor is a familiar aspect of social life and contributes to important well-being outcomes such as life satisfaction. However, humor styles and the function of humor differ across age and culture. An examination of these nuances deepens our understanding of the role humor plays in our lives. Consistent with a lifespan developmental perspective and through the lens of positive psychology, we emphasize how understanding the varieties and functions of humor can inform researchers and practitioners interested in well-being outcomes. We review individual and group differences in humor appreciation and comprehension, as well as how these differences relate to the function of humor. First, there are age and cultural differences in humor appreciation, with different groups endorsing some humor styles more than others. These differences may be due to a variety of factors including motivational, sociopolitical, and cognitive demands. Second, we review the function of humor, and how this may change across the lifespan and differ across cultures. We also highlight some universal aspects of humor, such as its robust relationship with life satisfaction across age and culture. We introduce the possibility that age and culture interact to influence humor appreciation and function as an important avenue for future research.
Humor plays a pivotal role in social interactions and is linked to various health benefits. Therefore, there is a vast potential for harnessing its advantages in diverse applications. Recent research has delved into how humor can enrich technology’s social appeal and user experience by enhancing its allure and interactivity. In this chapter, the author conducts a narrative review of the literature regarding the use of humor in interactions with social robots and virtual agents, assimilating understandings from psychological humor theories. Additionally, the author deliberates on the main challenges and opportunities in this research field and suggests future directions for inquiry, necessitating interdisciplinary collaboration between linguistics, psychology, computer science, and engineering.
Covid-19 has put a mental strain on many people globally in the short- and long-term perspective. It is extremely important to stay mentally healthy in times of pandemic challenges during social distancing, repeated lockdowns and social isolation, remote work, and home office and home-schooling practices. Humour is a coping strategy to deal with difficult situations and has a positive effect on mental health and well-being.
This study uses a qualitative design and a hermeneutical research paradigm to explore the humour used in the professional WhatsApp communications of colleagues working in a consultancy organisation in Gauteng, South Africa, during a hard lockdown in March and April 2020. Findings show that humour was used to cope with the highly challenging situation of working remotely during these times. Humour could be identified in terms of five themes: women professionals and work–life challenges, individual change from professional to “savage”, new lifestyles, marital relationships during social isolation, and the cure of Covid-19. Conclusions are drawn and recommendations for future research and practice are given.
Purpose
The main purpose of our study is to investigate the impact of daily leader humor behaviors on healthcare workers’ daily psychological state and behavioral outcomes.
Design/methodology/approach
Based on the conservation of resources (COR) theory, this study proposes that daily leader humor behaviors are positively related to healthcare workers’ daily positive affect, which in turn affects their next-day helping behaviors towards patients. These predictions hinge on healthcare workers’ difficulty in maintaining display rules. We conducted a lagged experience sampling methodology (ESM) survey of 621 complete daily observations from 93 healthcare workers who work in direct contact with patients at a large public hospital in China across consecutive 10 working days.
Findings
Results of multilevel path analysis demonstrate that daily leader humor behaviors are positively related to healthcare workers’ same-day positive affect, and this positive affect enhances their next-day helping behaviors towards patients. Furthermore, healthcare workers’ higher difficulty in maintaining display rules attenuates the benefits of daily leader humor behaviors.
Originality/value
Building on the COR theory and adopting a diary research design, this study shows daily fluctuations in leader humor behaviors and proposes a mechanism through which daily leader humor behaviors indirectly affect healthcare workers’ next-day helping behaviors. Thus, our study disclosed possible means for healthcare organizations to improve service quality.
Purpose: The purpose of this qualitative descriptive study is to describe how women academic department chairs in emergency medicine, surgery, and anesthesiology experience humor in the workplace. Method: Interviews were conducted with 35 women department chairs in academic medicine from 27 institutions that aimed to describe women's leadership emergence. The data from the primary study yielded rich and revealing themes involving participants' experiences with humor in the context of their leadership roles, justifying a secondary analysis focusing specifically on these experiences. Relevant remarks were extracted, coded, and summarized. Results: Participants discussed two broad types of humor-related experiences. First, they described how they responded to aggressive gender-based humor directed at themselves or their colleagues by tolerating it or expressing disapproval. This humor includes demeaning quips, insulting monikers, sexist jokes, and derogatory stories. Participants often did not confront this humor directly as they feared being rejected or ostracized by colleagues. Second, they described how they initiated humor to address gender-related workplace issues by highlighting gender inequalities, coping with sexual harassment and assault, and managing gender-based leadership challenges. Participants felt constrained in their own use of humor because of the need to be taken seriously as women leaders. Conclusion: Women leaders in academic medicine use humor to confront gender-related issues and experience aggressive gender-based humor in the workplace. The constraints placed on women leaders discourage them from effectively confronting this aggressive gender-based humor and perpetuating gender inequities. Eliminating aggressive gender-based humor is needed to create safe and equitable work environments in academic medicine.
