Jennifer Aaker & Naomi Bagdonas || How Humor Can Save The World

dive into today's episode. First, I wanted to let you know that if you'd prefer an ad free experience and would also like early access to new episodes, you can join us at patreon dot com slash psych Podcast. That's patreon dot com slash psych podcast for a completely ad free experience and also early access to new episodes. Also, I wanted to let you know that my Transcend course is coming back in February. The next iteration of the course will offer even more ways to help you live

more fulfilling, meaningful, creative, and self actualized life. There will only be one hundred and fifty limited slots available, though, so you're gonna want to save your spot as soon as possible, so you can go to Transcend course dot com to sign up. That's transcend course dot com. Okay, now let's dive into today's episode. Today, it's great to chat with Jennifer Aker and Naomi Bagdonus on the podcast.

Jennifer is the General Atlantic Professor that Stanford Graduate School of Business and a leading expert on how purpose and meaning shape individual choices and how technology can positively impact both human wellbeing and company growth. Our work has been widely published in lead in scientific journals and featured in The Economist, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, and Science. A recipient of the Distinguished Scientific

Achievement Award, and the MBA Professor of the Year. Oker and I just said right. Awker counts winning a dance off in the early nineteen eighties among her greatest feats. So we're gonna have to talk about that one. Nail me. Yeah, we're gonna to talk about that name nail me. Bagdonas is a lecturer at the Stanford Graduate School Business. At

the Stanford Graduate School Business and an executive coach. She helps leaders be more creative, flexible, and resilient in the face of change by facilitating interactive sessions for Fortune one hundred companies and coaching executives and celebrities for appearances ranging from Saturday Night Live to The Today Show. Formally Trained to the Upright Systems Brigade Theater, I did that once. Bagdonas performs at comedy venues and teaches improv in San

Francisco's County Jail. Her constant stream of foster dogs describe her as global and full of treats. Well, it is so delightful to have both of you on the podcast and what is going to be the most complicated bio I've ever read in the history of the Psychology podcast. Oh well, thank you. We will take that as a compliment. Thank you so much. It's on. It speaks to the amazing accomplishments you both have had and as well as

your cheeky side, which I love. As you know, anyone who knows me knows that I love people who bring their whole self to the table. So let's bring our whole self, Well maybe not our whole self, but let's bring a lot of ourselves to the table today and really talk about why the world needs humor. You know, a lot of people say the world needs love, love, but why humor? Talk to me? Well, I will I who's to go first? All the first cut at this

is humor is love in some small fashion. The end of our book Humor Seriously, is written or sort of dialogue with Michael Lewis, who ends the book saying, when humor exists, love is not far behind. So you could, you know, you could say, when you laugh together, you know, neurologically you actually experience some of the same things that you experience when you actually experience love. And we can get into that if you want. But you know, that would be one way to look at it, neo may

do you have a different way? I would say humor has a transformational effect on our behavior and in our psychology, on our mental health, creativity, our closeness with others, and even our sense of meaning in the world. And at the same time, it's a completely underleveraged asset at work. Our workplaces are humorless, and we think that this is going to help us get ahead, and in fact it's absolutely not. And the third thing is that it's a

learnable skill. So we think of humor as either something that you have or you don't you're funny or you're not. But we know is that small shifts in behavior and mindset are all it takes to reap the benefits of humor, which are particularly important in hard times. Now why also yeah, also humor is love. But yeah, this is good. I wanted to set this up. I wanted to set wanted to set up a false dichotomy so you could you

could stare me wrong. Wonderful. Well, now past Scott to uh, come on, you know everyone has the everyone has everyone has the expression one hundred percent. I want to be like, oh, eighty four point three percent. Okay, well I'm just going to bring eighty five point two percent and my whole self to this podcast. Yeah. Same, Yeah, No, I love it because no, I'm trying to be I want to be convinced by the end of by the end of this podcast, I want you to harms and coviits to

