Workplace Humor and Workplace Fun
Martin et al. (2003) demonstrated that employees who use affiliative humor attract others with jokes, funny stories and other forms of appealing humor are confident and extroverted and can bring people together by sharing humor and reducing interpersonal tensions. Research suggested affiliative humor may promote team cohesion via increased …show more content…
As stated by Martin et al. (2003) affiliative humor can help reduce interpersonal tensions and can be used as a stress reduction method that helps people keep a constructive view of life. In addition, research showed that affiliative humor can mask the unpleasant content of messages at workplace (Holmes, 2000) and limit friction in interpersonal interactions (Fine & Soucey, 2005). When being the target of aggressive behaviors at workplace, hospitality employees who use affiliative humor tend to use humor to cover the friction and the stress they experience at work, resulting in lower level of perceived workplace aggression. Therefore, the affiliative humor styles can act as lubricant and help employees buffer negative perception of both supervisor aggression and coworker aggression. Based on the literature review, we proposed the following