1 Humour at work
Humour is a social phenomenon that people use to influence social settings. In the workplace, it often serves to help build relationships with colleagues and teams, so it can be a great tool for creating a sense of community and relieving stressful situations. However, it can also reinforce hierarchies by, for example, undermining junior colleagues, and can even become a means of bullying (Holmes and Marra, 2006; Kotthoff, 2022; Ólafsdóttir, Petúrsdóttir and Rúdólfsdóttir, forthcoming; Taylor, Simpson and Hardy, 2022).
Humour can serve many functions and it affects people differently – recipients as well as those who witness the humorous interaction. It can be used and experienced both positively and negatively (Holmes and Marra, 2006; Taylor, Simpson and Hardy, 2022).
Activity 1 What do you already know about humour at work?
Did you know that the lower a person’s status in the workplace, the more likely they are to laugh at a joke made by someone with a higher status? And that individuals with lower status are more likely to make a joke at their own expense?
Spend a moment thinking about why that might be and jot down some notes.
Feedback
The way humour is experienced can be quite different from how it was intended, and workplace hierarchies and other factors can influence the use of humour and how jokes are taken. For instance, it is often safer for lower status colleagues to make jokes at their own expense to avoid challenging workplace hierarchies. At the same time, a high-status colleague can do the same to minimise the difference in status.
This was just a short activity to get you thinking about the topic. In the next section we’ll draw on the existing research to explore things further.
Introduction