me that humor is love. And I think that in answering this question, I think it braises a lot of question. I feel like it raises even more questions as you discussed in this book about cancel culture, for instance, and what about does does humor have a morality component to it? What if humor's done, you know, not with love, right, What if humor is is there's very uh, there's a

very uh. Like Abraham asl. Wre my favorite humanistic psychologists, talked about philosophical humor, you know, which is this kind of existential humor where we make fun of human existence and we all we're all in on the joke, all humans, you know, but in what you know, what happens when things are really funny but they're at the expense of a certain group or something like that. What are your

thoughts on that? Well, there are there are these four different you're bringing up an important point, which is that there are obviously different styles and different aims at humor, and in general we find that there are these four different styles. So there's the sniper, the magnet, the sweetheart, and the stand up and each of these styles is inclined to different kinds of humor. So so for example, you're what you are just describing the uh, you know,

kind of irreverent, ruffling feathers, maybe taking people down. That's the stand up form of style of humor. These people, you know, bold, irreverent, not afraid to ruffle feathers. And what's interesting about this style of humor is it can actually build intimacy depending on your relationship. So if you have a really strong relationship with a person, then teasing

can be actually really connecting. If you don't have that type of relationship, or if you have a different goal with your humor, if you're if you're actually trying to use it to to tear down an individual or group, then it can have very real downsides. You have the sweetheart, the sniper, and the magnet or the other three styles which are less inclined to the kind that you're describing. So sweethearts, for example, earnest, honest, understated, they tend toly

use humor that lightens the mood. Snipers are edgy, sarcastic, nuanced. They're sort of masters of the unexpected dig so they're not going to be sort of out there on stage, but they're going to give you that one line or that you sort of that's a that's a good singer. And then magnets are expressive, charismatic, really easy to make laugh. So this is the kind that's sort of most universally

uplifting is the magnet. The magnet style humor, so they Scott would be the least likely to offend necessarily, right, And so you're you see these different risks associated with these different groups, but there's greater risks associated with stand up and sniper in terms of offending. So just to pause for a second, So, Scott, what are you well? I think I'm a sweetheart. Oh, you for sure think I think I've ever I don't think that were those three words have ever come out of my mouth in

that order. You're definitely a three heart. You are correct. You got eighty four percent on that test. Yay, eighty four points. Yeah, like round eighty four round No, I do kind of it probably is, but then you know, I if I ever do stand up, it might be more sniper. You know, who knows what persona I'll take on, you know, for fun. But okay, so now I want to just step back a second and just how do you too know each other? How do what's thet's Let's

do like the origin story of this book. Our audience loves hearing that kind of stuff. Okay, So the origin story of the book is that I had invited Naomi into guest lecture and a power of Story class that I was teaching, and that the idea was for her to bring in her past research from Deloitte and other places to talk about how data and story are integrated in order to persuade de bond teams to feel empty

to lead, et cetera. So I'm watching Naomi Guest lecture in the back of the classroom as you do, and I'm watching all of the students and they're dying laughing for an hour and a half while she's talking about you know, igen value analysis and neurochemistry and so it was highly analytical and get through lacking the whole time.

So I thought that was weird, But I thought it was more weird when ten weeks later I did ratings and she scored off the charts, and the way in which she taught made it so that the students they didn't just enjoy it, they actually learned a lot more than, you know, had they not been laughing. So that got me really intrigued by these properties of you know, what does humor do? When does it allow you to encode information differently? When does information seem more differentiated, can be

more memorable if it's learned with humor? And then we ended up talking that even just a degree, how did the class go and we went into all sorts of areas of research that we both found to be incredibly fascinating, and then we were kind of on the humor journey. I love that. I love that. Did you guys like early on in your friendship like laugh a lot together? Well, Naomi is hilarious and I am not. So that's not true.