This conceptual paper explores the seldom-discussed "unspoken rules" or managerial taboos that are often part of a manager's career but are rarely acknowledged openly. These sensitive issues can trigger feelings of guilt, shame, or self-doubt, creating tension between a manager's real identity and the idealized image of an "ideal manager." We propose a conceptual model that links this identity conflict to adverse outcomes, such as decreased productivity and compromised mental and physical health. We argue that the idealized identity is facilitated by several processes in broader management education and learning processes: idealized management skills taught in business schools, popular literature that defines what a "good manager" should be, and high expectations from stakeholders, colleagues, and employees. We recommend transforming management education and training because confronting these managerial taboo topics head-on is necessary to help managers become more resilient and effective and improve their overall well-being.
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to understand the leadership humour style and the mechanism through which leadership humour style transforms into follower’s workplace positive and negative outcomes such as thriving at work and burnout. It uses comprehensive elaboration theory and relational process theory to explore self-disclosure and perceived similarity as two new constructs to assess their relation to intrapsychic (self-enhancing and self-defeating) and interpersonal (affiliative and aggressive) leader’s humour style, respectively.
Design/methodology/approach
An exploratory qualitative study through semi-structured interviews was conducted with 10 leaders to understand the different aspects of leadership humour and their outcomes. Based on these dimensions, a questionnaire was created and sent to 200 respondents, and 158 responses were received. The empirical analysis of data was done by building structural equation modeling using smart partial least square.
Findings
The empirical study has shown that self-enhancing leadership humour is related to self-disclosure, and both affiliative and aggressive leadership humour styles are related to perceived similarity. When looking at the two critical outcomes of leadership humour, both perceived similarity and self-disclosure were related to social intimacy and thriving at work. The mediation effect showed that self-enhancing humour leads to self-disclosure which increases social intimacy leading to improving thriving at work and aggressive humour leads to norm violation which further leads to burnout.
Originality/value
The study has used the mixed methodology to understand leadership humour and its outcomes by conducting in-depth interviews with leaders and also provides empirical evidence related to leadership humour style by using the survey to collect data from the followers capturing their perceptions. And very critically, it has explored self-disclosure and perceived similarity as two new constructs to see their relation to leadership humour style and positive and negative outcomes at the workplace.
Purpose
Drawing on conservation of resources theory, this study aims to develop a resource-based model depicting a decreased level of psychological resourcefulness – relational energy, as a novel explanatory mechanism that accounts for the harm of abusive supervision, and we further investigate the role of leader humor as a boundary condition.
Design/methodology/approach
We applied multilevel path analysis to test our hypotheses with three-time-point survey data collected from 226 supervisor-employee dyads in a telecommunication company in China across six months.
Findings
Our results show that abusive supervision is negatively related to employee relational energy, leading to a subsequent decline in employee job performance. The predictions of the depleting effects get alleviated by leader humor.
Practical implications
This study foregrounds the importance of employee relationship management in the workplace and reveals that some abusive supervisors may manage to sustain employee performance and relational energy by using humor in their interactions, which necessitates immediate intervention.
Originality/value
These findings offer novel insights into the deleterious impact of abusive supervision by demonstrating the critical role of relational energy in dyadic interactions. We also reveal the potential dark side of leader humor in the context of abuse in the workplace.
This article explores how sustained humor serves as a tool to delineate group boundaries and illuminate unequal power dynamics and social hierarchy within conversations among Pakistani Saraiki women. The study is grounded in an extended humorous exchange extracted from an audio-recorded conversation among female relatives of a middle-class Saraiki family. They engage in dialogue about one participant's encounter at a parent-teacher meeting held in a private English medium school, where her struggle with the English language becomes apparent. Following Attardo's (2019) theoretical framework on sustained humor, the study examines co-constructed humor, mode adoption (e.g., responding to irony with irony; Attardo, 2002; Whalen & Pexman, 2010), humor support (Hay, 2001), and extended speaker-dominated turns (such as sharing personal anecdotes or jokes). The findings reveal that Saraiki women predominantly construct a cohesive and continuously sustained humorous discourse through extended speaker-dominated turns. They utilize techniques like irony and self-deprecation, engage in joint fantasizing, and support humor through laughter, overlaps, repetition, and verbal endorsement, thereby heightening involvement. Through self-mockery and playful teasing, these women distance themselves from established social hierarchies, demarcate in-group and out-group boundaries, challenge unequal power dynamics, and articulate their marginalized position within society. This research amplifies the voices and concerns of Saraiki women and contributes to our understanding of humor dynamics in natural conversational settings.
