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Given the importance of humor in interpersonal communication in groups and the influence of the positive group atmosphere on group effectiveness, this paper aims to provide initial empirical evidence supporting the validity of a short measure for affiliative and aggressive humor.

Starting from existing individual-level measures of humor, this paper develops a short measure of affiliative and aggressive humor in groups. The reliability and validity of this scale in a combined Dutch and Romanian sample are tested.

The results support the reliability of the scale, its factorial structure and its predictive validity for positive group atmosphere. Moreover, this papers shows that the measure used in this study captures the affiliative and aggressive humor as group-level phenomena and it is shown that these two forms of humor are antecedents of collective emotional intelligence and group atmosphere.

This study provides a starting point for further research on the role of affiliative and aggressive humor in groups.

This paper develops a bi-dimensional measure capturing affiliative and aggressive humor in groups and opens new venues for research that extend the knowledge and understanding of the use of humor in interpersonal communication in groups.

Humor can be a useful tool in the workplace, but it remains unclear whether humor used by men versus women is perceived similarly due to social role expectations. This paper explored whether female humorists have less social latitude in their use of aggressive and affiliative humor in the workplace. This paper also examined how formal organizational status and the target's gender can impact audience perceptions.

Two scenario-based studies were conducted where participants rated the foolishness of the humorist. For Study 1, participants responded to a scenario with an aggressive, humorous comment. For Study 2, participants responded to a scenario with an affiliative, humorous comment.

Results suggested that high-status female humorists who used aggressive humor with low-status women were viewed as less foolish than low-status female humorists who used aggressive humor with low-status women. Conversely, status did not impact perceptions of male humorists who used aggressive humor with low-status women. Results also indicated that high-status women who used affiliative humor were viewed as less foolish when their humor was directed toward low-status men versus low-status women. Conversely, no differences existed for high-status men who used affiliative humor with low-status men and women.

Narrower social role expectations for women suggest that interpersonal humor can be a riskier strategy for women.

This study suggests that women have less social latitude in their use of humor at work, and that organizational status and target gender influence perceptions of female humorists.

The authors present a fist attempt to test the mediating role of humor in the relation between unruly passenger behavior and occupational stress in cabin crews.

This study used an experience sampling design to investigate the relationship between a frequent job hassle in air service provision, namely unruly passenger behavior (UPB), and the stress experienced by flight attendants.

The results of multilevel analyses show that UPB is positively related to the use of aggressive humor and negatively related to the use of affiliative humor in cabin crews. Moreover, humor mediates the relationship between unruly passenger behavior and stress. In addition the results show that general self-efficacy as a personal resource buffers the association between passenger misconduct and the use of aggressive humor.

This study is among the first empirical attempts to explore the role of humor as a mediator between uncivil customer behavior and stress in air service employee.

Displaying a sense of humour provides various interpersonal benefits including reducing tension and promoting conflict resolution, but should a firm use humour in response to publicly viewable online customer complaints after a service failure? The purpose of this study is to demonstrate that a firm’s use of humour in response to negative online consumer reviews has both positive and negative effects on perceptions of corporate image from a customer-as-onlooker perspective.

Three experimental studies are conducted and analysis of variance is used to empirically test the hypotheses.

Although humorous responses have an unfavourable influence on perceived trustworthiness of the firm, they have a favourable influence on perceived excitingness of the firm. The former influence is tied to lower perceived firm sincerity, whereas the latter is tied to higher perceived firm innovativeness and coolness. Furthermore, humour within the customer complaint itself is shown to moderate the influence of humorous responses on perceptions of the firm. Finally, regardless of the type of humour used (i.e. affiliative or aggressive humour) in the humorous response, the positive effect of humorous response remains strong, although aggressive humour further aggravates the negative impact of humorous response on trustworthiness.

The experimental set-up may limit external validity of the study, and the research is limited to the variables examined.

Humorous response is identified as a non-traditional approach to online customer complaints that poses a double-edged sword for managers of service organizations. Firms should avoid using humour in online service recovery if perceptions of trustworthiness are critical or if complaints are written in a neutral tone. However, such responses may be successfully used when a firm wants to position itself as exciting and if complaints are also humorous. Finally, firms are advised to avoid aggressive humour.

The present research represents one of the few studies in marketing to examine the potential of injecting humour into complaint management and service recovery. In addition, this study considers the consumer-as-onlooker perspective inherent in social media.

The interest on leader humor styles is recent. By applying a trustworthiness framework, the authors examine (1) how leader humor styles contribute to performance and deviance via trust in the supervisor and (2) who benefits/suffers the most from different leader humor styles.

The authors tested their hypotheses in a sample of 428 employee–supervisor dyads from 19 organizations operating in the services sector.

Affiliative and self-enhancing leader humor styles are particularly beneficial for employees with low core-self-evaluations, helping them develop trust in the supervisor and consequently improving their performance. An aggressive leader humor style, via decreased trust in the supervisor, reduces performance, regardless of employees' core self-evaluations. Self-enhancing and self-defeating leader humor styles also present significant relationships with organizational deviance.

Limitations include the cross-sectional design and the limited number of mechanisms examined.

Organizations need to train leaders in the use of humor and develop a culture where beneficial humor styles are endorsed, while detrimental humor styles are not tolerated.

These findings contribute to the literatures on trust and humor, by showing that the use of humor is not as trivial as one could initially think, particularly for those with low core self-evaluations, and by expanding our knowledge of the mechanisms by which different leader humor styles may influence performance and deviance.

