How Do We Perceive a Humorous Manager? Manager Humor, Impression Management, and Employee Willingness to Work With the Manager

Brender-Ilan, Yael; Reizer, Abira

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2021.628350

ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Psychol., 13 September 2021

Sec. Organizational Psychology

Volume 12 - 2021 | https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.628350

How Do We Perceive a Humorous Manager? Manager Humor, Impression Management, and Employee Willingness to Work With the Manager

$\r\nYael Brender-Ilan*&#x;$ Yael Brender-Ilan^1*†

Abira Reizer^2*†

¹Department of Economics and Business Management, Ariel University, Ariel, Israel
²Department of Behavioral Sciences, Ariel University, Ariel, Israel

Humor is a form of communication that is intended to be entertaining and produce positive affective and cognitive responses from receivers. Nonetheless, humor in the workplace is a complicated matter. It has been recognized as a valuable tool for managers because it can activate various favorable outcomes and alter employees’ perception of the manager’s warmth and competence (impression management), but not always to the benefit of the manager. In our studies, the use of humor showed changed attitudes toward a manager’s warmth and competence, and eventually influenced the employee’s behavioral intentions. In Study 1, we tested the use of managerial humor in two emails. The humorous manager was perceived as warm, but not competent. Impression management mediated the employee’s willingness to work with the manager. In Study 2, we tested the use of managerial humor with one introductory email. In this study, we also monitored the gender of both the manager and the employee. Once again, the humorous manager was perceived as warm and humor mediated employees’ behavioral intentions. As for competence, gender moderated the results, such that male employees perceived humorous female managers as more competent, while female employees perceived humorous male managers as less competent. Practical implications are presented.

Introduction

Humor has been recognized as a valuable tool for managers because it can activate several favorable outcomes in the fields of business and organizational behavior (Duncan et al., 1990; Mesmer-Magnus et al., 2012). Organizational scholars refer to humor as an effective tactic and managerial resource, particularly under limited tangible resource allocation (Robert et al., 2016; Cooper C.D. et al., 2018).

Over the past two decades, there has been a growing interest in managerial and leadership’s use of humor, and their potential impact in shaping employees’ attitudes and behaviors (Kong et al., 2019), and business unit effectiveness (Priest and Swain, 2002; Cooper K.M. et al., 2018). Specifically, researchers found that positive humor used by managers during their interactions with their employees increased organizational and employee creativity (Csikszentmihalyi, 1996; Li et al., 2019); employee positive emotions and work engagement (Goswami et al., 2016); employees’ psychological capital (Li et al., 2019); manager-subordinate relations (Messmer, 2012; Liu et al., 2019); and leadership effectiveness ratings (Decker and Rotondo, 2001). In addition, managers’ positive use of humor also serves to facilitate a friendly workplace environment (Pandita et al., 2019).

Despite the increasing interest in the impact of humor, the theoretical understanding of the use of humor among managers is incomplete, and the process through which it affects employees’ outcomes has not been fully identified) (Karakowsky et al., 2019). Therefore “[perhaps out of all communication strategies used by leaders, the use of humor may be the most promising, but it is also the least understood” (Crawford, 1994, p. 54). This fundamental quest remains unresolved even 20 years later (Martin et al., 2003; Veselka et al., 2010; Yam et al., 2018).

There have been several gaps in the extant literature as well as unanswered questions related to managerial use of humor. First, while most of the published studies focused on managerial humor as a trait, there is a lack of research when it comes to examining actual managerial humor expression (Kong et al., 2019). Specifically, Kong et al. (2019), in their recent extensive meta-analytic review on managerial humor, concluded that leader humor expression is a better predictor of employee behaviors and attitudes than leader humor as a trait. They call for further exploration of actual leader humor expression.

In addition, while most of the studies up till now have focused on cross-sectional and correlational designs (Kong et al., 2019), there is a lack of research findings on managerial leadership humor expression. Finally, there is an inadequate understanding of the processes by which managerial humor expression impacts employees’ perceptions and behavioral intentions. Moreover, there is also a need to deepen our understanding regarding the potential moderators and mediators of these relationships.

The current study addresses Kong et al. (2019) call by focusing on several unexamined goals in the managerial humor literature. Our study aims to: (1) empirically investigate the contribution of leader humor expression on employees’ behavioral intentions (willingness to work with the manager); and (2) explore the mediators and moderators that explain the associations between leadership humor expression and behavioral intentions. As humor may impact impression management processes (Bitterly and Schweitzer, 2019), we will also examine whether employees’ impression management perceptions regarding their manager may mediate the associations between managerial humor expression and employees’ intentions to work with their manager. As for the third goal: (3) Since leadership humor expression may be perceived differently depending on the leader’s gender (Evans et al., 2019), and as gender was presented as a potential moderator for future examination by several scholars (Mesmer-Magnus et al., 2018; Kong et al., 2019), we will also investigate the moderating role of managerial gender. Finally, (4) while most, if not all, previous measurements in the literature on managerial humor have been based on employees’ and managers’ self-report, which are potential sources of social desirability and common method biases (e.g., Antonakis, 2017; Kong et al., 2019), we will further examine the research hypotheses by using an experimental design. Additionally, up until now all existing managerial humor expression research has pertained to face-to-face (hereafter FtF) interactions, but not all manager-employee interactions are FtF. While previous work suggested that managers who use humor are perceived more favorably by their employees (i.e., Messmer, 2012), this research did not address written communication, but primarily FtF interactions that were measured via employee’ self-report. This is a critical gap in the available research because FtF interactions provide a very different medium for communication immediacy than computer-mediated communication (hereafter CMC) contexts (Schulze et al., 2017). Our final research goal is to be not only methodologically novel, but also theoretically innovative. The current study will address and use the most recent and common workplace communication channel – email correspondence (Machili et al., 2019). In addition, the current work is the first to examine managers’ humorous expression in email communication. Our investigation will examine how adding a humorous expression in a manager’s email sent to employees affects employees’ perceived impression of the manager and their subsequent behavioral intentions.