Depending on various factors in the workplace, employees are exposed to some effects such as stress and workload. The main purpose of this study is one way to explore whether stress and workload encountered in working life can cause many physical, mental, and spiritual effects on employees, and the other is determining which strategies can be developed regarding stress and workload. Within the scope of the study, concepts of stress and workload were defined within a literature review. This study tries to sort and classify which strategies could be used when faced with stress and workload. It is possible that effective strategies applied when encountering negative situations in organizations where the employees are able to cope with stress and workload will result in positive outcomes. Managing of both concepts is possible with the help of effective strategies.
Depending on various factors in the workplace, employees are exposed to some effects such as stress and workload. The main purpose of this study is one way to explore whether stress and workload encountered in working life can cause many physical, mental, and spiritual effects on employees, and the other is determining which strategies can be developed regarding stress and workload. Within the scope of the study, concepts of stress and workload were defined within a literature review. This study tries to sort and classify which strategies could be used when faced with stress and workload. It is possible that effective strategies applied when encountering negative situations in organizations where the employees are able to cope with stress and workload will result in positive outcomes. Managing of both concepts is possible with the help of effective strategies.
The use of humor has become common practice in advertising; yet our knowledge about its impact has not been updated since the last major review almost twenty years ago. In the interim, a great deal of humor research has been conducted. The outcome of this research only partially supports earlier conclusions and highlights the need to apply humor with care. Humor is by no means a guarantee of better ads, but its effect can be enhanced with careful consideration of the objectives one seeks to achieve as well as the audience, situation, and type of humor.
Humor is used for a variety of functions in everyday social interaction. It frequently serves as means of expressing friendliness, solidarity or Positive politeness' (Brown and Levinson 1987), but it may also function less positively, especially when used between people of different power or status. While the powerful may use humor to maintain control, it is also available to the less powerful as a socially acceptable means of challenging or subverting authority. This paper examines some of the ways in which humor is used subversively between colleagues in two New Zealand organizations. The distribution of humor in meetings in these workplaces is compared with the frequency of humor in informal interactions between friends and apparent equals. The analysis suggests that while humor is much more frequent in informal contexts, subversive humor is proportionately much more frequent in workplace meetings. The analysis also demonstrates that subversive humor tends to be conveyed through discourse strategies which create social distance, and emphasize social boundaries between the speaker and the target of the humor. Potential social implications of these patterns are discussed.
The repatriated Vietnam prisoners of war are suffering almost no mental illness, and the effective use of humor seems to be one of the reasons for their health. The literature by and about prisoners of war from several recent wars indicates prisoners often found humor to be an effective coping mechanism, a way of fighting back and taking control. By defining humor as an element of communication and by thinking of resilience as a communication phenomenon, the links between humor and resilience become more apparent. This was a qualitative study that consisted of interviewing approximately 50 Vietnam POWs in unstructured interviews and 12 Vietnam POWs in a structured, topical format. Chronicling the subjective accounts of these men and framing them as communication allowed an examination of the results. Knowing that human connection contributed to the survival and resilience of these men implies that resilience is contagious, as humor seems to be. Through the creation of humor in a well-defined system of social support, these fiercely independent men learned to rely on their own power and to draw a sense of mastery from each other.
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Three studies, conducted with 143 undergraduates, are reported that investigated the hypothesis, long held by theorists, therapists, and laypersons alike, that a sense of humor reduces the deleterious impact of stressful experiences. In each study a negative-life-events checklist was used to predict stress scores on a measure of mood disturbance. These studies made use of different measures of Ss' sense of humor, including 4 self-report scales and 2 behavioral assessments of Ss' ability to produce humor under nonstressful and mildly stressful conditions. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses revealed that 5 of the 6 humor measures produced a significant moderating effect on the relation between negative life events and mood disturbance. Ss with low humor scores obtained higher correlations between these 2 variables than did those with high humor scores. Results provide initial evidence for the stress-buffering role of humor. (42 ref)
Recent work in emotions and emotion management suggests that humor is a social phenomenon and serves an important purpose in interaction. That is, humor can be viewed as interpersonal emotion management, whose purpose is to manage the emotions of others as well as of the self. This article offers the following definition as an analytical tool: humor as emotion management is an expert cultural performance; which strengthens or restores the feeling norms of the situation and creates amusement in the self and others; generating positive sentiments among members of an interacting group by bonding them and/or reducing an external threat; often at the expense of some excluded person(s), event(s), or object(s).