Jennifer is hilarious speaking she went down hill and I want to feel I mean, I think that, Yeah, it's been. Actually it's been when you put humor at the basis of a common you know, area of interest or passion, and that that actually fuel the relationship. I think it does. It breathes, you know, becomes infectious, It becomes a property of the relationship. So I would say that that's true.

And one of the things that's sort of most I don't know, surprising about writing this book and having taught this class with you know, for the last six years, is that the cultures around us also become you know, more laughter filled, more generous with their laughter. They actually the people around us seem to value it more. Yeah, I mean, there's a way in which we have to live out what we're what we're teaching, and if we're not,

then we're obviously really doing something wrong. So I remember when we were writing the proposal for this book, and it felt like so much pressure to put down the perfect proposal on paper, or even to write a book felt like just kind of a you know, a big undertaking, which I recognize you won't identify with because you're like, eh, books, crank them out. But I, you know, I had personally

never written a book. And so we were going to start this document and we realized that we were holding so much tension about it that it was feeling stressful, and so we titled the document a really shitty proposal. That was so that's what we titled it. What title? We kept it on the book for like two years until it was almost published. Yes, yeah, it became it

became what we were doing. So when we even submitted it to the publishers as a really shitty proposal, and then when we started writing the book, we titled it a really shitty book, A really shitty chapter One Are we allowed to say this this much on your podcast? But it was this way of reminding us, right in everything we're doing, we're reminded that we're here to do really serious work. We're here to do a good job, and we're also here to not take it so seriously

and laugh along the way. I love that. And you talk about like the bottom wine value of humor, you know, and I could you elaborate a little bit? Could one of you elabrate a little more on what that means? Sure? One thing that's really interesting is that, you know, because and later Naomi should share like her personal story about you know how you know, we're what she was doing before this. But one thing we find is that most

people don't believe they can bring humor to work. You know, you probably laugh or use it on the weekends, but you don't really use it more generally. And in fact, there's a lot of data to back that up. One Larscale Gallup study of one point four million people over one hundred and sixty six countries were involved. These subjects were asked a simple question, did you smile or laugh yesterday?

And the answer is yes. When you're sixteen, eighteen, twenty, and then all of a sudden at twenty three, it plummets, like plummets. The effects size is gigantic, and it does it start to increase until you're tired, so like seventy and eighty, it starts to increase a little bit. So what's happening is we go to work and we stop smiling, laughing. But what's fascinating is if you start to look at the actual hard data that suggests the benefits are there,

you start to wonder, you know, what's going on. For one, you know, work by Brad Bitterley and Allison Woods Brooks and Maury Schweitzer shows that when individuals are seen as having a sense of humor and it doesn't even be a good sense of humor, just a sense of humor, that they're about thirty thirty seven percent more respected, so they have higher levels of status and they're seen as

more competent and confident. In another set of studies, managers who were seen as having a sense of humor, which is different than being funny. So these aren't people that were saying, like, you know, the manager is funny. It was just had a sense of humor. We're twenty seven percent more motivating and admired by their employees, and the employees were about fifteen percent more engaged and satisfied in their work. Teams that reported under these types of leaders

report to be twice as creative. And not only that, but there's these mental health benefits that you know so well, right which are so important, especially right now. So for example, there was one large scale Norwegian study that looked over the course of fifteen years of people that say, get a sense of humor. Again, doesn't have to be even good sense of humor. It was in Norway, and nothing

against Norwegians. I'm Norwegian, so I love the Norwegians, but like you know, a keen sense of humor, I'm not sure if it's up there, that's right, I'm gonna blame my DNA. Anyway, what they found was that individuals with the sense of humor lived on average eight years longer than those who didn't who said they didn't eight years longer. And remember, Scott, those are high quality, funny years because you're finally starting to climb back out of the humor abyss.