Computer-Mediated Communication in the Workplace

In this age of globalization, current technology, coupled with the stipulation of immediate communication and quick reactions, directs workplaces to use CMC for day-to-day professional activity. Though FtF is certainly not deemed redundant, these two communication methods require different personal characteristics – the latter being termed a twenty-first century competency one cannot do without (Schulze et al., 2017). Emails have become mainstream in organizational life (Derks and Bakker, 2010). It is fast, inexpensive, accessible, and easy to replicate; thus, it streamlines communication (Brown et al., 2014). Employees seem to prefer email communication and they use it to communicate information as well as emotions (Byron, 2008). Yet, the use of email can lead to miscommunications – a drawback that needs to be closely monitored and improved to avoid interpersonal misunderstandings during organizational written interactions (Byron, 2008). Still, the benefits of this mode of written communication still far outweigh the disadvantages. When employees send emails to colleagues, the recipients can access and respond to the email at their convenience, thus increasing work flexibility and creating a sense of timeliness (Mano and Mesch, 2010). Despite the growth and prominence of mobile messengers and chat apps, email remains an integral part of daily online life. In 2020, the number of global email users stood at four billion, meaning over 50% of the world’s population was using email. This number is projected to reach 4.6 billion users in 2025 (The guardian, 2016; Eurofound and the International Labour Office, 2017; Levin and Kurtzberg, 2020; Statista, 2021).

While FtF communication encompasses different cues, including non-verbal cues, CMC is unique because it is documented, more detailed, and more informative (Tudini and Liddicoat, 2017). Specifically relevant for this study is the difference between types of humorous communications. Humor can be communicated via spoken conversation and written text. However, both are considered verbal humor (Norrick, 1993), as opposed to non-verbal humor emerging from pictures or body language. Importantly, the SIDE model of dehumanization has found different effects on behavior when comparing CMC and FtF interactions (e.g., Spears, 2017; Vilanova et al., 2017), mostly when discussing norms of behavior, which are crucial in workplace environments (Mackey et al., 2021). In this study, we stress the difference between conversational humor that can be accompanied by non-verbal cues and elicit certain effects, and verbal humor which takes the form of written text, specifically in our case – emails (Dynel, 2009). While there are several ways in which humor and laughter can be elicited, the most common is humor emerging spontaneously from a particular situation (Martin and Kuiper, 1999). This type of humor can occur in the workplace, but cannot be easily and accurately measured, since we, as researchers, are not there to witness and document it. Moreover, the reactions and laughter elicited by conversational humor are psychologically different from textual humor (Martin and Ford, 2018). Importantly, written jokes have been extensively studied, their mechanisms examined and compared (Ruch et al., 1993). The General Theory of Verbal Humor (GTVH) has studied these mechanisms and it was found to be conducive for testing jokes and their translation (Attardo, 2017). In addition, the ideas behind the GTVH could also be used to understand humor and what makes a joke funny (Raskin, 2012), as well as to analyze humor occurring in conversations. Still, these mechanisms are mainly used to analyze the linguistics of written jokes (Attardo, 2017). In this study, we focus on this latter type of humor – “verbal” written humor that is conveyed in emails.

The use of email at work reflects professional demands, individual preferences, and the inclusion of emotions. This use of emotions in emails can create miscommunications which negatively impact organizational communication (Byron, 2008). While boundaries in emails are group dependent (Cecchinato et al., 2015), and can employ varying emoticon communicative functions (Skovholt et al., 2014; Glikson et al., 2018), industry users (compared to academia users) have a better understanding of the boundaries between work and personal usage, indicating that it is the working environment that influences people’s boundary practices (Cecchinato et al., 2015). In addition to the variability in email messaging among environments, culture is also a factor. Email communication styles and content, in terms of individual psychological space (i.e., private life, confidentiality, work orientation, and social distance), vary widely across cultures (Holtbrügge et al., 2013).

As a twenty-first-century skill (Schulze et al., 2017), competent managers are also evaluated by their ability to communicate effectively using emails given that, in general, communicating well with employees has been shown to predict important organizational outcomes, such as individual and team performance and leadership (e.g., Young et al., 2000; De Vries et al., 2010). Consequently, it is vital to study ways in which this type of communication affects employees’ evaluation of managers’ competence.