The belief that another person shares your appreciation for humor is likely to exert a powerful effect on interpersonal attraction because sense of humor is a highly valued quality in others, and an important personal characteristic. In an attitude similarity-interpersonal attraction laboratory experiment, participants were led to believe an unseen stranger had many, or very few, similar attitudes. In addition, participants were allowed to interact, via an intercom, with the stranger, in order to relate a favorite joke. The stranger responded positively or neutrally to the joke. Although both attitude similarity and response to the joke influenced ratings of interpersonal attraction in the expected direction, the positive response to the joke was sufficiently powerful to overcome attitude dissimilarity. A dissimilar stranger who responded positively to the joke was more attractive than a similar stranger who responded neutrally. The results are interpreted as indicating that some dimensions of similarity are more important than others, and that humor appreciation may be an especially critical dimension.
Participant observation of a 6-week Executive Development Course suggests that humor provides a key mechanism for enacting a sense of community for group members. Specifically, the study examines the process through which putdown humor helps foster group identity and cohesion in a temporary group. Putdowns followed a pattern of development that signaled increasing trust and inclusion, and was regulated by implicit rules that incubated the emergent solidarity. The meaning of certain humorous episodes was equivocal, but the act of laughing together glossed over the equivocality so that the sense of community was reaffirmed. Further, social identity dynamics appeared to strongly affect perceptions of the appropriateness of humor. The authors conclude that shared putdown humor and the implicit set of rules regarding its use may facilitate solidarity, and they attempt to reconcile why ‘inclusionary putdowns’ were found here when ‘exclusionary putdowns’ are usually reported in the literature.
Humor is a quintessentially social phenomenon, since every joke requires both a teller and an audience. Here we ask how humor
operates in task-oriented group discussions. We use theories about the functions of humor to generate hypotheses about who
jokes, when and in what situations. Then we use event history techniques to analyze humor attempts and successes in six-person
groups. Our results combine to suggest an image of joking as a status-related activity, with men, high participators, frequent
interrupters, and those who are frequently interrupted all showing status-related patterns of humor use. We find substantial
time dependence in humor use, in which humor may serve to form a status hierarchy early in a group's development and to dissipate
task-related tension later in the discussion. We use these results, in conjunction with core insights on status and emotion
from the group processes literature, to develop a new theory of humor use in task-oriented groups. The new theory generates
predictions about the content of humor episodes, which we examine with additional data from our group discussions. Consistent
with the theory, we find that a higher proportion of men's humor is differentiating, while a higher proportion of women's
humor is cohesion-building. We find the same general pattern with our other status variable, participation.
Administered a course examination under standard classroom conditions to 215 undergraduates differing in level of test anxiety. Approximately 1/2 the ss received a form of the examination containing 1/3 humorous test items, while the remainder received a nonhumorous form of the examination. High-test-anxious ss, receiving the nonhumorous form, performed (a) significantly more poorly than low- or moderate-test-anxious ss, and (b) at a significantly lower level than the high-anxiety group that received the humorous form. Results lend support to the hypothesis that exposure to humor may reduce anxiety and thereby affect task performance. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Investigated the problem of self-aimed humor by examining the case of Jews and Arabs in Israel. Study 1, with 80 Jewish and 60 Arab high school seniors, dealt with preferences of jokes. Ss were asked to rate the funniness of 5 jokes with a Jewish butt and 5 jokes with an Arab butt. Jews preferred jokes with an Arab butt, as did the Arabs who felt positively toward Israel, but not those whose attitudes were negative. Study 2, with 139 Jewish and 111 Arab high school seniors, dealt with the production of humor. Ss were asked to respond humorously to 13 cartoonlike drawings depicting an Arab and a Jew in conversation. Both Jews and Arabs expressed more aggression toward an Arab butt. When humorous answers toward the Ss themselves and toward subgroups within each group were compared, no differences between Jews and Arabs were found. The only difference found was in a special kind of self-aimed humor, in which aggression is turned inward but the situation is denied, and the S finds a humorous way to benefit from it. Jews used this kind of humor more often. (29 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
This article addresses the question of women's seeming rejection of sexual harassment law by refusing to apply the label “sexual harassment” in the face of incidents that would easily qualify as such. Building on the work of Bumiller (1988) and the tradition of sociolegal studies focusing on understanding the power of the law in its everyday context (e.g., Merry 1979; Engel 1987; Sarat and Kearns 1993), this analysis explores the “tactical milieu” in which both hostile work environment sexual harassment and tactics for its resistance are produced. Using in-depth interviews with both women and men, the author explores the ways a particular form of hostile work environment harassment–dubbed “chain yanking”–poaches on the realm of ambiguous humor to effect male group solidarity and women's disempowerment. A common countertactic–”not taking it personal”– is analyzed for its simultaneous power as resistance and unwitting collaboration. The contradictory effects of this tactic-countertactic pairing on the naming and claiming of the harm of sexual harassment are examined, as well as the implications this has for combating sexual harassment in the workplace.