While researchers in other disciplines seek to determine the impact that humour has in personal interactions, studies of humour in service delivery are lacking. The purpose of this paper is to examine whether it is beneficial to deliberately use humour in service encounters.

This paper provides a comprehensive review of humour research in multiple disciplines to assess the applicability of their key findings to the service domain. By establishing the antecedents, types, and consequences of humour, the authors build a framework and propositions to help service researchers uncover the potential of injecting humour into service interactions.

The authors find that using humour in service encounters is an ingenious affiliative behaviour which strengthens rapport between service employees and their customers. Humour also permits frontline service employees to better cope with the emotional challenges of their work, thus promising to reduce emotional labour and increase well-being. The effectiveness of service recovery efforts may also grow if employees use humour successfully to soften unpleasant emotional reactions and accept responsibility.

The authors explore cross-disciplinary humour research to apply the findings to the use of humour in service encounters. The authors also attempt to identify situations in which humour usage is most promising or beneficial, as well as its main beneficiaries.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how employees’ perceptions of their supervisor’s use of four types of humour relate to employee job satisfaction, organisational pride, organisational commitment and self-esteem. Supervisor favourability is also examined as a mediating variable in these relationships.

An online survey of 216 working individuals provided data on the effect of supervisor use of humour on employee attitudes.

Perceptions of positive forms of humour (affiliative and self-enhancing) positively related to employee various attitudes, while aggressive humour was negatively associated with those attitudes. Results also support the intervening role of supervisor favourability in the relationship between supervisors’ positive use of humour and employees’ job satisfaction, affective commitment and organisational pride.

Studies of the effects of workplace humour can benefit from using more fine-grained operationalisation of positive and negative humour. Research can also benefit from considerations of intervening mechanisms to the humour–work outcome relationship.

The results underscore the benefits of affiliative and self-enhancing humour on employee attitudes in the workplace. While negative humour can have an undesirable effect, there may be circumstances under which self-defeating humour is not negatively received.

This paper fulfils an identified need to better understand supervisors’ use of different, more discriminating forms of humour on employee attitudes.

The purpose of this study was to conduct a content analysis of humor styles used in US and Mexican television advertising.

A total of 97 television commercials broadcasted by major US and Mexican national television networks were classified under the four humor styles described by Martin et al.

Humor styles used in television advertising significantly differ between the two countries. US commercials use more affiliative, aggressive, and self‐defeating humor than do Mexican advertisements, while self‐enhancing humor is the predominant humor style of Mexican commercials and is used more frequently in Mexico when compared to the USA.

The findings reveal the frequency and types of humorous television commercials used in the USA and Mexico.

The study suggests that cultural differences should be taken into consideration when humorous advertising is used across borders.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship of leader aggressive humor on employee extra-role behaviors of proactivity and creativity by probing feeling ostracized as a mediator and team identification and professional identification as boundary conditions.

A survey sample of 347 employees was collected from three technology companies in Sichuan and Guizhou, China. Hierarchical regression analysis and PROCESS macro in SPSS were used to test the hypotheses.

The results indicate that leader aggressive humor is negatively related to employee extra-role behaviors. Feeling ostracized is an important mechanism linking leader aggressive humor and employee extra-role behaviors and team identification and professional identification moderate the relationship.

Organizations should make rules to prevent leaders from using aggressive humorous behaviors and encourage coworkers to show more affiliative funny behaviors during breaks to reduce employees' sense of ostracism.

Building on sociometer theory, this research demonstrates the opposite moderating effects of team identification and professional identification in the effects of leader aggressive humor on feeling ostracized and consequently employee extra-role behaviors.

The benefits of humor for general well‐being have long been touted. Past empirical research has suggested that some of these benefits also exist in the work domain. However, there is little shared understanding as to the role of humor in the workplace. The purpose of this paper is to address two main gaps in the humor literature. First, the authors summarize several challenges researchers face in defining and operationalizing humor, and offer an integrative conceptualization which may be used to consolidate and interpret seemingly disparate research streams. Second, meta‐analysis is used to explore the possibility that positive humor is associated with: employee health (e.g. burnout, health) and work‐related outcomes (e.g. performance, job satisfaction, withdrawal); with perceived supervisor/leader effectiveness (e.g. perceived leader performance, follower approval); and may mitigate the deleterious effects of workplace stress on employee burnout.

The authors examine the results of prior research using meta‐analysis (k=49, n=8,532) in order to explore humor's potential role in organizational and employee effectiveness.

Results suggest employee humor is associated with enhanced work performance, satisfaction, workgroup cohesion, health, and coping effectiveness, as well as decreased burnout, stress, and work withdrawal. Supervisor use of humor is associated with enhanced subordinate work performance, satisfaction, perception of supervisor performance, satisfaction with supervisor, and workgroup cohesion, as well as reduced work withdrawal.

Profitable avenues for future research include: clarifying the humor construct and determining how current humor scales tap this construct; exploring the role of negative forms of humor, as they likely have different workplace effects; the role of humor by coworkers; a number of potential moderators of the humor relationships, including type of humor, job level and industry type; and personality correlates of humor use and appreciation.

The authors recommend caution be exercised when attempting to cultivate humor in the workplace, as this may raise legal concerns (e.g. derogatory or sexist humor), but efforts aimed at encouraging self‐directed/coping humor may have the potential to innocuously buffer negative effects of workplace stress.

Although psychologists have long recognized the value of humor for general well‐being, organizational scholars have devoted comparatively little research to exploring benefits of workplace humor. Results underscore benefits of humor for work outcomes, encourage future research, and offer managerial insights on the value of creating a workplace context supportive of positive forms of humor.