We regard emails as a type of professional conversation between managers and employees (Tudini and Liddicoat, 2017). However, since emails lack the non-verbal cues FtF conversations possess (Holtbrügge et al., 2013; Schulze et al., 2017), individuals need to use different cues to emphasize and express themselves (e.g., emoticons, unconventional orthography, and non-standard punctuation) (Darics, 2010; Vandergriff, 2013; Kalman and Gergle, 2014). In the current study, we aim to test the effect of humorous discourse framed by the concrete text of an example of a work email. We will study the effects of written humor on the impression/first impression an employee forms regarding a manager/new manager, who uses humor in an email.

Humor and Managerial Positive Humor Expression

Humor is a form of communication (Smith et al., 2000) that is intended to be entertaining (Cooper, 2005, 2008), and produces positive affective and cognitive responses in receivers (Crawford, 1994; McGraw et al., 2015; Warren and McGraw, 2016). Nonetheless, humor in the workplace is a complicated matter. Positive humor was found to have beneficial effects in the workplace in relation to employees’ well-being, productivity, and managers’ socialization (e.g., Gkorezis et al., 2011; Mak et al., 2012; Smith and Khojasteh, 2014). In a comprehensive literature review and meta-analysis of leader humor, Kong et al. (2019) explain the myriad uses of humor by leaders and its effects on followers, and provide constructive critiques of leader humor research. Specifically, in their extensive meta-analytical review they distinguish between the idea of a managerial humor trait (an individual difference of the manager) and managerial humor expression (behavioral). Although the subject of managerial humor trait received more empirical attention, Kong et al. (2019) concluded that humor expression is a stronger predictor of employees’ attitudes and behavior intentions, and called for further empirical support for the contribution of leadership humor expression.

In the best-case scenario, humor is non-hostile, and affirming of self and others. However, negative comicality as well as self-defeating humor and aggressive humor also exist (Martin et al., 2003). Martin’s approach has also been applied to the organizational setting. It was indicated that humor, which concentrates on the self (for purposes of self-enhancement or self-appreciation), is positively related to personal well-being measures and positive interpersonal communications, while negative humor styles impaired personal well-being, often leading to interpersonal conflicts (e.g., Mesmer-Magnus et al., 2012). When examining the unique contribution of different types of positive humor, it appears that the use of affiliative humor facilitates the advancement and preservation of social support networks, which foster and enhance well-being.

Humor has long been studied as a form of human influence (O’Quin and Aronoff, 1981), while its social functions have been extensively studied from an anthropological perspective (Martineau, 1972). In a recent meta-analysis that examined the effect of humor on persuasion (Walter et al., 2018), researchers found that overall, humor has a significant, but weak, effect on persuasion; some level of influence on knowledge; and only a minor impact on attitudes and behavioral intentions. When it comes to humor in the workplace, the results are more prominent. Managerial humor expression is defined as a behavioral construct focusing on the way managers express humor during interpersonal interactions with their employees. It is “a communication tactic used by the leader. the core of which is the leader[’s] sharing of funny events with the employees with the intention to amuse them” (Pundt and Herrmann, 2015, p. 109). A meta-analysis (Mesmer-Magnus et al., 2012) found positive effects for employees’ use of humor (satisfaction, enhanced work performance, workgroup cohesion, coping effectiveness, health, and decreased levels of stress, work withdrawal, and burnout) as well as managers’ use of humor (general satisfaction, workgroup cohesion, satisfaction with supervisor, enhanced subordinate work performance, satisfaction, perception of supervisor performance, satisfaction with supervisor, and workgroup cohesion, along with reduced work withdrawal). Humor was also found to be indicative of employee OCB (Martin et al., 2004; Tremblay et al., 2016), and employees’ happiness, well-being, and short and long-term positive emotional and psychological outcomes (Robert and Wilbanks, 2012; Kim et al., 2016; Wijewardena et al., 2017).

The functional perspective refers to humor expression as a managerial tool. By adding humor to a conversation, the manager can promote the accomplishment of work (Malone, 1980; Newstrom, 2002), re-frame difficulties so that they seem less disturbing, and ease negative emotions (Grugulis, 2002). Managers can use humor as a mode of communication – to transmit ideas (Grice, 1989) or merely entertain their employees (Raskin, 1985; Bitterly and Schweitzer, 2019). Nonetheless, though managerial humor was vastly shown to have positive effects on employees and organizational culture (Holmes and Marra, 2002; Shah, 2018), research also found a potential downside regarding humor at work (Yam et al., 2018). These studies show that humor at work is not necessarily perceived as beneficial in all areas of the world (Yang et al., 2017; Wang et al., 2018). In particular, the disruptive perspective views humor usage as a type of behavior that conflicts with the serious nature of business (Duncan et al., 1990). Moreover, humor might impose norms (Meyer, 2000), generate interpersonal tension, and create an assertion of power over others (Holmes and Marra, 2006).

