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  • July–August 2020
  • Article

Sarcasm, Self-Deprecation, and Inside Jokes: A User's Guide to Humor at Work

By: Brad Bitterly and Alison Wood Brooks
Humor is widely considered essential in personal relationships, but in leaders, it’s seen as an ancillary behavior. Though some leaders use humor instinctively, many more could wield it purposefully. Humor helps build interpersonal trust and high-­quality work... View Details
Keywords: Managing People; Humor; Leadership; Relationships
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  • 01 Dec 2006
  • News

Humor Us

As a Harvard undergraduate and an editor of the Harvard Lampoon, Robert Hoffman (MBA ’72) “helped spin the popular campus humor magazine into an irreverent national institution that skewered American culture and later spawned movies like... View Details
  • 15 Oct 2008
  • News

Humor and Leadership

  • March 2017
  • Article

Risky Business: When Humor Increases and Decreases Status

By: T. B. Bitterly, A.W. Brooks and M. E. Schweitzer
Across eight experiments, we demonstrate that humor can influence status, but attempting to use humor is risky. The successful use of humor can increase status in both new and existing relationships, but unsuccessful humor attempts (e.g., inappropriate jokes) can harm... View Details
Keywords: Status and Position; Behavior; Groups and Teams; Perception
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  • 2025
  • Article

Humor as a Window into Generative AI Bias

By: Roger Samure, Julian De Freitas and Stefano Puntoni
A preregistered audit of 600 images by generative AI across 150 different prompts explores the link between humor and discrimination in consumer-facing AI solutions. When ChatGPT updates images to make them “funnier”, the prevalence of stereotyped groups changes. While... View Details
Keywords: AI and Machine Learning; Demographics; Prejudice and Bias
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  • 08 Jul 2024
  • News

Is Humor in Business Negotiation Ever Appropriate?

  • 04 Oct 2016
  • News

Using Humor in the Office: When It Works, When It Backfires

  • 21 Jun 2021
  • News

Kominers’ Conundrums: Celebrating Dads and Their Sense of Humor

  • 2014
  • Working Paper

Risky Business: Humor Can Increase Perceptions of Status, but Only If the Jokes Are Funny

By: B.T. Bitterly, A.W. Brooks and M.E. Schweitzer
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  • August 12, 2021
  • Article

How to Build a Life: The Link Between Happiness and a Sense of Humor

By: Arthur C. Brooks
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  • Article

Research: Cracking a Joke at Work Can Make You Seem More Competent

By: Alison Wood Brooks
Keywords: Humor; Judgment
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  • 11 Jan 2017
  • News

A Dog Walks into a Bar

Keywords: communication; jokes; humor; competency; faculty research
  • 06 Sep 2016
  • First Look

September 6, 2016

between portfolio choice and return realizations. Publisher's link: https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=51573 In Press Journal of Personality and Social Psychology Risky Business: When Humor Increases and Decreases Status By:... View Details
Keywords: Carmen Nobel
  • 2011
  • Working Paper

Temptation at Work

By: Alessandro Bucciol, Daniel Houser and Marco Piovesan
To encourage worker productivity, offices prohibit Internet use. Consequently, many employees delay Internet activity to the end of the workday. Recent work in social psychology, however, suggests that using willpower to delay gratification can negatively impact... View Details
Keywords: Employees; Performance Productivity; Behavior; Power and Influence; Internet
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  • 25 May 2020
  • News

Meaning and Purpose in Life and Work

  • 2011
  • Book

Getting to Giving: Fundraising the Entrepreneurial Way

By: Howard H. Stevenson and Shirley M. Spence
Getting to Giving is based on Stevenson's many years as a donor, fundraiser and entrepreneur. The book offers practical techniques and real life stories, and brings passion and humor to the art and science of asking for money. Topics included in the book... View Details
Keywords: Fund Raising; Fundraising; Non-profit Management; Strategy; Nonprofit Organizations; Philanthropy and Charitable Giving
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  • 2013
  • Article

Optimizing the Amount of Entertainment in Advertising: What's So Funny about Tracking Reactions to Humor?

By: Thales S. Teixeira and Horst Stipp
Humor and other entertaining content, as opposed to demonstrations of product features and "selling," are increasingly used in advertising, such as TV commercials, to attract and keep consumers' attention. This study uses facial tracking to explore how marketers can... View Details
Keywords: Advertising Content; Entertainment; Face Perception; Advertising; Digital Marketing; Television Entertainment; Consumer Products Industry; Food and Beverage Industry
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  • 02 Dec 2016
  • News

Why We Are So Careless with the Things We Own?

  • 12 Oct 2022
  • Video

James Mickens: Why All Data Science is Political

  • 17 Dec 2013
  • First Look

First Look: December 17

  Publications August 2013 Harvard Business Review Press Can China Lead? Reaching the Limits of Power and Growth By: Abrami, Regina M., William C. Kirby, and F. Warren McFarlan Abstract—At the time of the American Revolution, China was the strongest, richest, and most... View Details
Keywords: Carmen Nobel