In that same study, the researchers found that individuals with a sense of humor were thirty percent more resistant to severe disease. So when you think about the actual ROI on this or the bottom line value of humor, especially in the workforce, it's significant. Yeah, you open my eyes, you know, a big time. When I was reading your book about the humor cliff, which is what you just described, and you call it the humor cliff in the book,

and you know it's it's a bit depressing. I gotta admit, I was like, oh, this is not this is really not good twenty three. I mean, we already had a had the bad news that intelligence starts to client at nineteen, but now now humor declines too. I'm like, what do we what do we got? You know? So that was really sad. But you know, have you thought about like interventions in like universities, you know, to like infuse more

humor into the classroom for instance? Like I mean obviously you two, you embody that live that with the work you do, But what about all around the country, you know, not everyone's doing the kind of work you two are doing, right, you know what sort of like system wide level interventions or things you know, can be done to raise the tide for all society. I think in part it's oh go ahead, Jennifer, No, I was going to say, that was a great question, which nail me will take, thank you.

So I think in part it's building awareness. I also, you know, my background is more in the corporate space, so I think about how do we bring this to groups of executives who are getting together for a board retreat or have their executive team off site where they only get together once a year. They need to accomplish a ton and they are not thinking about how do

we get together and laugh. And in that context, because my work outside of teaching previously has been designing and facilitating these sessions for groups of executives, how do you get to break through? How do you get thirty people to have a breakthrough in eight hours? And in that context, I find that the most effective interventions are ones that are subtle and that allow allow invitations for play. So

I'll give you an example. I facilitated an off site for the board of a two billion dollar utility and it was they were coming together to do a war gaming simulation. So everyone, So for those who don't know what a wargaming simulation is, it's essentially a bunch of executives get in the room and they say they take on the persona of their biggest competitors and then they

try and tear down the company. So it's sort of it's it's role playing for executives and and also less fun than any other type of role playing you might be thinking of. All right, so they get into these roles. And what we did was we had little costumes at

every breakout group. So the Silicon Valley, you know, utility nerds had these red hoodies that they could put on, and another group had, you know, granola bars because they were really environmentally had granola bars and bucket hats and like fishing, right, so just these sort of silly, light hearted things. But what we found was, you know, people get to the get to the breakout group, they start putting on their hoodies, and a shift happens where they

start sort of joking around with each other. Someone reaches over and pulls back someone else's hoodie, and it shifts the dynamic and it unlocks are a more playful side. And similarly, when we do our report outs, instead of having people raise their hands if they have a good idea or if you if you hear something that's really insightful that you think we need to incorporate int our strategy,

we passed out cowbells and kazoos. Right, so you have this you know all these CEOs of different companies that take themselves very seriously and their only way to communicate that they agree is to ring a cowbell or to buzz a kazoo. Right, and it just shifts, It shifts the way that we are able to bring a full arrange of ourselves and we're and we're invited to play. Are there like individual differences in responsiveness to that kind

of inner mention? You know, there's obviously the obvious, like the grump, you know who's just like ba humbug, I'm not going to laugh if you make me. But then I feel like there's also another type that I wanted to talk about that might respond to that kind of thing in a different way because they're they're almost like humorless and and the people that I have observed, and I'd love to hear your opinion on this, because it's

just an observation. I haven't done research on it, but appears to me like people who are like profound profoundly narcissistic, you know, like psychopaths, or even don't seem to have much of a sense of a humor like and if so, and they can't seem to mock them, they can't seem to uh bring themselves to even view themselves in a funny light in any moment. You know, there's not a lot of self deprecation there. And and people who aren't capable of self deprecation, in my observation, don't tend to

be very joyous people at all. And I don't know, is there is there any truth to this? Have you done any research on that? We haven't done any research on this, But it's such an interesting observation, right, It's that what you know, how do you define humor? Is it an ability to self reflect? Is it a propensity to you know, have self deprecating jokes, as a as an opportunity to actually you know, bond or diffuse tension

sort of in a room. You know. The way that we think about humor is that, you know, there's these very different types of humor, and so instead of thinking about this as like you're either humor full, I guess, or humor less, we think about it in terms of these different types, you know, just thinking you know, even like in the early days of personality, right when Big five came out and we started thinking like you either have a personality or you have no personality, which, by

the way, one of the worst things you could ever tell someone is that a they don't have a personality, or be they're humorless. So I think they're both kind of up there is like like a pretty brutal comment. Anyway, you know, we love good typologies, right Scott, And so I think one of the reasons we like typologies is because it dimensionalizes a construct that hasn't really been unearthed.