Humorous Emails and Willingness to Work With the Manager

Known positive outcomes of leadership communication competence are employee satisfaction, motivation, and commitment (Mikkelson et al., 2015). On the other end of this spectrum, negative outcomes were also found, including stress, job tension, emotional exhaustion, and turnover (Khan et al., 2010; Sun et al., 2019). Malone (1980) concluded that leader humor should be examined and recognized as a tool that enables managers to enhance employees’ satisfaction and productivity. He also suggested that humor may serve as a facilitator that helps leaders get things done (Malone, 1980). It seems that a consensus is emerging, which perceives managerial positive humor as a form of socioemotional exchange currency that can shape, develop, and build manager-employee relations (Cooper K.M. et al., 2018; Kong et al., 2019).

The dynamics of the manager-employee relationship and its effectiveness are influenced by several managerial factors. These include managers’ previous work experience, affiliation scores, and the ability to address both the personal and professional needs of employees by creating a friendly workplace environment (Pandita et al., 2019). Humor can help improve this dynamic, by forming strong friendship networks at work, which has been associated with the willingness to work together. Humor can also contribute to positive affect, which tends to promote improved interpersonal relationships at work (Romero and Cruthirds, 2006; Robert et al., 2016). Moreover, humor moderates the relationship between leadership style and unit-level performance; and the managerial use of humor has been shown to encourage the forming of strong friendship networks, as well as enhanced leader-employee relationship quality (LMX) (Avolio et al., 1999; Liu et al., 2019). While there is some indication that managers who use positive humor expression in day-to-day interactions are perceived favorably by their employees (e.g., Messmer, 2012), little is known regarding the impact of humor in terms of behavioral intentions such as willingness to work with the supervisor. There are three primary theories about humor in the literature, which explain the contribution of managerial humor expression to employee intentions and behaviors. The first is relief theory (Freud, 1960), according to which humor is derived from the release of built-up emotions that are otherwise suppressed. Therefore, humor is considered a defense mechanism (Cooper, 2008), a stress-relief tool, which has therapeutic benefits when coping with sensitive and uncomfortable topics (Kuiper, 2012). The second theoretical conceptualization refers to the positive affective benefits of humor. Humor can facilitate positive emotions that promote individual cognitions and behaviors (Cooper, 2005). Effective leaders usually manage their employees’ emotions (Cropanzano et al., 2017), and impact the positive evaluative judgment of their employees, thus facilitating employees’ attitudinal and behavioral outcomes. Employees’ positive emotions, triggered by the manager, can also broaden and build employees’ personal resources (Fredrickson, 2013). The third and most popular theory is that of social exchange. According to social exchange theory (Blau, 1964), a manager and an employee-follower have mutual interactional episodes that consist of resource exchange (Graen and Uhl-Bien, 1995). Managers are not expected to express humor toward their employees. Therefore, an expression of humor signals managerial supportiveness and friendliness toward employees that extends beyond what is expected (Blau, 1964), in addition to managerial desire to form good relationships with employees (Cooper, 2008). Therefore, managerial expression of humor serves to build and expand the employee’s socioemotional resources. Strong exchange relationships with the manager not only contributes to employees’ affective response toward the job and the organization, it also motivates them to reciprocate the manager’s positive attentions by diligently fulfilling job requirements (Cooper K.M. et al., 2018). Cooper K.M. et al. (2018) integrated the three theories and conceptualized managerial humor expression as an interpersonal resource that promotes socio-psychological functioning among employees. When supervisors use positive forms of humor with their subordinates, they send a message that the individual is worthwhile and well liked, which may promote that individual’s self-esteem (Mesmer-Magnus et al., 2018). Indeed, a recent meta-analysis study suggested that humor expression is associated with employee intentional behaviors such as their willingness to remain with the organization (Kong et al., 2019). However, their analysis was based on three studies (Sobral and Islam, 2015; Cooper C.D. et al., 2018; studies 1 and 2), which emphasize the need for further examination of the topic. Following this work, in the current study we expand this perspective by suggesting that humor expression may shape employees’ willingness to work with the manager during their early initial stages of interaction.

Based on these links connecting leader humor expression and positive employees’ behavioral outcomes, we infer that willingness to work with the supervisor will undoubtedly be enhanced by the manager’s use of positive humor. This is because, as was shown, humor has ample positive effects on employees’ positive evaluation of the manager and interaction with the manager. This can translate into one’s willingness to work with this type of positive-effect-creating agent – the manager.

In addition, we expand previous work by focusing on written communication sources.

According to Social Information Processing (SIP) theory (Walther, 1992), participants in CMC settings are probably able to communicate interpersonal information to the same degree as in FtF settings. One way to communicate relational information in the CMC setting is to use humor in the text. Therefore, according to SIP, the use of humor in texts signals relational communication and serves as a potential compensating mechanism to non-verbal channels in CMC conversations (Hancock, 2004). It was recently suggested that humorous text messages may be an effective tool for shaping beneficial organizational image. Shin and Larson (2020) conducted three experimental marketing studies suggesting that humorous responses to a client’s complaints by a service agent have a favorable influence on the firm’s perceived attractiveness, regardless of the type of humor used (i.e., affiliative or aggressive humor) The impact of humorous emails on employees’ willingness to work with managers has not been examined previously, and only a few leadership research studies have examined the contribution of managers’ humorous expression and employees’ behavioral intentions. However, we suggest that employees might positively evaluate written humorous messages sent by their managers via email correspondence. Therefore, these employees are likely to respond positively to their manager’s requests, as was previously suggested in organizational studies.

