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.

Article | Journal of Experimental Psychology: General | April 2019

Mitigating Malicious Envy: Why Successful Individuals Should Reveal Their Failures

Alison Wood Brooks, Karen Huang, Nicole Abi-Esber, Ryan W. Buell, Laura Huang and Brian Hall

People often feel malicious envy, a destructive interpersonal emotion, when they compare themselves to successful peers. Across three online experiments and a field experiment of entrepreneurs, we identify an interpersonal strategy that can mitigate feelings of malicious envy in observers: revealing one’s failures. Despite a general reluctance to reveal one’s failures—as they are happening and after they have occurred—across four experiments, we find that revealing both successes and failures encountered on the path to success (compared to revealing only successes) decreases observers’ malicious envy. This effect holds regardless of the discloser’s status and cannot be explained by a decrease in perceived status of the individual. Then, in a field experiment at an entrepreneurial pitch competition, where pride displays are common and stakes are high, we find suggestive evidence that learning about the failures of a successful entrepreneur decreases observers’ malicious envy while increasing their benign envy in addition to decreasing their perceptions of the entrepreneur’s hubristic pride (i.e., arrogance) while increasing their perceptions of the entrepreneur’s authentic pride (i.e., confidence). These findings align with previous work on the social-functional relation of envy and pride. Taken together, our results highlight how revealing failures encountered on the way to success can be a counterintuitive yet effective interpersonal emotion regulation strategy.

Keywords: Emotions; Perception; Interpersonal Communication; Communication Strategy;

Citation:

Brooks, Alison Wood, Karen Huang, Nicole Abi-Esber, Ryan W. Buell, Laura Huang, and Brian Hall. "Mitigating Malicious Envy: Why Successful Individuals Should Reveal Their Failures." Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 148, no. 4 (April 2019): 667–687. View Details

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Prior advice research has focused on why people rely on (or ignore) advice and its impact on judgment accuracy. We expand the consideration of advice-seeking outcomes by investigating the interpersonal consequences of advice seekers’ decisions. Across nine studies, we show that advisors interpersonally penalize seekers who disregard their advice, and that these reactions are especially strong among expert advisors. This penalty also drives advisor reactions to a widely-recommended advice-seeking strategy: soliciting multiple advisors to leverage the wisdom of crowds. Advisors denigrate and distance themselves from seekers who they learn consulted others, an effect mediated by perceptions that their own advice will be disregarded. Underlying these effects is an asymmetry between advisors’ and seekers’ beliefs about the purpose of the advice exchange: whereas advisors believe giving advice is more about narrowing the option set by providing direction, seekers believe soliciting advice is more about widening the option set by gathering information.

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Risky Business: When Humor Increases and Decreases Status

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