Faculty of Policy Management, Keio University, Japan.
Faculty of Sociology, Toyo University, Japan.
Ind Health. 2024 Nov 26;62(6):392-401. doi: 10.2486/indhealth.2024-0135. Epub 2024 Sep 26.
Laughter is related to better well-being in daily life. Previous cross-sectional research among employees showed a positive relationship between laughter and work-related well-being (i.e., work engagement). However, longitudinal and even bidirectional relationships have not been yet explored. This study thus investigated the longitudinal and reciprocal relationships of laughter, with work engagement and workaholism as positive and negative aspects of work-related well-being. Specifically, we conducted two-wave web-based surveys among Japanese employees via an Internet survey company with a one-year interval, and 855 valid data were analyzed. The hypotheses were then tested using structural equation modeling. The results showed that increases in laughter during the previous year were positively and negatively related to future work engagement and workaholism, respectively. In addition, through changes in laughter, the initial work engagement led to future work engagement (gain cycle), whereas initial workaholism led to future workaholism (loss cycle). These findings suggest that laughter and work-related well-being influence each other reciprocally rather than unidirectionally. This underlines the importance of studying reversed as well as regular causal effects in the relationship between laughter and employee well-being.
笑声与日常生活中的幸福感息息相关。以往针对员工的横断面研究表明，笑声与与工作相关的幸福感（即工作投入）呈正相关。然而，目前尚未探讨其纵向甚至是双向关系。因此，本研究调查了笑声与工作投入和工作狂之间的纵向和相互关系，将工作投入和工作狂分别作为工作相关幸福感的积极和消极方面。具体而言，我们通过互联网调查公司在一年的时间间隔内对日本员工进行了两次基于网络的调查，共分析了 855 份有效数据。然后使用结构方程模型检验了假设。结果表明，上一年笑声的增加与未来的工作投入和工作狂分别呈正相关和负相关。此外，通过笑声的变化，最初的工作投入会导致未来的工作投入（增益循环），而最初的工作狂则会导致未来的工作狂（损失循环）。这些发现表明，笑声和与工作相关的幸福感是相互影响的，而不是单向影响的。这强调了在笑声和员工幸福感之间的关系中研究反向和常规因果效应的重要性。
