What would happen to business if you added a little humor, lightheartedness and casualness to it? Stanford Graduate School of Business course instructors Jennifer Aaker and Naomi Bagdonas talk about this in “Humor Is Serious.
For Naomi, her first experience using humor in a high-stakes professional environment came in a near-disastrous situation. It all started (like any such story) in a conference room. Naomi was just starting her career at The Deloitte Greenhouse, a dedicated group of strategy consultants that designed and delivered workshops for key Deloitte clients. She had been asked to conduct team dynamics training for a group of executives, most of whom were 15-20 years her senior.
Young (relatively) Naomi sailed alone on a homemade raft in a sea of tweed blazers.
One of the herringbone blazers, one Craig, was posing throughout the seminar, demonstrating a deliberate aloofness and skepticism. Clasping his hands behind his head and relaxing his shoulders, he leaned back in his chair so imposingly that it created tension both in the atmosphere and in the Steelcase springs holding the structure together. The man was clearly claiming to be the alpha male of the group, letting any man – or primate, for that matter – know who held the highest status in the conference room that day.
Naomi was just explaining how to adapt her communication style to one character or another when Craig interrupted her:
– Can’t we get right to the part where you just teach me how to get my team to do what I want?
The room tensed up.
All heads slowly turned from Craig to Naomi. Without thinking, she playfully parried:
– That’s a great question, Craig. You mean my mind control seminar? It’s next week, and you’re welcome to join.
A long pause followed, during which Naomi wondered if she had just ruined her career. But then the room burst into laughter and all eyes turned back to Craig.
Having a sense of humor-the ability to not only generate humor, but to appreciate it-correlates with indicators of intelligence.
His retort was harsh, defiant, bordering on disrespectful. It was clear from the dynamics in the audience that Craig was not used to being challenged – much less by “young upstarts.” And yet he was smiling – for the first time all day.
– Respect,” he said, rocking back in his chair. – You may continue.
– Thank you,” Naomi replied. – I was just about to do that.
Almost immediately the energy changed. For the rest of the seminar, Craig remained engaged and respectful, and his team followed his boss’s lead. The atmosphere loosened up, with everyone speaking more freely and casually, offering significantly better ideas. Naomi relaxed, too, and the quality of the presentation benefited. Moreover, Naomi finally felt like herself, real, and a state of fear was replaced by a state of presence, engagement, and flow.
After the seminar Craig and Naomi exchanged a few words about her career, and the man seemed to be in a good mood. She later learned that Craig had sent her CEO feedback praising the seminar and Naomi personally for her insight and ability to manage an audience. Such a gesture on his part set in motion a chain of events that opened new doors for her career.
Thanks in large part to a silly little joke about mind control .
…Or was it mind control?
A key concept with regard to humor is its relationship to status. In one study, our colleagues at Second City – Brad Bitterly, Maurice Schweitzer, and Alison Wood Brooks – recruited participants to write and submit reviews for VisitSwitzerland, a fictional Swiss travel company. What the group did not know, however, was that the first two “participants” who read their reviews were research assistants. Their pre-written pieces were half-serious, half-humorous (compare the detailed commentary: “The mountains are great for skiing and hiking. Awesome vacation!” and the joking one, “The mountains are great for skiing and hiking, and the flag is a big plus!”).
When participants were asked to rate speakers on several criteria, those who provided humorous feedback were perceived to be 5 percent more competent, 11 percent more confident, and 37 percent higher in status.
In other words, the empty five-word pun at the end of the review significantly changed the vector of opinion.
Humor not only affects how we perceive others, but also how we relate to them. In the same study, when participants were asked to choose a group leader for a follow-up assignment, the assistant who composed the funny review was significantly more likely to win the vote just because of that (not particularly good) joke.
Similarly, in the episode with Craig at the seminar, Naomi used a dash of humor to demonstrate courage, confidence, and liveliness of mind, raising her status in the eyes of the audience and reinforcing her credibility.