It hasn't really been exploited or understood. And one thing that you know, people when you know, even in the class, when they think of this class, they think, oh, that's going to be this you know, non rigorous, you know, kind of like, you know, sort of silly type of course. But it's highly rigorous. You know. What we're trying to do is really debunk perceptions of what humor is. It's not about being funny. It's definitely not about trying to

be funny. It's about cultivating joy. The students actually do end up, you know, getting funnier at the end of the class, but that's not the goal. The goal is to sort of look at life in these really interesting ways and borrow secrets from comedians in order to sort

of observe life in a sort of different way. And then as you observe life not necessarily just looking for funny things, but just like kind of interesting huh kind of things, then you can use these tools from comedians like exaggeration or contrast or rule of three in in pretty systematic ways that allow you to actually be able to make others laugh. And it's almost like math Sonomi,

you want to give like one example. Sure, So so a rule of three example would be, oh, and what if we said, Okay, I'm trying to use something that we've said earlier, So you could say, I uh I, let's see. One thing that is great about us all doing this video conference is rather than you know, doing it in person, is you know we can be back

to back from another meeting. You know, we don't have to make our hair looks good because we have virtual backgrounds and we only have to get dressed on eighty four percent of our bodies, right, So that's what implies that I'm maybe not wearing pants and also made a callback to what we've said earlier, which is we've said eighty four percent a couple of times. So what that does is rule of three is where we do something

that's a little bit unexpected on the third element. And I also used a callback, which is where if there's anything we've said earlier that we've laughed about, the simplest way to get another laugh is just to refer back to that number. Now, that was an objectively horrible joke, and I wasn't quite ready to make. I'm sorry about that. I think I will notice, first of all, that was outstanding.

I thought. Second of all, you know, even like, even if the listener right now is going, this is not necessarily overly comical, but there's something that happens among the

three of us, because yeah, there is a bonding. And the idea is that the bar is so low, especially in the work place, especially in remote work, and so just being able to read the room or understand when something lighthearted might actually help, and then having these rules like rule of three, as Miami said, or these callbacks, remembering when you or I or Naomi said something and kind of noting that down, that something that made everyone else laugh, and then referring back to that later in

the meeting. Something as risk free as that is sufficient enough to actually change the tenor of the room. Oh my gosh, you know the bar is I plan that? Oh my god, I did. I didn't plan that. No, but but but I I was gonna when you said, you know, usually the bar is really low. I thought what you were going to say is for academics, because because because I was going to be like, you know,

it's it's so true. Like if I go to like if a keynote or a talk or something like, they're expecting, you know, Professor Columbia, they're expecting you need to be the opposite of funny. So if I even say, like, you know, hello everyone, and then I trip and fall, they'll be like, oh my god, to be so funny, you know, like it's just you know what I'm saying, like the bars is so low for us. Really totally, it's so true and too yeah business, Yeah it's not.

Yeah completely. We have one friend who actually is a big keynote speaker, and he tapes all of his lectures, like his keynotes, and then he just notes down when people laughed because you don't remember, right like you trip and everyone laughed and you're like you forget that immediately. But anyway, so what he does, he's just you know, tapes a few of them right, listens to them again and notes when people laugh, and then he just writes down a little signature story of what was it that

made people laugh. The interesting thing about humor is that it's kind of like, you know, going to see your favorite band where they play the favorite song, everyone is so happy. Similarly, when you have your signature story, your signature jokes, and you play them again, you often think, oh, no one's gonna laugh. I've said this a million times, but that only happens in your house with your partner.