Appreciation of cartoon humor was examined in male and female college students who had been categorized into one of four gender identity groups (masculine, feminine, androgynous, undifferentiated) on the basis of Bem's Sex Role Inventory. Results indicated that males preferred sexual humor more than absurd humor, while females showed the reverse pattern. Furthermore, gender identity was related to humor appreciation only for females. While feminine females preferred absurd humor more than sexual humor, masculine and androgynous females were more appreciative of sexual humor. Finally, masculine, feminine, and undifferentiated males, as well as masculine and androgynous females, showed greater appreciation of sexual humor which portrayed females, as opposed to males, as the sex object or brunt of the joke.
This article explores the use made of humour in three different private sector organisations. It draws on observations of managers working towards a management qualification and, from the jokes they exchange, it argues that studying humour may offer insights into sentiments not easily articulated in ‘serious’ conversation. Humour’s ambiguity enables contentious statements to be made without fear of recrimination. Equally, constructing jokes by juxtaposing two different frames of reference provides a glimpse of alternative (and shared) perceptions of ‘reality’. This sensitivity to complexity makes humour a particularly appropriate vehicle for conveying ambitions, subversions, triumphs and failures and this article considers some of the ‘serious’ messages underlying the jokes.
Investigated the problem of self-aimed humor by examining the case of Jews and Arabs in Israel. Study 1, with 80 Jewish and 60 Arab high school seniors, dealt with preferences of jokes. Ss were asked to rate the funniness of 5 jokes with a Jewish butt and 5 jokes with an Arab butt. Jews preferred jokes with an Arab butt, as did the Arabs who felt positively toward Israel, but not those whose attitudes were negative. Study 2, with 139 Jewish and 111 Arab high school seniors, dealt with the production of humor. Ss were asked to respond humorously to 13 cartoonlike drawings depicting an Arab and a Jew in conversation. Both Jews and Arabs expressed more aggression toward an Arab butt. When humorous answers toward the Ss themselves and toward subgroups within each group were compared, no differences between Jews and Arabs were found. The only difference found was in a special kind of self-aimed humor, in which aggression is turned inward but the situation is denied, and the S finds a humorous way to benefit from it. Jews used this kind of humor more often. (29 ref)
Three benefits of humor in the workplace are explored: its promotion of health, mental flexibility, and smooth social relations.
In this study, we examined the links between leadership style, the use of humor, and two measures of performance. Results indicated that leadership style was moderated by the use of humor in its relationship with individual and unit-level performance. Implications for further research on the use of humor by leaders are discussed.
Scores on a multidimensional scale of humor and a nonverbal indicator of creative ability for 86 adults indicate a significant positive association of creativity and a sense of humor. Adults who were classified as low on creativity scored significantly lower on the humor scale than adults classified as high on creativity. This result is congruent with previous research indicating a relationship between the two constructs.
Humor is a commonly used communication tool in advertising in the United States, but U. S. marketers know little about its use and effectiveness in foreign markets. Such limited knowledge hinders international managers' ability to determine which aspects of humorous communications are likely to be amenable to global standardization and which should be adapted to local expectations. The authors examine the content of humorous television advertising from four national cultures: Korea, Germany, Thailand, and the United States. Findings indicate that humorous communications from such diverse national cultures share certain universal cognitive structures underlying the message. However, the specific content of humorous advertising is likely to be variable across national cultures along major normative dimensions such as collectivism-individualism.
Although advertisers have employed humor extensively as the motivational basis for their appeals, relatively little is known about the persuasive effect of humor. This article assesses the role of humor in persuasion and suggests an approach to future humor research.
Many have acknowledged the favorable, even therapeutic, effects of humor. However, few have attempted to relate humor to the functions of management and leadership. Research on this topic could possibly convert an undeveloped resource into a tool that could enhance our ability to get things done.
Humor can reflect the healthy release of feelings during the counseling process, the type of emotional release that leads to significant therapeutic gains. It can also be a disturbing distraction, possibly causing early termination, if used inappropriately. Counselors need to exert particular caution before attempting to apply humor in working with a client from a culture different from the counselor's. This article explores the available literature and offers contributions on the subject from 4 “ethnically diverse” perspectives. Finally, a general approach based on existential theory is presented along with 5 general conditions to ascertain the appropriate use of humor.
This investigation sought to understand the impact of sense of humor on relationship development. High and low sense of humor subjects were paired with moderate sense of humor partners and were instructed to interact for 30 minutes. A post‐interaction questionnaire tapped attributional confidence and the desire to interact in the future. Results indicated that a high, rather than a low, sense of humor facilitated the reduction of uncertainty and also served to reduce social distance between interactants. These findings provide support for the facilitative nature of humor in the development of interpersonal relations. Indeed, sense of humor is an engaging personality trait that has direct implications for social relationships.