Hypothesis 1: A manager’s expression of humor in an email will increase the employee’s willingness to work with the manager.

Humor and Impression Management

Impression management (hereafter IM) appears to be a strong individual-level variable when considering aspects that are likely to influence the relationship between managerial humor and employee outcomes. In the workplace, effective IM projects the “right” images of an individual’s personal and professional life (Bolino et al., 2016), and is considered a desired managerial quality. Much of the IM literature has focused on two common impressions managers seek to convey: warmth and competence (Holoien and Fiske, 2013; Koslowsky et al., in press).

Warmth represents the interpersonal tendency to demonstrate friendliness, communion, helpfulness, and trustworthiness (Cuddy et al., 2011; Fiske et al., 2018). The competence dimension captures intrapersonal capabilities such as ability, intelligence, agency, skills, confidence, and resource deployment (Fiske et al., 2007; Cuddy et al., 2011). These two dimensions of warmth and competence can also be described as “liking versus respecting” (Fiske et al., 2007), and they generally account for 82% of the variance in personal impressions in social psychology studies (Wojciszke et al., 1998; Fiske et al., 2007). These unique dimensions of warmth and competence are considered central dimensions in the organizational literature as well (Bitterly and Schweitzer, 2019).

From a theoretical perspective, humor impacts the IM process. The speaker’s use of humor can determine the way the audience perceives the speaker’s intentions and motives, which in turn, fundamentally alters the way the audience evaluates the speaker (Bitterly and Schweitzer, 2019). Indeed, it was indicated that the use of humor shapes IM processes (Cooper, 2005; Stoll, 2015; Bitterly et al., 2017). Humor can increase employees’ positive evaluations of managers as it builds social relationships (Cooper, 2005). Therefore, we assume that managerial use of humorous communication will increase employees’ perceptions of their manager’s warmth. The associations are more complicated in terms of the relationship between humor and competence. In many ways, the decision to use humor can be a very risky business (Bitterly et al., 2017). On one hand, managers who use humor can be perceived as showing lower levels of competence because the use of humor in the workplace is viewed as inappropriate and distracting, and is associated with “playing around,” rather than focusing on tasks in a serious manner (Plester, 2009; Martin and Ford, 2018). People who use humor at work may be perceived as lacking dedication (Taylor and Bain, 2003; Westwood and Johnston, 2013). On the other hand, employees may value managers who are willing to “risk” using humor in their conversations, given that humor can be misunderstood or negatively assessed (McGraw and Warner, 2014; Martin and Ford, 2018). One might assume that the uncertainty is even higher when the joke-teller interacts with an unfamiliar audience and uses a CMC interface as opposed to FtF conversation. Therefore, when a manager decides to use humor, despite all the potential obstacles, the employees might perceive the use humor as demonstrating confidence.

Although there is a lack of research regarding the impact of humorous managerial message on impression management in experimental design, the literature provides some support for the contribution of humorous messages to IM processes in the workplace. For example, Bitterly and Schweitzer (2019) recently indicated that humor increases warmth and competence perceptions among interviewers during face-to-face job interviews. Specifically, they found that job candidates who use humor while disclosing negative information were perceived more favorably – in terms of both warmth and competence by the interviewees – as opposed to job candidates who do not use humor. In addition, studies show that displaying humorous responses to publicly viewable online customer complaints after a service failure can contribute to corporate image perceptions. Specifically, a humorous reply can have a positive influence on the firm’s perceived attractiveness, which was linked to higher perceived firm innovativeness (Shin and Larson, 2020).

Our study is based upon the perception that managerial humor is an effective mechanism for “building friendships in the office and breaking down barriers” (Mesmer-Magnus et al., 2018 p. 704). Managers’ positive humor increased their employees’ tendency to evaluate them as more socially attractive (Wanzer et al., 1996) and more favorable (Mesmer-Magnus et al., 2018). It was also suggested that managerial positive humor expression facilitated employees liking of the leader (Hoption et al., 2013). However, further research is needed to explore the effects of leader humor expression and employee perceptions (Kong et al., 2019). In addition, the current literature does not provide a clear argument for how managerial humor expression is incorporated by employees during early interactions in an experimental design, and how the receiver interprets it during an email correspondence. The goal of the current study is to address these gaps in the literature. Therefore, we hypothesize the following:

Hypothesis 2a: The use of humorous messages via email increases employees’ perceptions of managerial competence.

Hypothesis 2b: The use of humorous messages via email increases employees’ perceptions of managerial warmth.

The Mediating Role of IM

In the current study, we examine how managerial humorous messages can increase employees’ positive impression of their manager, ultimately increasing employee willingness to work with the manager. Whereas prior research has focused primarily on the direct impact of humorous managerial messages on employees’ outcomes – suggesting that people benefit from delivering humorous messages because observers respond positively to such messages (Mesmer-Magnus et al., 2012) – relatively little research has examined the mediating mechanisms of these associations. As IM increases one’s chances to form and maintain long-term relationships and friendships (Uziel, 2010), we assume that positive IM will increase employees’ willingness to work with their manager.

