Participants in the sarcasm condition were significantly more likely to solve a creativity task assigned later in the experiment than those in the sincere condition. In a subsequent study, participants were asked to merely recall a time when they either said or heard something sarcastic or a time they said or heard something sincere. Once again, creativity on the subsequent task was higher in the sarcasm condition.
Why does this happen? Sarcasm involves saying one thing and meaning the opposite, so using and interpreting it requires higher-level abstract thinking compared with straightforward statements , which boosts creativity. The downside is that sarcasm can produce higher levels of perceived conflict, particularly when trust is low between the expresser and the recipient.
During his presidential campaign, John F. Kennedy faced accusations that his wealthy father was attempting to buy the election. Self-deprecating humor can be an effective method of neutralizing negative information about oneself. Research by one of us Brad and Maurice Schweitzer found that individuals are seen as warmer and more competent when they disclose negative information about themselves using humor than when they disclose it in a serious manner.
When they add humor to a disclosure, counterparts view the negative information as less true and less important. There are limits to the benefits of self-deprecating humor, however.
Among lower-status people it can backfire if the trait or skill in question is an essential area of competence. For instance, a statistician can more safely make self-deprecating jokes about her spelling than about her statistical skills. So when discussing core competences, another form of humor might serve the purpose better. An exception worth mentioning is when being self-deprecating about a core competence is the only alternative to disclosing the information in a serious way.
You should also avoid using humor to reveal your failures in situations where levity would be seen as inappropriate such as if you are testifying in court or when the failure is perceived as so serious that joking about it would be in poor taste.
Nope, no weapons over there…maybe under here? In the second of two debates during the U. At age 73, Reagan was already the oldest president in American history, and he was perceived as being fatigued during the first debate. Mondale later said it was the moment he knew he had lost the election. Few people enjoy being asked difficult questions like the one posed to Reagan.
Previous research has revealed a range of ways people can respond: by staying silent, explicitly lying, paltering saying truthful things to deliberately mislead , or responding with another question.
Using humor to dodge a question is another option that can be quite helpful in certain situations. Just as a good magician gets the audience to look away from the sleight of hand, a successful joke can turn our attention away from certain information. Successful humor also makes us happy, and we are more likely to trust people when we are in a good mood.
And as we have mentioned, funny people are seen as more intelligent and skilled. By responding with humor even with a scripted line he had probably rehearsed , Reagan signaled to the audience that he was still mentally sharp.
McClellan failed to attack General Robert E. Lee in Richmond. Yours respectfully, A. Delivering negative feedback can be challenging, so it may be tempting to fall back on a joke to lighten the mood. However, couching criticism in the form of a joke can lessen its impact. Peter McGraw and colleagues ran experiments in which participants reviewed complaints that were made in either a humorous or a serious manner. Although humorous complaints were better received than serious ones, they were also seen as more benign, and people felt less compelled to take action to rectify the problem.
Because accompanying criticism with humor softens the feedback, it detracts from getting the point across when the issue is not obvious. If it were, why would she be joking about it? Do you remember the day after the U. For Donald Trump supporters, it was a happy day; for Hillary Clinton supporters, not so much. We took that opportunity to study how humor might help people cope with negative news. Those who sought humor in the situation felt better about it in the moment—and they still felt better about it when the researchers checked back in with them months later.
Humor can be an extremely powerful coping tool, in even the toughest of circumstances. Leadership consultant Linda Henman found that American prisoners of war in Vietnam frequently used it to deal with the tough conditions they experienced.
Strick and colleagues conducted studies in which they presented participants with photos of negative scenes such as a physical assault or a car crash , followed by either a funny stimulus or a positive but not funny stimulus. Participants presented with the funny stimulus reported fewer negative emotions than did participants presented with the nonhumorous one. Again, the cognitively demanding aspect of humor distracts people, leaving them less able to focus on negative information.
Other research, however, revealed that the type of humor matters. One study by Andrea Samson University of Fribourg and James Gross Stanford found that positive, good-natured humor in response to bad news made people feel better, but negative, dark, or mean-spirited jokes made them feel worse.
Avoid inside jokes when you care about group cohesion and not everyone is in the loop. Use humor to deliver negative feedback when you want to increase the odds that the recipient will remember the feedback.
Use humor whenever you can, cognizant of your relationships with the people listening and the norms of different environments. But in general, humor can be tremendously useful in helping people cope not only during or immediately after a negative event but also over the long term.
If anything, following the style or content of many professional comedians—who are expected to push the boundaries of appropriateness—would be dangerous in most workplaces. The good news is that your colleagues are not expecting you to be as edgy or as funny as the professionals—or even to tell planned jokes at all.
When you think about humor as a tool of leadership, recognize that people can be funny in a variety of ways. For example, witty conversationalists differ from elaborate storytellers, clever emailers, and rollicking presenters. Each of these types of humor requires a different response time, unique delivery pacing, and an understanding of the audience.
If you tend to be more serious when talking one-on-one, you might try sending funnier emails. Options for incorporating more humor into your work life abound. Humor at work is a delicate dance, and humor research is still in its infancy. But any rules of thumb for using humor have to include a caveat: Context matters. Conversational dynamics can vary profoundly from culture to culture, person to person, and group to group.
These factors are tricky to navigate and make it difficult—even in the moment—to know whether your humor attempt has been successful or not. And that was well before this Christmas, when he appeared to joke about Obama being a Muslim. Within a concentration camp, would someone make a joke about the number, the tattooed number? Anyone willing to threaten war over a joke is clearly not playing with a full deck.
The patriarchal decree of the government was a good deal of a joke on the plains, anyway—except when you were caught defying it! Crow was rocking back and forth on his perch, for a joke —on anybody except himself—always delighted him. Well, thinks I, this is no joke sure, at this lick I'll have family enuff to do me in a few years. The king, by way of joke , desired the earl to personate him, and ordered the petitioner to be admitted.
New Word List Word List. Save This Word! She played a joke on him. An officer with no ability to command is a joke. See synonyms for joke on Thesaurus. We could talk until we're blue in the face about this quiz on words for the color "blue," but we think you should take the quiz and find out if you're a whiz at these colorful terms.
Joke, jest refer to something said or done in sport, or to cause amusement. A joke is something said or done for the sake of exciting laughter; it may be raillery, a witty remark, or a prank or trick: to tell a joke.
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