Risky Business: When Humor Increases and Decreases Status

T. B. Bitterly; A.W.  Brooks; M. E. Schweitzer

Article | Journal of Personality and Social Psychology | March 2017

Risky Business: When Humor Increases and Decreases Status

by T. B. Bitterly, A.W. Brooks and M. E. Schweitzer

Abstract

Across eight experiments, we demonstrate that humor can influence status, but attempting to use humor is risky. The successful use of humor can increase status in both new and existing relationships, but unsuccessful humor attempts (e.g., inappropriate jokes) can harm status. The relationship between the successful use of humor and status is mediated by perceptions of confidence and competence. The successful use of humor signals confidence and competence, which in turn increases the joke teller’s status. Interestingly, telling both appropriate and inappropriate jokes, regardless of the outcome, signals confidence. Although signaling confidence typically increases status, telling inappropriate jokes signals low competence and the combined effect of high confidence and low competence harms status. Rather than conceptualizing humor as a frivolous or ancillary behavior, we argue that humor plays a fundamental role in shaping interpersonal perceptions and hierarchies within groups.

Keywords: Status and Position; Behavior; Groups and Teams; Perception;

Format: Print

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Citation:

Bitterly, T. B., A.W. Brooks, and M. E. Schweitzer. "Risky Business: When Humor Increases and Decreases Status." Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 112, no. 3 (March 2017): 431–455.

Working Paper | 2018

Status Inconsistency: Variance in One's Status Across Groups Harms Well-being but Improves Perspective-taking

Catarina Fernandes and Alison Wood Brooks

Most people belong to many different groups. While some people experience consistently high or low status across all of their groups, others experience wildly different levels of status in each group. In this research, we examine how status inconsistency – the degree to which one’s status varies across groups – impacts well-being and perspective-taking. Across five studies, we find robust evidence that status inconsistency (controlling for average status) has negative intrapersonal, but positive interpersonal, consequences. Study 1A shows that higher status inconsistency across many groups is related to lower levels of life satisfaction, self-esteem, and subjective social status. Study 1B tests the causal relationship between status inconsistency and well-being, demonstrating that even thinking about one’s status inconsistency can lead to lower feelings of happiness. Study 2 focuses on attitudes towards the most status-inconsistent groups and shows that individuals are most likely to leave the groups in which their status is furthest away from their mean personal status across groups, irrespective of whether the deviance is positive (much higher status than average) or negative (much lower status than average). Studies 3A and 3B shift to investigate the interpersonal effects of status inconsistency on perspective-taking. Study 3A shows that status inconsistency is related to higher levels of trait perspective-taking and empathetic concern, and Study 3A that thinking about one’s status inconsistency increases perspective-taking on a task. Taken together, the results indicate that those whose status is inconsistent across groups experience lower levels of well-being, but are better at understanding others’ points of view.

Keywords: Status; Social hierarchies; Groups and Teams; well-being; Perspective Taking; Status and Position; Groups and Teams; Satisfaction; Perspective;

Citation:

Fernandes, Catarina, and Alison Wood Brooks. "Status Inconsistency: Variance in One's Status Across Groups Harms Well-being but Improves Perspective-taking." Working Paper, 2018. (under review, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes.) View Details

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Much of an executive’s workday is spent asking others for information—requesting status updates from a team leader, for example, or questioning a counterpart in a tense negotiation. Yet unlike professionals such as litigators, journalists, and doctors, who are taught how to ask questions as an essential part of their training, few executives think of questioning as a skill that can be honed—or consider how their own answers to questions could make conversations more productive.
That’s a missed opportunity. Questioning is a powerful tool for unlocking value in companies: It spurs learning and the exchange of ideas, it fuels innovation and better performance, and it builds trust among team members. And it can mitigate business risk by uncovering unforeseen pitfalls and hazards.
Several techniques can enhance the power and efficacy of queries: Favor follow-up questions, know when to keep questions open ended, get the sequence right, use the right tone, and pay attention to group dynamics.

Does It Hurt To Ask? (DIHTA) is an interactive exercise that pairs students (in groups of two) for a brief, spontaneous, open-ended conversation during class. Each student is given instructions to ask many questions (as many as possible) or few questions (ideally zero) during their conversation (resulting in some high-high questioning pairs, some low-low questioning pairs, and some high-low questioning pairs). The exercise is flexible—it can stand on its own for a whole class session (taking 60-90 minutes), or it can be used to supplement other material within the same class session (taking as little as 30 minutes total). This teaching note provides step-by-step instructions to administer the exercise in class. The goals of the exercise are to examine how asking questions during conversation influences interpersonal perception, information exchange, decision making, productivity, as well as relationships and happiness over time—to weigh the pros and cons of asking questions versus making statements in conversation. While there are many reasons people don’t ask questions (such as egocentrism, anxiety, apathy, and ignorance), those who can become talented question askers stand to learn more information, to be better liked, and to have more influence than those who do not.

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Risky Business: When Humor Increases and Decreases Status

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