Humor is an interpersonal form of communication (Holmes et al., 2019) that signals affection (Hoption et al., 2013) and warmth (Bitterly and Schweitzer, 2019). In addition, positive and funny humorous messages signal high confidence, competence, and power (Bitterly et al., 2017).

The managerial literature suggests that managerial use of humor predicts high-quality manager-employee relationships because employees feel more comfortable at work. This increases their engagement with supervisors (Pundt and Herrmann, 2015) and causes them to view their supervisors as relationship-oriented (Decker and Rotondo, 2001). Specifically, positive humor expression was found to be related to favorable reactions to the leader (Decker, 1991). In addition, managers perceived as higher in humor use were perceived as more likable and more effective in their positions (Rizzo et al., 1999) – all of which can boost employees’ willingness to work with the manager. Managerial favorability mediated the relationship between managerial humor as a personality trait and employee outcomes such as job satisfaction, employee organizational commitment, and employee organizational pride (Mesmer-Magnus et al., 2018). More importantly, leader humor was found to foster employees’ organizational citizenship behavior through the mediating mechanism of leader-member exchange (Cooper K.M. et al., 2018).

Therefore, we assume that the use of humor could also elicit a positive evaluation of managers’ competence skills, as well as increase employee willingness to form a mutual exchange relationship with the manager such as willingness to work with the manager. Finally, IM can occur in many social channels, including FtF as well as written communication (Koslowsky et al., in press). Hence, we assume that FtF theories can be applied to email correspondence as well.

Hypothesis 3a: Perceived warmth will mediate the relationship between a managerial humorous message and employees’ intentions to work with the manager.

Hypothesis 3b: Perceived competence will mediate the relationship between a managerial humorous message and employees’ intentions to work with the manager.

Study 1

In Study 1, we examined whether the inclusion of a humorous message in a manager’s email about a work directive impacts the employee’s willingness to work with the manager, and whether warmth and competence mediate this linkage. For this purpose, we used an experimental design with three conditions. Participants received two consecutive emails that included instructions for performing a task (organizing and calculating the department’s financial expenses). The treatment group received the basic message with a humorous sentence; the control group received the same message, but the humorous sentence was replaced with a general clarification sentence of the same length; and the neutral group only received the basic message. This methodology allowed us to compare the humorous email to the two other conditions: control and neutral.

Method

Participants

To detect a medium effect size with 80% power (alpha = 0.05), G^∗Power suggested we would need 90 participants (Faul et al., 2009). Two trained MA research assistants recruited 100 employees using Network respondent-driven sampling (Wejnert and Heckathorn, 2008; Heckathorn, 2011). The final sample included 63% women. The participants’ mean age was M_age = 31.75 (SD_age = 11.41); approximately 50% held a BA degree and 7% held an MA degree or higher. The participants’ average weekly work hours were 40.14 (SD_hours = 12.18), and 63% were in a non-management position. The experiment included three between-subjects conditions: a humor condition (n = 33) and two control conditions – a control condition (n = 34) and a neutral condition (n = 33). Participants were randomly assigned to one of the three conditions.

Procedure and Humor Manipulation

The experiment included two steps. The first step was to send a gender-neutral email describing the purpose of the study and the assurance of anonymity of all responses, and a message from a “manager” to the “employee” (the participant) with an assignment (a simple question of choosing an unnecessary departmental expense item). The participant was asked to send the name of the unnecessary expense item via email to the “manager.” Upon receiving the name of the item, the “manager” sent a final email thanking the “employee” and asking him/her to complete an online questionnaire. Participants were informed that upon completion of the final questionnaire, they would automatically be included in a $25 draw.

In order to test the effect of the use of humor by the manager in an email, we used three versions. To provide a consistent and unbiased examination of the treatment effect (Rosenbaum, 1987, 2002), we included a second control group. In this second control group (the neutral group), the participants only received the basic message. All versions included a basic message from the manager asking the participant to remove one unnecessary expense item from a list of departmental expenses (see Appendix for the email wording of the three versions). The treatment group received the basic message and a joke. The study received research ethics committee (institutional review board) approval.

Measurements

Perceived warmth and competence

To measure perceived warmth and competence, we used items developed by Fiske et al. (2002). Perceived warmth was measured using 4 items (sincere, friendly, tolerant, warm). Perceived competence was measured using 5 items (skillful, confident, intelligent, competent, and efficient). Participants responded on a 7-point Likert scale – ranging from 1 (totally disagree) to 7 (totally agree). Cronbach’s alphas were (0.90) for perceived warmth and (0.93) for perceived competence.

Willingness to work with the manager

To measure behavioral intentions, we used one question: “Would you like to continue working with this manager?” Participants responded on a 5-point Likert scale – ranging from 1 (do not want to) to 5 (definitely want to).

Manipulation check

To assess whether the message was perceived as humorous, participants answered the following question: “Did you find the manager’s email amusing?” Participants responded on a 5-point scale – ranging from 1 (not amusing at all) to 5 (very amusing).

Results

Descriptive statistics and intercorrelations are shown in Table 1.

TABLE 1

Table 1. Descriptive statistics and intercorrelations.

