Using humor and boosting emotions: An affect-based study of managerial humor, employees’ emotions and psychological capital

Abstract

Evidence from emerging scholarly investigations consistently points to managerial humor as fruitful new grounds to expand management knowledge and practice. In light of this, the present study examined managerial humor as an affective event at work that has short-term emotional and long-term psychological outcomes for employees. To test this empirically, we recruited a sample of 2498 Australian employees to participate in a field experience sampling study. We also considered the potential moderating effect of leader–member exchange on the humor–emotions relationship. Findings provide initial support for managerial humor as an affective event such that when employees perceived their manager’s humor as positive they reported experiencing positive emotions, and vice versa. Importantly, employees with high-quality relationships with their managers responded to their manager’s humor use with a greater number of positive emotions and fewer negative emotions than did employees with low-quality relationships with their managers. We argue that humor is an event that managers must responsibly manage in order to produce positive emotional experiences for employees and support healthy emotion regulation at work. We also discuss the conditions under which it is advisable for managers to use humor with employees, and suggest future research directions to develop this growing field of inquiry.

The state of research on leader humor

“…The extant studies on leader humor expression have focused predominantly on positive humor expression. Sporadic attention has been paid to leader negative (antisocial) humor expression, which is typically intended to disparage, ridicule, attack, or dominate one or multiple followers (e.g., Decker & Rotondo, 2001; Huo et al, 2012; Wijewardena, Härtel, & Samaratunge, 2017; Yam et al, 2018). Besides a scarcity of well-established measures tapping leader negative humor expression, theories guiding the investigations of leader negative humor expression also seem scarce.…”

Social and Emotional Intelligence: Students’ Propensity for a Sense of Humor in Emergency Situations

“…Әзілкештік қабілеттер қазіргі таңда жоғары өзектілікке ие, себебі оны ұжымдағы адамдарды басқаруда және кикілжіңді болдырмау үшін (Lopes, Brackett, Nezlek, Schutz, Sellin, Salovey, 2004) [6], стрестік күймен күресуде (Wijewardena, Härtel, Samaratunge, 2017;Abel, 2002) [7][8] және түрлі терапиялық мақсаттарда кеңінен қолданады. Әзілдесу мен позитивті көңіл-күй адамның физиологиялық және психикалық саулығына (Абдуллаева, 2009) [1], стрестің теріс салдарының төмендеуіне ықпал жасайды (Fredrickson, 2001) [9].…”

A Methodical Approach to the Assessment of Human Resources` Interactions

“…/ A methodical approach to the assessment of human resources` interactions Studying interactions between executives (managers) and employees, scientists have proved that the greater the quality of interactions between executives and employees, the higher the quality and work productivity of the latter (Zanozovska, 2017). There are interesting research studies on the impact of executives` managerial humor on teamwork (Wijewardena, Härtel, & Samaratunge, 2017). Humour is an event run by managers in order to provoke a positive emotional reaction from employees and create an appropriately favorable working environment.…”