Folkman and Lazarus's transactional theory of emotion and coping was used to explain how humor influences job satisfaction among health care providers. One hundred forty-two nurses completed measures of humor orientation (HO), coping efficacy, job satisfaction, and open-ended questions about their use of humor to relieve job tensions. This produced 9 categories of producing humor and 8 types of work situations identified in which humor was used to cope. Nurses (21.4%) reported using humor the most often during "patient care" situations (e.g., providing medicines, moving patients, physical therapy, and so on). More than one third (38.66%) of the nurses reported using "word-play/language" as a humorous coping strategy. Higher HO was associated with higher ratings of humor effectiveness, greater self-perceived coping efficacy, and higher emotional expressivity. Path analysis demonstrated that, as the transactional theory would predict, trait HO influences job satisfaction through its effect on heightened coping efficacy. Study limitations include the use of self-report methods and the limited number of responses to the open-ended items. Subsequent research in this area should attempt to validate the categories identified in this study and determine the most effective means of coping. Researchers also should explore differences in health care providers' coping communication based on gender, years of experience, and profession.

A n ajfective orientation is the degree to which individuals are aware of and use affect cues toguide communication. Some people appear to be very sensitive to their emotional state, while others attend primarily to factual, logical information in making decisions. Four studies investigated how aflective orientation relates to other communication constructs and behavior. Study One developed the measure, a 20-item scale with sound factor structure and internal reliability. Study Two assessedconstruct validity. Affective orientation (AO) was predictably related to conversational sensitivity and femininity. Divergent validity was supported in that A 0 was unrelated to communication apprehension, masculinity, self-monitoring, and need for cognition. Study Three determined that A 0 was related to communication production: As affective orientation increased, so too did the number of emotions participants were able to list in a timed trial. Study Four analyzed the ways high versus low aflectively oriented communicators differ in their recall and communication of emotional events. High affective-oriented respondents exhibited shorter latencies prior to speaking and less pausing during the account.ndividuals employ diverse sources of information in making judgments concerning their individual actions, relation-

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