Abstract This study explored relationships between sense of humor, stress, and coping strategies. Undergraduate,students (N=258) from,introductory psychology courses completed a perceived stress scale, an everyday problems scale, a state anxiety inventory, a sense of humor scale, and a scale assessing their preferred coping strategies. High and low sense of humor,groups were determined,by selecting participants with self-reported sense of humor,at one standard deviation above and below the overall mean,on the sense of humor,scale. The high sense of humor,group,appraised,less stress and reported less current anxiety than a low sense of humor,group,despite experiencing a similar number,of everyday,problems,in the previous two months. The high humor,group was more likely to use positive reappraisal and problem-solving coping strategies than the low humor,group. A weaker relationship existed between,appraisal of stress and number,of problems in the low humor,group because this group perceived greater stress at low and average,number,of everyday,problems,than the high humor,group. The results were discussed as supporting the role of humor,in restructuring a situation so it is less stressful, and the relationship of humor to both emotion-focused and problem-focused coping strategies. Numerous,studies have supported,the anecdotal,view that humor,and
Work is one important source of an individual's social identity, and workplace interaction is a crucial means of instantiating that identity. As one component of workplace discourse, humour can provide insights into the distinctive culture which develops in different workplaces. Using a community of practice framework, this paper explores the potential of humour analysis for identifying characteristics of workplace sub-cultures which develop within different organisations. In particular, patterns of variation in the frequency, type and style of humour used in meetings in four different organisations is examined. The dataset is taken from the larger corpus of the Victoria University of Wellington Language in the Workplace Project.
Humor, a communicative tactic used to engender support, is often employed, but rarely understood. Literature in the field of humor has attempted to define situations where humor could be beneficial. Even today few definitive answers exist relating humor to effective leadership communicative behavior. Thus, the purpose of this research is to present current research findings about the symbolic nature of leadership as enacted through humor.
Initially, this research details the important symbolic realm within which leaders work. Next, some of the relevant literature dealing with humor is discussed. Specifically, humor is defined and the purposes of humor are elaborated. This research also reviews contemporary leadership literature dealing with humor. Finally, this research evaluates the appropriateness of each form of humor and specific guidelines for effective humor are discussed.
Humor is seen as a virtuous personality trait that can be used to release tension, convey organizational roles, and alleviate boredom. What may be perceived as a humorous joke to one person, however, could be considered inappropriate or offensive to another. Thus, joking may impact on civil and human rights litigation and on the quality of work life. To further understand perceptions of humor and joking, 165 subjects were asked to evaluate the appropriateness of three types of jokes in work settings. Whites and females considered racist and sexist jokes more inappropriate than blacks and males. Inexperienced employees considered all joking behavior at work to be less appropriate than experienced employees.
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This review focuses on three fundamental aspects of humor and work. First, we review accepted theories of humor and their implications for the field of management. Second, we review and summarize the research on humor in management and related areas of behavioral science. Third, we provide a specific application of the importance of humor and work with an examination of the legal and arbitral aspects of humor as it relates to employee relations. This review concludes that even though the interest in humor by management has been sporadic, joking behavior remains a pervasive and important topic and has the potential of providing significant insights into management and organizational behavior.
This study describes the development of a self-report measure of functional humor in relationships. Based on a review of the literature, items were formulated that would tap into possible functions of humor in marital interaction. People were asked to report on their own and their partner's use of humor in the marriage. Principal component analyses identified three subscales for both self and partner: Instrumental Humor, Positive Humor, and Negative Humor. Convergent and construct validity was tested with other humor and relationship measures. The Relational Humor Inventory proved to be a useful instrument for tapping important positive and negative relationship behaviors.
This paper analyzes joking relationships that are targeted at persons or at those affairs which actors interpret as representing persons. A theory of social relations of work is outlined; the literature illustrates that joking relationships have a content that reflects these relations. The form of joking relationships is then analyzed using Caplow's triad theory; this theory allows humor to be seen as a product of power relations and the contesting of these. The theory claims to be able to predict the likelihood of joking relationships between actors of various degrees of power, and the consequences of these, conservative, revolutionary, or improper for the organization. Jokes are analyzed in terms of the theory. Humor analysis can, in a complementary reasoning, be seen as a methodological tool that helps unmask organizational power relations. A number of reflections are drawn about humor in organizations subject to post-industrial change. Humor has no essence; it is inserted into the dynamics of social life and its contents and form reflect social relations, power distributions, and changes in both.
