Volume 26, Issue 4

Terror management theory has spawned a body of experimental research documenting a multitude of defensive responses to mortality salience manipulations (e.g., rigid adherence to dominant cultural values, self-esteem bolstering). Another substantive body of work suggests that humor functions as a natural and often effective means of down-regulating stressful or traumatic experiences. Integrating a terror management paradigm with a cartoon captioning task, the present study finds that participants subliminally primed with death wrote funnier captions than those primed with pain, as judged by outside raters. Interestingly, a reverse pattern was obtained for participants' own ratings of their captions; explicitly death-primed participants rated themselves more successful at generating humorous captions than their pain-primed counterparts, while no significant difference emerged between the two subliminal priming conditions. Findings contribute new insights to recent research suggesting that death reminders may sometimes facilitate creativity and open-mindedness.

This paper shows how blue-collar workers co-construct humorous scripts to manage their workplace identities. It repositions humorous scripts as performative and highlights the process of co-construction to draw attention to the significance of script form and content during identity production. This case study is part of a year-long ethnographic project that identified the norms of blue-collar humor at a furniture moving company. It explores the process of co-constructing three humorous scripts: infusion, recalibration, and free behaviors (Ashforth and Kreiner 1999). The article shows the paradoxical processes through which employees used the scripts, both as a form of resistance to and a reinforcement of negative stereotypes. By showing how the scripts were used to resist and to reinforce negative stereotypes regarding blue-collar identities, the study concludes with several implications for identity management research. The three humorous scripts served as the discursive means through which workers navigated and reified their occupational identities.

Peter Berger is one of the world's best known sociologists of religion, having made significant contributions to the theories of the social construction of religious worlds and secularization theory. He is also a lay theologian who has never been shy about putting forth his religious interpretations of modernity and combining his theological concerns with his sociological insights. This article considers the role of humor in Berger's overarching theoretical framework, demonstrating its consistency over a thirty-six year period in his writings from The Precarious Vision (1961) to Redeeming Laughter (1997). After outlining his theory, Berger's arguments are criticized for their theological elements and a corrective is offered from the sociologies of humor and knowledge. The article concludes with a consideration of Berger's potential contributions to a sociology of religious humor and an invitation to future research on the topic.

An 11-item Affinity for Political Humor (AFPH) scale is theorized as a higher-order latent factor with four lower-order latent factors (incongruity, superiority, anxiety reduction, and social connection). The theorized measurement model and several alternative models are tested using confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). In addition, reliability and validity assessments are provided. Analyses are conducted using four data sets collected between December 2009 and March 2011 (total N  = 1860). Results reveal the theorized model to fit the data well, but also indicate that an alternative model (four lower-order latent variables only) retains the strongest and most consistent fit across all four data sets. Reliability assessments reveal strong internal consistency for the 11-item AFPH scale, as well as for each of the four sub-dimensions. In addition, correlational analyses reveal the AFPH measures to retain strong validity (i.e., statistically significant and positive correlations with political TV satire consumption).

In this paper, we investigate how adaptive and maladaptive humor influence well-being in the workplace. In particular, this study examines the extent to which reactions from others (i.e., humor targets) can moderate the relationship between humor and well-being. Unlike prior research, we adopted a withinperson research design. We used data from a two-week-long diary study of 57 Dutch individuals employed in the automotive sector. Our hierarchical linear modeling analysis found that employees are more engaged on days when they express adaptive humor, while they appear more emotionally exhausted on days when they express maladaptive humor. Reactions from humor targets do not moderate the effects of humor. Using a within-person design, this study makes an important contribution to the humor at work literature, which has focused almost exclusively on inter-individual differences.

Sense of humor has been identified as a possible factor that leads to riskier behavioral choices, which could, in turn, contribute to health problems and reduced longevity. In previous studies, sense of humor was viewed as a one-dimensional, positive personal quality: the potential impact of maladaptive styles of humor was not acknowledged. The current study assesses both adaptive and maladaptive humor styles and relates them to perceived risk, and to the performance of risky behavior. The results do not support the suggestion that a sense of humor – when considered as a cheerful, carefree, and optimistic orientation – is related to assessments of risk or risky choices. Although humor styles did predict risk perception and risky behavior, it was the maladaptive, aggressive humor style that was related to a lower perception of risk, and higher rates of predicted and actual risky behavior. Humor styles that reflect a positive mindset, and that were predictive of less chronic worry, were not consistently or reliably associated with perceiving situations as less risky or with higher rates of risky behavior. Further research is needed to clarify why an aggressive humor style was predictive of risk assessment and risky choices.

A number of studies have found that humor has a positive short-term effect in terms of enhancing creativity, but few have examined its long-term effects, and few have considered different personality traits when exploring this connection. The present study seeks to address this gap by examining the relationship between creativity and dispositions towards ridicule and being laughed at. We conceptualized humor-induced mirth as a positive emotion within the framework of broaden-and-build theory (Fredrickson 1998), with the potential to foster an individual's disposition towards creative behavior. We hypothesized that this potential would depend on different dispositions towards ridicule and being laughed at. Path analysis was then used to explore the impact of gelotophobia, gelotophilia and katagelasticism on creative performance, with creative disposition as a mediating variable. Gelotophobia, the fear of being laughed at, was found to correlate negatively with creative disposition, and may also exert an indirect negative influence on creative performance through its association with creative disposition. Gelotophilia, the joy of being laughed at, on the other hand, appears to have a partially mediated influence on creativity, exhibiting both a direct and an indirect positive relation through its positive association with creative disposition. No significant relation was observed between katagelasticism (the joy of laughing at others) and creativity.

I argue that the overt subjugation in the system of American slavery and its subsequent effects offer a case study for an existentialist analysis of freedom, oppression and humor. Concentrating on the writings and experiences of Frederick Douglass and the existentialists Simone De Beauvoir and Lewis Gordon, I investigate how the concepts of “spirit of seriousness”, “mystification”, and an existentialist reading of “double consciousness” for example, can elucidate the forms of explicit and concealed oppression. I then make the case that subversive humor is an effective means to bring to consciousness the inconsistencies and incongruities of the serious oppressors. I also illustrate how humor can act as a bulwark against the rise and persistence of oppression by (non-violently) attacking the absolutist stance on human nature maintained through the use of dominating and “authoritative” language and action.