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Leading through affiliation: the effect of humor type and gender on likelihood of being perceived as a leader

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Abstract

Humor can be a powerful tool for increasing one’s status in a group and influencing others. Given that past research has indicated that the use of humor by a woman might harm her potential of advancing in the workplace, we examine the joint effect of humor style and gender on the likelihood of being perceived as a leader. Using a within-subjects vignette experiment, we collected data from 148 participants, with 73% being female, and an average age of 33.2 years old (SD = 9.8). We found that people using affiliative humor had a higher perceived chance of emerging as leaders compared to those using aggressive humor and gender itself did not have a significant effect on leadership emergence. Contrary to our expectations, the affiliative-aggressive humor discrepancy in leadership emergence was higher for men rather than women. These results are aligned with expectancy violation hypothesis pointing to a distinctiveness effect of incongruent role behaviors such that men tend to receive more credit for affiliative humor, while women tend to be penalized less for using aggressive humor in groups. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

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Data Availability

The datasets generated during and/or analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on request.

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Funding

No funding was received for conducting this study.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Psychology Department, Babeș-Bolyai University, 37 Republicii Street, 400015, Cluj-Napoca, Romania

    Andreea Gheorghe & Petru Lucian Curșeu

  2. Department of Organization, Open Universiteit, Heerlen, The Netherlands

    Petru Lucian Curșeu

Authors
  1. Andreea Gheorghe
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  2. Petru Lucian Curșeu
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Contributions

All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation and data collection were performed by Andreea Gheorghe, and data analysis was performed by Petru L. Curșeu. The first draft of the manuscript was written by Andreea Gheorghe and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Andreea Gheorghe.

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Ethics approval

This study was approved by the ethics committee of our university under the reference number 2637/19.03.2021 and adheres to the tenets of the Declaration of Helsinki.

Consent to participate

Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare.

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Appendix

Appendix

Experimental vignettes.

After reading the scenario, the participants were presented with four extracts from the team member’s conversation. We manipulated the name of the person telling the joke, so that affiliative and aggressive jokes were told by both men and women (the order was counter balanced). After reading each joke, the participants had to respond to the questions pertaining to gender and humor style manipulation checks, as well as perceived leadership emergence and internal attributions.

Scenario description:

Alina, Bogdan, Victor and Ioana are working in the marketing team of a company that is selling different alcoholic drinks (wine, beer, whisky, gin etc.). They have been working in the company for almost a year, and, recently they were put in a project team in charge of creating commercials and other materials for advertising. The team is in its forming stage, and their task is to create a series of Christmas commercials for a new drink series.

Below, you will find extracts from their conversations:

“Name of the person” said:

Affiliative humor

“I think it is difficult to come up with ideas for the wine commercial if we don’t understand its characteristics. From now on, we will have to start every meeting with a wine tasting. Sometimes teamwork requires us to make sacrifices.”

Aggressive humor

“Last year reports show that during the holiday season there was a 15% increase in beer sales. Even so, numerous bottles remained unsold and I don’t know what has become of those bottles. But, if we look at how much weight you’ve gained last year, I think we’ll discover where they went.”

Affiliative humor

“I have come up with a list of reasons for consuming alcohol that we could insert into the commercial. For example, this year we’ve poured more alcohol on our hands than in our mouths and it is time we do something to address this situation.”

Aggressive humor

“One idea would be to insert some product descriptions from our personal experience at the end of the commercial. I was thinking about a 10 seconds interval, but knowing what alcoholics you are, it will turn in a 7-part movie series.”

Note: the jokes were originally written and presented to the participants in Romanian, therefore some of their characteristics regarding funniness and meaning might have been distorted by translation.

The ordering of the four scenarios as they were presented to the participants is presented in the table below:

Link 1

Link 2

Link 3

Link 4

Affiliative (female)

Aggressive (female)

Affiliative (male)

Aggressive (male)

Aggressive (male)

Aggressive (male)

Affiliative (female)

Affiliative (female)

Affiliative (male)

Affiliative (female)

Aggressive (male)

Aggressive (female)

Aggressive (female)

Affiliative (male)

Aggressive (female)

Affiliative (male)

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Gheorghe, A., Curșeu, P.L. Leading through affiliation: the effect of humor type and gender on likelihood of being perceived as a leader. Curr Psychol 42, 23028–23039 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-022-03383-6

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