The Evolution of Workplace Humor: From Ancient Medicine to Modern Management

Written by Antonio Sadaric and Carin-Isabel Knoop

Heavy is the head that wears the crown of seriousness, and the process of making the great King human through the joy of laughter, envisioned by AI

This is an excerpt from a January 3, 2024 article by Antonio Sadaric and Carin-Isabel Knoop, on lessons for the workplace from stand-up comedians: The Healing Power of Laughter: Why Managers Should Embrace Humor in a Stressed-out Digitalized World.

Stanford researchers found that leaders with a sense of humor are seen as 27% more motivating. And that alone is a reason to try finding a sense of humor in the rapidly dehumanizing digital workplace.

Humor has the remarkable capacity to capture attention, disarm defenses, and create a shared experience among individuals. This inherent accessibility allows comedy to serve as a compelling vehicle for relaying messages.

The desired outcome is to make a person laugh, an area of research that is still emerging.

Humor engages multiple regions of the brain, including the prefrontal cortex, limbic system, and the brainstem. It creates a cascade of cognitive, emotional, and physiological responses that contribute to the pleasurable experience of laughter.

According to Savage et al. (2017) when experiencing laughter or humor, four key neurological processes come into play:

1. Activation of Reward Pathways: Humor activates the brain’s reward pathways, particularly the mesolimbic dopaminergic system, which releases dopamine, a neurotransmitter associated with pleasure and reward. This activation leads to positive feelings and reinforces the enjoyment of humorous experiences.
2. Cognitive Processing: Humor involves cognitive processes such as pattern recognition, incongruity detection, and surprise. The brain anticipates a certain outcome or pattern, but when humor introduces unexpected or incongruous elements, it creates a cognitive conflict. Resolving this conflict by understanding the unexpected twist or punchline can lead to a burst of laughter and a sense of satisfaction.
3. Emotional and Hormonal Response: Humor elicits emotional responses, primarily joy and amusement. It can create a sense of happiness, light-heartedness, and relief from stress or tension. The release of endorphins during laughter further enhances the positive emotional experience associated with humor, especially if shared.
4. Stress Reduction: Laughing can help alleviate stress and promote relaxation by reducing levels of stress hormones such as cortisol and epinephrine. It provides a temporary escape from negative emotions and creates a more positive emotional state.

Provine (2015) remarks how neuroscience research findings include the acoustic structure of laughter, the minimal voluntary control of laughter, contagiousness, the “punctuation effect” that describes the placement of laughter in conversation, the dominance of speech over laughter, the role of breath control in the evolution of speech, the evolutionary trajectory of laughter in primates, and the role of laughter in human matching and mating.

Broadness of research suggests the importance of laughter in our everyday lives, which makes it even stranger to have humor not welcome or even excluded from the modern workplace.

Through comedic devices such as irony, satire, and wit, comedy can approach difficult subjects and explore them from alternative perspectives.

Presenting ideas in a humorous context, helps comedy bridge gaps, challenge preconceptions, and foster understanding utilizing the principle of emotional truth hidden behind the punchline.

The etymology of humor is Latin, meaning “body fluid”; old medicine referred to four body fluids as humor. In its essence, humor is an essential element of the human condition, whether it’s just a state of mind and having a sense of it, or enjoying its full power and bringing tears to one’s eyes.

And as a powerful tool, humor holds significant value in the modern workplace. It enhances communication by breaking down barriers and fostering connection, but also builds rapport, trust, and engagement among team members.

Humor aids in stress management and resilience, promoting adaptability and emotional well-being. By encouraging creativity and innovation, it sparks fresh thinking and inspires problem-solving.

But what makes humor so powerful?

Effective comedy surpassing audiences’ cognitive filters often relies on storytelling techniques, including aesthetic storytelling.

Aesthetic storytelling refers to the use of visual and sensory elements, such as imagery, symbolism, and evocative language, to create a captivating and emotionally resonant narrative that supersedes cognition. When infused with aesthetic storytelling, comedy enhances its impact by creating a rich and immersive experience for the audience.

A well-crafted comedic narrative can elicit empathy, provoke self-reflection, and challenge ingrained beliefs, thereby facilitating a more profound connection between the message and the audience, almost like a superpower. It is through this dynamic interplay that comedy becomes a compelling and effective medium for relaying messages to diverse audiences, an especially helpful capability for the problems of the modern workplace.

Given its strong benefits on the human brain, it’s no wonder that the role of humor has been evolving through the millennia. Even animals have their own ways of laughing.

The more we are able to laugh at ourselves, the more we are able to move away from taking everything so seriously. We are fallible humans — not perfect machines.

The pursuit of excellence without a humorous pit-stop will leave us empty in the long race that is life.

Antonio Sadaric is an active member of #Humanizing Digital Work initiative and focuses on prosocial change leadership, aesthetic storytelling and human capital sustainability. He is passionately curious about organizational symbolism, corporate cultism and general mechanisms of social learning (sensegiving/sensemaking) in various organizational contexts. Most recently he published work in Frontiers of Psychology, Journal of Change Management, Economics and Business Review and Academy of Management Proceedings. He is also the co-author of Capt. Bossman’s Workplace Stories — the world’s first picture book for professionals. His consulting work at BUFFED focuses on leadership upskilling and helping (fin)tech scale-ups humanize organizational development. When not working, he plays Fortnite with his GenZ cousins.

Carin-Isabel Knoop leads the Harvard Business School’s research and case writing group and has helped HBS faculty members write more than 200 case studies on organizations and managers around the world. Learning about managers’ challenges pushed her to improve their lives, leading to the publication of Compassionate Management of Mental Health at Work with Professor John A Quelch (Springer, 2018). She also co-founded HSIO (Human Sustainability Inside Out), and speaks and publishes about mental health in the U.S., French, and Spanish-language spheres. She enjoys soft-serve ice cream, pragmatic idealists, and postcard writing.