Impressing with intelligence
It has been repeatedly confirmed that having a sense of humor-the ability to not only generate humor, but to appreciate it-correlates with measures of intelligence.
In their inspired study, psychologists Daniel Haurigan and Kevin McDonald asked participants to come up with humorous answers to ridiculous questions (“If you had the chance to turn into another animal for one day, what would you want to be and why?”), and to draw “the funniest, funniest animal you could think of.” A panel of anonymous judges then judged participants’ drawings and stories on the basis of humor. Participants whose entries were deemed the funniest had previously received the highest scores in their general intelligence tests.
In an effort to pass for smart, you can wear thick-rimmed glasses, read comic books tucked under the cover of a weighty dictionary, or pretend you don’t have a TV, but humor is a sign of intelligence that cannot be faked. As Tina Fey says, “You can always tell how smart a person is by what they laugh at.”
Not only does humor help us elevate our status and appear intelligent, it is also a powerful tool for influencing where we least expect it: at the negotiating table.
In one experiment, researchers Karen O’Quinn and Joel Aronoff tasked participants with negotiating with an “art dealer” (a research assistant) about the price of an artwork. Half of the assistants made a final offer whose price far exceeded the participants’ last bid, stating, “My final offer is X.” The other half offered the same high price, but accompanied their statement with a smile: “My final offer is X… and I’ll add my favorite frog to it.”
Here’s the trick: For final offers accompanied by the frog joke, buyers were willing to pay an average of 18% more. Not only that, but buyers later reported that they liked the negotiation process better and didn’t feel constrained in their communication with the seller.
Think about it: participants paid more money and left the auction more satisfied with both the negotiation process and communication with the seller – as opposed to those who paid less. All thanks to a smile and a cheerful comment.
In another negotiation study conducted by scientists Terry Kurtzberg, Charles Naken, and Lyuba Belkin, participants were split into pairs and given the roles of recruiter or job seeker. The experiment required them to negotiate an employment compensation package via e-mail, each element of which (salary, bonuses, insurance coverage, vacation time) had a value expressed in points. The goal was to get through the interview with the most points. In the “fun” group, one person in the pair (either the recruiter or the job seeker) forwarded Dilbert comic books on the topic of negotiation to a partner before the experiment began.
It turned out that participants who viewed the comic books scored 33% higher than their counterparts in the experiment, in addition, couples in the “fun” group reported a higher (31%) trust in each other and experienced 16% more satisfaction with how the negotiation went overall .
Humor is charming and disarming. Even small displays of levity can decide the fate of a negotiation, in part because it ignites a spark in the relationship. And when we communicate in a human way, we often get much more than we expected.
Material on the subject
Standing out and sticking out
Humor, among other things, helps us remember. By filling the brain’s “pleasure center” with the neurotransmitter dopamine, humor helps us concentrate more deeply and retain information longer. In other words, humor makes content more appealing in the present moment and more memorable after the fact.
This finding is illustrated in a Pew Research survey, which found that viewers of humorous news shows such as the Daily Show and The Colbert Report remembered more facts about current events compared to those who drew information from newspapers, cable or network channels . And in the study, researchers found that participants who watched a humorous commercial before taking a short-term memory test remembered more than twice as much information as those who simply sat and waited for the test to begin.
It works in the classroom, too: a study by Avner Zeev published in the Journal of Experimental Education found that students who were humorously presented with instructional material retained more knowledge and scored 11 percent higher on their final exams.
This is why politicians often include professional comedians among their speechwriters. In his 2011 State of the Union Address to Congress, President Obama commented on the need for better government performance with this example: “The Department of the Interior is responsible for salmon while they’re in fresh water. Once it’s in salt water, it goes to the Department of Commerce.” After a pause, the president added: “I hear it gets even more complicated after the salmon is smoked.”
The audience burst into laughter.
NPR asked its listeners what three words they would highlight in the president’s message. Can you guess the word that came up most often in the answers?
As comedian John Sherman says, “If people are laughing, it means they’re listening carefully.”