Pundt Alexander, Kutzner Juana, Haberland Katarina, Algner Mona, Lorenz Timo
Department of Psychology, Medical School Berlin (MSB), Berlin, Germany.
Front Psychol. 2022 Jul 22;13:929988. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.929988. eCollection 2022.
Research has recently established the notion that humor in leadership contributes to the development of a positive professional relationship between leaders and followers. This relationship has been supposed to be the core mechanism which humor in leadership unfolds its effects on work attitudes and behaviors. However, research has neglected the option that humor used by leaders might fail to amuse their followers. In this study, we investigate the role of failed humor for the relationship between leader and follower. More concretely, we develop a new scale for measuring failed humor in leadership and demonstrate its factorial and criterion-related validity. Using an automated item selection algorithm, we optimized the newly developed scale and derived a well-fitting six-item scale out of a pool of 12 items. In a study based on a sample of 385 employees, we were able to show that our newly developed scale is factorially valid. Moreover, we showed a negative correlation between failed humor and leader-member exchange. Furthermore, we showed incremental validity of failed humor in that failed humor predicted variance in leader-member exchange beyond well-established humor constructs such as affiliative and aggressive humor. Our study contributes to the development of the field of humor in leadership and opens up new options for further inquiry. Moreover, our study demonstrates the use of automated item selection algorithms in the applied field.
最近的研究确立了这样一种观念，即领导风格中的幽默有助于领导者与下属之间建立积极的职业关系。这种关系被认为是领导风格中的幽默对工作态度和行为产生影响的核心机制。然而，研究忽略了领导者所使用的幽默可能无法逗笑下属这一情况。在本研究中，我们调查了失败的幽默在领导者与下属关系中所起的作用。更具体地说，我们开发了一种新的量表来衡量领导风格中失败的幽默，并证明了它的因子效度和与标准相关的效度。我们使用自动项目选择算法对新开发的量表进行了优化，从12个项目中得出了一个拟合良好的六项量表。在一项基于385名员工样本的研究中，我们能够证明我们新开发的量表具有因子效度。此外，我们发现失败的幽默与领导成员交换之间存在负相关。此外，我们还证明了失败的幽默具有增量效度，即失败的幽默能够预测领导成员交换中的变异，超出了诸如亲和型幽默和攻击型幽默等已确立的幽默构念所能解释的范围。我们的研究有助于领导风格中幽默领域的发展，并为进一步探究开辟了新的途径。此外，我们的研究展示了自动项目选择算法在应用领域的使用。
