Supervisor Humor and Employee Outcomes: The Role of Social Distance and Affective Trust in Supervisor

Purpose

To examine how social distance and affective trust in supervisor affect the relationships between supervisor humor and the psychological well-being and job performance of subordinates.

Design/Methodology/Approach

A survey was conducted among 322 matched supervisor–subordinate dyads in 14 South Korean organizations. Multi-level analyses were performed to test the research hypotheses, including the moderating effects.

Findings

Self-enhancing humor of supervisors was positively associated with the psychological well-being and job performance of subordinates. Affiliative humor was positively associated with psychological well-being, whereas aggressive humor was negatively associated with psychological well-being. In addition, supervisor humor was indirectly related to the psychological well-being of subordinates via social distance. Moreover, affective trust in supervisor significantly moderated the relationship between supervisor humor and social distance, such that the relationship between affiliative humor and social distance was stronger when affective trust in supervisor was high rather than low.

Implications

These findings are important in developing and refining humor theory on the responses of employees to various types of supervisor humor. Moreover, they provide practical implications for organizations. For example, organizations should note that supervisor humor may not always produce good results, and thus should encourage managers to use constructive humor. Similarly, supervisors should build a high-trust relationship with their subordinates to increase the effectiveness of their constructive humor.

Originality/Value

This study is one of the few studies that has examined the mechanism and boundary conditions of the effects of supervisor humor on employee outcomes.

     

Children's alcohol cognitions prior to drinking onset: discrepant patterns from implicit and explicit measures

Prior to drinking onset, children report stronger negative versus positive beliefs on self-report alcohol expectancy questionnaires, with some attenuation of this negativity as they transition into adolescence. Traditional alcohol expectancy assessments, however, capture endorsement of deliberative propositions about drinking outcomes. Measurement of implicit alcohol associations may elucidate automatic evaluations, clarifying the role of nondeliberative cognition in the initiation of alcohol use among youth. Few studies have assessed implicit alcohol cognition among children and younger adolescents, with inconsistent findings regarding the nature of these automatic associations within and between age groups. Eighty-nine 3rd and 4th graders and 91 7th and 8th graders completed an alcohol expectancy measure and two unipolar alcohol Implicit Association Tests (IAT) measuring positive and negative alcohol associations independently. On the explicit measure older compared with younger participants rated positive drinking outcomes as more likely and negative outcomes as less likely. Older compared with younger students were also more neutral/moderate in their evaluations of positive drinking outcomes. On the IATs, scores for the full sample indicated negative alcohol associations, and Negative IAT scores were higher for older compared with younger participants. However, the valence of implicit alcohol associations was qualified by the order of explicit versus implicit assessment; for those who completed the IATs prior to the explicit expectancy measure, alcohol associations were positive. Findings replicate and extend prior research conducted with preonset youth. Implications regarding the role of automatic and controlled processes in drinking onset and directions for future work on children's alcohol cognition are discussed.     

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Effects of Age,Sex, and Income Level on Sex-Role Differentiation in Preschoolers

Sex-role differentiation in 337 three-, four-, and five-year-old girls and boys, approximately equally divided into lower-and middle-income groups, was measured by five sex-role tests. A composite z score was also used for increased reliability. The study was replicated in order to investigate the reliability of the measures. The results showed that sex and, to a partial degree, age, had significant effects, but income level had little effect on sex-role differentiation. A factor analysis of the sex-role tests is also discussed.     

Cancer as a defence against depressive pain

An association between object loss and the predisposition to develop physical illness is well established in the psychosomatic literature. This paper describes a psychotherapeutic consultation with a woman who developed breast cancer after the death of her father by cancer, and the loss of her mother by dementia. Her cancer was preceded by persecutory dreams which ‘predicted” the cancer, and which ceased when the cancer was diagnosed. It is argued that the cancer represented a somatic defence against intolerable guilt and despair, which constitute depressive anxiety as described by Klein and Riviere. Cancer is felt by such patients to be preferable to grief and madness. Possible unconscious meanings and functions of the dreams and the cancer are discussed, as well as the patient's inability to avail herself of psychotherapeutic help.     

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