The purpose of this research was to explore humor from a functional perspective. Twenty‐four functions of humor were derived from prior literature. Items representing these 24 functions were subjected to factor analysis resulting in an 11‐item “Uses of Humor Index.”; Three primary factors emerged from this analysis: positive affect, expressiveness, and negative affect. Initial validation of the Uses of Humor Index was achieved via a peer evaluation, a measure of sense of humor, and assessment of interpersonal competence in naturalistic conversations. The implications of this study for future research concerning the use of humor in social interaction and the influence of humor on perceptions of interpersonal competence are discussed.
This article focuses on the use of humor as a tool for organizational diagnosis and change. The guiding assumption is that humor is a means for organization members to make statements, consciously or unconsciously, about themselves, their relationships, their groups, and their organizations-statements that may be more difficult to make and to hear in other ways. Examples from the author's and others' experiences and from secondary sources are presented to explore the processes by which organization members use humor. The author discusses ways of interpreting the data couched in humorous messages and incidents, presenting five primary functions that humor serves for individuals and groups. These functions are linked by a theoretical framework underlying the use of humor in the diagnostic process. The author also offers some thoughts on using humor sparingly and carefully in the process of creating organizational change.
Two experiments examined “jeer pressure,” which is a hypothesized inhibiting effect of observing another person being ridiculed. Jeer pressure was expected to induce conformity to others’ opinions; concern about failing or standing out; and conventional, uncreative thinking. In both experiments, participants observed videotapes containing either other-ridiculing humor, self-ridiculing humor, or nonridiculing or no humor. Participants then completed tasks that assessed conformity, fear of failure, and creativity. Results of both experiments showed that participants who viewed ridicule of others were more conforming and more afraid of failing than were those who viewed self-ridicule or no ridicule. Creativity was not influenced by the humor manipulation. Experiment 2 also included a lexical decision task to assess whether salience of potential rejection mediated the obtained behavioral effects. Salience of rejection mediated the effects of humor on fear of failure but not the effects of humor on conformity.
The experience of humor consists of two simultaneous mental elements: a perception of a normal pattern and a perception of a violation of such a pattern. This study explored how humor was created in narratives within one organization to unify members in the face of potentially divisive values and behaviors. Paradoxically, in this context, humor also served to stress behavioral or characteristic differences among organization members. Problematic values clashing as a result of these differences were channelled and negotiated through humorous narratives. By providing a less threatening means of acknowledging disagreement, humor served to promote unity among organizational members by reinforcing shared values and establishing the social order within the organization in the face of incongruous or conflicting values. Through enabling members to shift between unifying and differentiating narratives, humor allowed organization members to maintain unity in the face of diversity.
Humor and laughter as a therapeutic force can be utilized to
alleviate pain and despair as well as having far-reaching consequences
for both personal and organizational development. The various reasons
why people laugh and what makes something funny are very complex, and
can be measured to a certain extent by the maturity of social systems.
Humor may be a useful managerial tool, contributing to effectiveness and subordinate satisfaction. A survey explored 290 workers' job satisfaction and impressions of supervisors as a function of subject age, subject sex, supervisor sense of humor, and supervisor sexual humor. Subjects
rating their supervisors high in sense of humor reported higher job satisfaction and rated other supervisor qualities higher than did subjects rating their supervisors low in sense of humor. In general, the differences between ratings, given low and high sense of humor supervisors, were greater
for younger (under 25) subjects than older. Older females downgraded supervisors who used sexual humor, while younger females and males did not. Future research should attempt to relate humor to objective measures of leader effectiveness.
The use of humor was an important aspect of Ronald Reagan's rhetorical appeal. Three major theories of humor have been suggested in the development of the literature: the relief theory, involving emotional release of tension; the incongruity theory, where the cognitive functioning reacts to unexpected input; and the superiority theory, which holds that humor results from feeling superior to others, who may be considered disobedient or somehow “wrong.” The application of the theories to Reagan's humor shows how he used humor to criticize authority without being perceived as too harsh or negative, as well as to promote positive feelings from his audiences.
Examined the relationship between creativity (CY) and humor via a content analysis of 13 definitions and 11 theories of humor. Results indicate that there is a highly integrated relationship between CY and humor. Within the selected literature combining humor and CY, humor seemed to be sufficiently integrated to be considered a subset of CY. In that respect, the two could be productively studied within similar conceptual frameworks. In spite of a degree of integration among the CY elements in the humor definitions studied, major incongruities still exist in the defining process used by CY researchers or practitioners. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Developed a taxonomy of humor found in a small, family-owned business. The different types of humor serve to maintain low status differentials and alleviate workplace tension. The types of humor included puns, slapstick, jokes/anecdotes, and teasing. Humor also seemed part of the socialization process for employees, helping to create bonds among the employees. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Contends that Herb Kelleher, founder of Southwest Airlines, has been pivotal in crafting a distinctive organizational culture (based on the values of humor, altruism, and "luv"). Cultural values become the platform for specific and concrete actions designed to meet difficulty and challenge. It is suggested that the underlying values and elements of an organizational culture are usually buried beneath a wide range of social behaviors and artifacts. The cultural elements below the social surface (e.g., in the case of a tough-talking executive) are not necessarily unsavory or unacceptable. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Management gurus are among the most influential public orators of the day. But mastery of age-old rhetorical devices, including the use of humour, is central to their effectiveness.