Manipulation Check

An analysis of variance (ANOVA) revealed a significant difference between the experimental and control groups [F(2,97) = 22.77, p < 0.001)]. Post hoc analysis (Scheffe) indicated that the participants in the humor condition group were significantly more amused (M = 3.45, SD = 1.03) than the participants in either the control group (M = 2.00, SD = 0.89) or the neutral group (M = 2.27, SD = 0.88).

Examining the Effects of Willingness to Work With the Manager and IM

An analysis of variance (ANOVA) revealed a non-significant difference in willingness to work with the manager among the experimental, neutral, and control groups [F(2,97) = 0.46, p = 0.64)]. Thus, H1 was not supported. In order to examine H2a and H2b – predicting that a humorous comment in an email increases employees’ perceptions about their manager’s warmth and competence – a multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) was conducted. Box’s M (11.53) was not significant, p(0.08) > (0.05), indicating that there are no significant differences between the covariance matrices. Therefore, the MANOVA assumption is not violated and Wilk’s Lambda is an appropriate test to use. The MANOVA analysis indicated a significant effect F(4,192) = 2.97, p = 0.02; Wilks’ ∧ = 0.89, partial η² = 0.06. Follow-up univariate ANOVAs indicated that warmth was significantly different for the humor condition group as opposed to the control and neutral groups F(2,97) = 5.00, p = 0.01, partial η² = 0.09]. The post hoc test (Scheffe) indicated that the humor condition group perceived the manager as warmer (M = 3.91, SD = 0.78), as opposed to the control group (M = 3.34, SD = 0.93) and the neutral group (M = 3.30, SD = 0.92), thus supporting H2a. However, there was no significant difference among the three groups regarding employees’ perception of their manager’s competence. Thus, H2b was not supported.

Examining the Mediating Effects of Perceived Competence and Warmth

In order to examine the mediating effects of perceived competence and warmth on the impact of the humorous message, and on willingness to continue working with the manager (H3), we adopted Hayes (2017) procedure to test for regression and moderated mediation. We ran the analysis using the SPSS macro PROCESS 3.2. To reduce non-essential multicollinearity concerns (Enders and Tofighi, 2007), independent variables were mean-centered before computing product terms. Since there was no significant difference between the control and neutral conditions, we combined these groups. We conducted a bootstrap procedure (5,000 resamples) to examine the mediating path. The first bootstrap analysis revealed a significant indirect path from receiving a humorous message via perceived warmth to willingness to continue working with the manager [effect = 0.19; 95% CI (0.02, 0.41)]. However, the mediating role of perceived competence on the impact of humor on willingness to continue working with the manager was not significant [effect = 0.08; 95% CI (−0.06, 0.25)]. When controlling for the mediator, there was no direct association between receiving a humorous message and willingness to work with the manager (effect = −0.07, p = 0.66), thus indicating a full mediation path. Figure 1 illustrates the findings.

FIGURE 1

Figure 1. The mediation model for Study 1 with unstandardized coefficients. Both mediators were tested simultaneously (Model 4, Hayes, 2017).

Discussion

Our findings support the functional perspective in humor that refers to humor as a managerial tool that can further work accomplishments (Newstrom, 2002). Therefore, humor would increase employees’ willingness to work with the manager through the mediating role of warmth perception. In addition, the participants in both the control group and the humor condition group evaluated their managers relatively high, as opposed to the neutral group. The current findings did not support the disruptive perspective that views humorous amusement as contradicting with the serious manner in which business should be conducted (Duncan et al., 1990) and characterizes humorous employees as lacking dedication (Taylor and Bain, 2003; Westwood and Johnston, 2013).

The positive benefits of humor on warmth, and the lack of negative impact in terms of competence, are very encouraging to humor research, providing considerable evidence that people are more sensitive to information that is related to the warmth dimension. Research suggests that warmth judgments occur prior to competence judgments (Willis and Todorov, 2006), and account for a greater portion of the IM process (Abele and Wojciszke, 2007). In addition, warmth is a fundamental aspect of the evolutionary perspective, as it determines our approach-avoidance behavioral reactions to others (Peeters, 2001; Fiske et al., 2007).

Although the study supported our hypotheses, it is not without limitations. First, the study included only 100 participants divided into three groups. Therefore, the lack of support for the mediating role of competence may stem from the relatively small sample size, even though the sample size was supported by power analysis. In addition, previous studies suggested that the manager’s gender (Evans et al., 2019) as well as employees’ gender (Bitterly et al., 2017) should be examined as a potential moderator in the associations between humor and workplace outcomes.

Another important point in this study is that the manager sent an email using gender-neutral wording. Considering the above discussion, we further presumed that the manager’s gender could possibly influence the results. Therefore, the moderating effect of gender needs to be addressed.

Study 2

As mentioned above, the potential role of gender may affect the humorous exchange between managers and employees. We therefore set three objectives for Study 2. First, we aimed to further test the use of humor in an email that does not initiate employees’ action, but is rather a mundane managerial message. Second, we wished to reproduce and validate the effect of humor on IM that was established in Study 1. Importantly, Study 2 included two new key conditions. One, the sample was considerably larger (265 vs. 100 participants). Two, the email communication was a single short email and did not include further interaction with the manager. This was done in order to assess whether the effect of humor on IM can also be reproduced in a brief communication. Third, in an attempt to add to the theoretical understanding of the nature of the relationship between humor and first impression, we introduced the moderating effect of gender.

