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Humor in Negotiations: How to Persuade Others with Humor

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Humor at Work in Teams, Leadership, Negotiations, Learning and Health

Part of the book series: SpringerBriefs in Psychology ((BRIEFSPSYCHOL))

Abstract

Negotiations are a very common business activity. The power of humor in negotiations lies in its capacity to be used competitively and cooperatively simultaneously. It thus helps negotiators to be tough on the issue and soft on the people. In this chapter, we will present general functions of humor in negotiations and explain which linguistic cues signal humor. We will then describe an important experimental study involving a pet frog that shows how humor can lead to financial concessions. Other research rather focused on softer, socio-emotional negotiation outcomes. We will then explain how one’s own characteristics (such as power) and one’s partner’s characteristics influence the amount and type of humor used. Because humor can change both positive and negative moods, we will present relevant findings on the influence of affect in negotiations. We will close by pointing out how humor works in online negotiations.

The original version of this chapter was revised: See the “Chapter Note” section at the end of this chapter for details. The erratum to this chapter is available at https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-65691-5_9

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  1. SRH University of Applied Sciences, Berlin, Germany

    Christine Gockel

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  1. Christine Gockel
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Correspondence to Christine Gockel .

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Gockel, C. (2017). Humor in Negotiations: How to Persuade Others with Humor. In: Humor at Work in Teams, Leadership, Negotiations, Learning and Health. SpringerBriefs in Psychology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-65691-5_5

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