Everyone else loves it. And so having that, you know, basically a signature story bank is an incredible asset for executives, for leaders, for anyone. I love that Professors, you know, like they should have it in the pocket, you know, when they're discussing complex, arcane information, you know, and the students have fallen asleep, and the best and then the best professors do. I mean that initial story I shared

about Naomi, I think is illustrative. You know, Yeah, humor and intelligence and the ability to intake information and remember it, all of those things go together. Yeah, And I just want to circle back to Naomi for a second, because when you were giving your three things. I was like picking up an improv vibe vibe from you because I was like, I don't know, I can I can kind of do that with like I'm like, oh, I bet they did uc BE and so anyway, I kind of got that vibe from you a little bit. Can you

tell us a little about your experiences with the UCB. Yeah? Wait, first, what was your experience with UCB? Oh? I loved it. My teacher was her name was Betsy Stover and she uh, it was in New York City and I had to do like you know, the end of the capstone that they have this capstone thing where you had to go in the stage and perform. And I just invite one friend, my best friend, because I trust him to never tell anyone about That's about what my stand up and improv

experience there. But I I personally actually I loved it. Yeah, yeah, tell me tell me about yours. Like you know, so, I I for about ten years was doing improv on my nights and weekends while I was doing you know, business by day and so and I love UCB. Have have trained it upright, Sin's a brigade have trains at BATS in San Francisco at the second city, so I've have sort of learned different methodologies. By the way you said you invited one friend, I trained and performed at

uh in LA for six years. I was sort of splitting my time between San Francisco and LA, and I would never tell any of my friends when my shows were because it just for me. There is something so pure about improv and and sort of doing it for the love of it that I never wanted it to be something that was overly performative, like I never wanted

it to be about having people come see me. And as long as I was getting joy and getting fulfillment out of just doing it for the sake of doing it, then that's when I knew that I, you know, it was it was sort of the right thing to do. And then what happened was I had a moment at work where I really I had this realization that I was really leading a double life, where by day I

was perceived by my colleagues. Jennifer said that the worst thing you can be is Personalit listen humorless, and that is exactly how I was being seen by my colleagues. I had a client one day tell me that she basically thought that I was a lonely cat lady who spent my weekends alone and you know, just watched History Channel reruns by myself all weekend, and and so this

really is it was rough. And so from that came this realization and belief that there there just has to be a better way that all of all of what I believe in so deeply outside of my work, that the power of humor, not just to have fun, but also to build meaningful relationships, to be resilient through some of the most challenging things in my life, to be more creative and and sort of resourceful, that all of those things were actually things that we need more than

ever right now in our professional lives as well, which which of course set us set me on this journey. So you feel like you're more integrated now, I do. Yeah, it was. It was my single focused goal when I went to Stanford for business school when I was a student there was to become a more integrated version of myself, which is part of why I went to work at IDEO, because I looked around and I was like, Okay, who's

doing this well? Who is bringing their full, their full, creative, weird selves to work in a way that's really encouraged.

And it's also part of why I really was excited to part with partner with Jennifer because I saw Jennifer tell stories of you know, her kids around the dinner table, and her life outside of teaching where she was doing this work, you know, around Dragonfly and trying to have real impact in the world, and I thought, Wow, these are people who that is someone who is feels fully integrated through her professional life and through her personal life. So yeah, that was a that was a real goal.