The Moderated Mediation Model: Gender as a Moderator

We chose to use the humor receiver’s gender as a moderating variable, since toggling the gender of the joke-teller (Hooper et al., 2016) and the gender of the receivers (Bressler et al., 2006) may profoundly influence the joke’s success. To this end, the current work addresses the recent calls by Bitterly et al. (2017), Kong et al. (2019), and Mesmer-Magnus et al. (2018) to expand current knowledge on the managerial use of humor regarding how the gender of the manager and the audience may affect the success of a humorous message.

Gender differences in humor style usage were extensively studied. Martin et al. (2003) found gender differences in all humor styles, with males reporting higher levels on all styles compared to women. In their meta-analysis, Kong et al. (2019) reported various results of gender differences in humor use, and encouraged the use of leader gender and follower gender as moderators in the study of humor and leadership. Crawford, (2003) studied the origins and psychological mechanism of gender differences in humor. He concluded that women and men use humor to construct their interaction with same-gender and mixed-gender individuals and express their group’s agenda. Over the past decades, women’s humor, in particular, has been affected by the women’s movement and the related political atmosphere.

Gender was also used as a moderator in studies examining the associations linking humor, stress, and outcomes (Abel, 1998). In terms of humor appreciation, Herzog (1999), replicating Mundorf et al. (1988), did not find that males and females have a different appreciation of humor, mostly in relation to opposite-gender victim and sexual humor. However, he did find changes in the appreciation of hostile humor toward female victims, attributing the change and his failed replication to the influence of the women’s movement.

We assume that the receivers’ gender will impact the way humor is perceived (appropriate vs. inappropriate), and therefore will ultimately affect the receivers’ willingness to work with the manager. To further understand the role of gender in the relationship between humor and outcomes, we refer to the experiment of Evans et al. (2019), which shows that using humor increases men’s, but decreases women’s, status, performance, and leadership ratings, in comparison to their same-gender counterparts. Bitterly et al. (2017) found that effective and appropriate humor could increase status, and argued that appropriate humor signals high confidence and competence levels. However, in their study humor was manipulated for men only and gender was not fully examined. Since Heilman (2012) found that gender stereotypes can serve as shortcuts for forming impressions, a more thorough examination of gender is required. Expectations regarding the way women and men should behave are widely shared, and are mostly instinctive in individuals’ behavior (Hentschel et al., 2019). Therefore, women’s behavior in the workplace might produce a different effect than a similar behavior when performed by men (e.g., Gupta et al., 2018). Scholars have paid little attention to characteristics of the humor’s source and audience. We maintain that this is an oversight, predominantly when examining the issue of gender. The ideas that male and female behavior will be interpreted differently were expressed 25 years ago (e.g., Crawford and Gressley, 1991) and are still maintained today (Tosun et al., 2018). For example, Cooper K.M. et al. (2018) found some differences in the way male and female students interpreted instructors’ humor (males found it funny, while females found it offensive). Riordan and Glikson (2020) found differences among men’s and women’s reaction to leader’s use of emojis. Female recipients rated a leader using emojis as less effective and, generally found the use of emojis by leaders as less appropriate for the workplace.

Additionally, we rely on notions from the parallel-constraint-satisfaction theory (PCST) of functionality vs. disruptiveness of behaviors, to support the argument that gender stereotypes will affect employees’ impression of managers’ humor differently, depending on the manager’s gender (Read and Simon, 2012). Thus, for male managers, we expect that the effect of humor will be similar to that observed by Evans et al. (2019), meaning – it will be evaluated positively because it is seen as more functional compared to humor expressed by female managers.

It is reasonable to postulate that humor used by female managers will be interpreted differently. Researchers found that female stereotypes include lower expectations regarding rationality, achievement, and agency (Fiske et al., 2002). This could mean that the positive impression extended to men does not apply to women. The above reasoning suggests that gender plays a central role in the relationship between humor and status. In addition, according to Bitterly et al. (2017), when the humor is considered functional it is likely to signal competence. Consequently, we expect that a dysfunctional use of humor will reduce competence ratings and lead to a negative relationship between humor and competence for women.

Hypothesis 4a: Managers’ gender moderates the mediating role of competence on the impact of humor on behavioral intentions, such that the mediating role of competence is positive for male managers and negative for female managers.

Hypothesis 4b: Receivers’ gender moderates the mediating role of competence on the impact of humor on behavioral intentions, such that the mediating role of competence is positive for men and negative for women.

In order to test the effects of gender, we used an experimental design with three conditions. Participants received an email from a new manager introducing him/herself by name (the manager’s name made gender explicit). The content of the email was introductory and also included a sentence declaring that time-off would not be granted in the following weeks because of exceptional work load. The three experimental conditions were created by toggling the ending of this email. The treatment group (humor condition group) received an ending that was an actual joke (related to time-off); the control group received an ending comprised of a general positive sentence (of the same length as the joke); the neutral group did not receive an additional ending to the basic message. The three improvements of Study 2 listed above, together with the experimental design, were intended to deepen the understanding of managerial humor, while testing the mixed-gender effects of sender and receiver.