When does a joke become sexual harassment? In a partial test of an integrative model of gender-related humor in the workplace, the role of personal and situational variables in perceptions of sexual harassment was examined. Other implications of sexual humor in the office were also studied.
Describes the development and initial validation of the Humor Styles Questionnaire, which assesses four dimensions relating to individual differences in uses of humor. These are: relatively benign uses of humor to enhance the self (Self-enhancing) and to enhance one’s relationships with others (Affiliative), use of humor to enhance the self at the expense of others (Aggressive), and use of humor to enhance relationships at the expense of self (Self-defeating). Validation data indicate that the four scales differentially relate in predicted ways to peer ratings of humor styles and to measures of mood (cheerfulness, depression, anxiety, hostility), self-esteem, optimism, well-being, intimacy, and social support. They also relate to all five dimensions of the Five Factor Model and to Agency and Communion. The first two scales overlap with previous humor tests, whereas the Aggressive and Self-defeating humor scales largely tap different dimensions. Males scored higher than females on Aggressive and Self-defeating humor. It is expected that the HSQ will be useful for research on humor and psychological well-being by assessing forms of humor that may be deleterious to health as well as those that are beneficial.
Humor can serve numerous functions in discourse. This paper provides a tool for categorizing functions of humor, and uses this tool to highlight statistically some interesting patterns in the humor of New Zealand men and women.The humor occurring in 18 New Zealand friendship groups was analyzed according to function and these functions were organized into a taxonomy. Functions of humor occurring in such groups can be classified under the three broad labels of solidarity-based, power-based and psychological functions. Further distinctions within these labels are also made.The distribution of these functions within the friendship groups was analyzed. The sample consisted of both mixed groups and male and female single-sex groups. Log-linear modelling revealed the women much more likely to share funny personal stories to create solidarity, whereas the men used other strategies to achieve the same goal. They were more likely to reminisce about shared experiences or highlight similarities to create solidarity within the group. While teasing was used in single-sex groups both to create power and solidarity, this behavior reduced markedly in mixed groups.
Two studies investigating the influence of a humorous atmosphere on students' creativity scores are presented. In the first study 78 adolescents were shown humorous film clips and given a task requiring them to write captions for cartoons. A creativity test was subsequently administered to these students and to a control group. In the second study, Form A of the Torrance creativity test (TCT) with standard instructions was given to 130 adolescents. These were then divided into two groups, one experimental and one control. The experimental group was instructed to complete Form B of the TCT with humorous responses, while the control group was instructed to proceed as before. Results of both experiments showed that a humorous atmosphere significantly increases creativity scores. Several explanations for the findings were proposed and the practical applicability of the results in education were stressed.
The benefits of humor in reducing anxiety were investigated in a laboratory study, in which subjects were falsely led to believe that they would receive a shock in 12 min. Participants were 53 undergraduate students with either high or low sense of humor as measured by the Situational Humor Response Questionnaire of Martin and Lefcourt (1984). During the anticipatory period, subjects listened to either a humorous tape, a nonhumorous tape, or no tape. Dependent variables were repeated measures of self-reported anxiety, heart rate, and zygomatic facial activity. Anxiety increased over the anticipatory period, as predicted. A significant interaction between condition and time indicated that subjects from the humor condition consistently rated themselves as less anxious and reported less increase in stress as the shock approached. A three-way interaction concentrating on the final 3 min. indicated a tendency for subjects with low sense of humor to have higher heart rates in the no-tape condition than in the humorous or nonhumorous tape conditions. Analysis for zygomatic activity indicated more smiling by subjects with high sense of humor and by subjects in the humor condition. Also, the humorous tape elicited more smiling by subjects with high sense of humor.
Four experiments indicated that positive affect, induced by means of seeing a few minutes of a comedy film or by means of receiving a small bag of candy, improved performance on two tasks that are generally regarded as requiring creative ingenuity: Duncker's (1945) candle task and M. T. Mednick, S. A. Mednick, and E. V. Mednick's (1964) Remote Associates Test. One condition in which negative affect was induced and two in which subjects engaged in physical exercise (intended to represent affectless arousal) failed to produce comparable improvements in creative performance. The influence of positive affect on creativity was discussed in terms of a broader theory of the impact of positive affect on cognitive organization.