Do you feel like your mental health improved, because do you do talk in your book about the link between humor and mental health and did you personally feel a shift in that kind of consciousness? I did, I really did. Actually. I mean when I was at the point in my career in consulting when I had this realization, I felt really close to burnout. I knew that it wasn't a sustainable career path for me, and I thought that was because I maybe wasn't cut out for that work. By

the way, I was doing great at work. I was getting I was in the highest ratings group in my among my peers, I was getting promoted, and I just felt like it was completely unsustainable. And the realization for me is it's not because it wasn't because the work

wasn't right. I can make any work right if I'm able to be a more integrated version of myself, if I'm able to have fun and genuinely enjoy myself with my colleagues, and so as soon as that was removed, as soon as this this persona of who I thought I needed to be was removed, then it was incredibly freeing. It's like, oh, I can I can actually do anything and be joyful while I'm doing it, which frees up all of these things I can do with my career. Well,

what a wonderful realization, you know. I try to create an environment with my podcast for every guest, I don't care who the guest is. I try to create a safe space for humor. I'll put it. I'll put it that way. So I hope you feel that feel that safe space for humor here as well. Totally so. And maybe I'll address Jennifer here because I don't want her feel left out here in this conversation at all. But

it's fine, guys, talk amongst yourself. I was going to interject and go and So in contrast, you let me decided I need a career that's going to be much more sustainable, and so I said, I will write a book which is totally sustainable, and I will sleep all of the time. Let's I think, I think I'm gonna not sleep for two years, get paid little to nothing for doing it, and we lose my health insurance and then just hope to God it comes back someday magically.

You you too, like you should do like a YouTube comedy like routine. This is just her last week. So anyway, this is this is not a routine, scot her last week. This is her last week of what no do something you don't know? This is our last week on earth, last week. This is it, I understand, and I think that's a good way to end the podcast. All right, folks, No, Jennifer,

what what did you mean by that? Jennifer? No, I was describing Naomi's last week, which was sleepless, last prior prior, fairly stressed, and she nearly lost while she did lose her health insurance. But we think it's back. So I was describing her last week. If not that you guys want, I can submit for the just for the show, notes Scott, I can submit just transcripts from my therapy sessions as well. If you think like that's it seems like that's what

the listeners want to hear. The love. They love authenticity, They love it. They love authenticity. There, you know, there's an interesting relationship, you know, just talking you bring up a different topic from your book, because you had so many fascinating things in your book. Another thing that fascinated me and reading your book was talking about status and humor and how it's a very complicated relationship. And I've noticed that too. For instance, I'll tell you something I noticed,

then please tell me how this whole relationship works. But I've noticed that in environments where there's like a higher power person like a boss or something like, everyone just like laughs at the person jokes, even though they're stupid jokes. You know, Like there's almost like you feel compelled to when someone has power over you. And it's always fascinating because I've always been the one that doesn't laugh, you know, and people like Scott, Scott you should laugh. It's like, no,

but this person's not funny, you know. But that's where I get in trouble. I'm too honest sometimes but but but but I've just I've noticed that phenomenon. It's a fascinating phenomenon. So anyway, please tell me, you know what your research says on this absolutely, So a couple of things. One, you're completely right when you increase. The concern about humor is that as you increase in status that you still

might get significant laughs when you try. You know, you know any any laugh line, but you don't know why people are laughing, and so there's you know, what you know, Scott is is kind of a Duchen laughter or you know Duschen's smile. And so you have to get as you increase in status, you have to really understand what's authentic exactly what's authentic laughter, and be able to read the room with emotional intelligence. That's potentially even more important

than when you are lower levels of status. The other thing that we find is that, you know, as you increase in status, you are often more free to use self deprecation and not have it harm you. And this is particularly important if you look at humor through a gender lens. As one small example, we find that some of the female executives that we either have data on or have worked with they tend to be magnets or sweethearts to a greater degree. Again not a huge effect size,

but it definitely is there. And then male executives tend to lean towards stand up and sniper, so as Naomi said, you know, oftentimes stand up since snipers often tease or you know, kind of like have a zinger. And partly because sometimes it's just a sign of affection, like if I tease you, it means I like you. But imagine you're in a room with you know, a variety of people,

you can imagine how easily you can offend. And similarly, for our females, they tend to over index on self deprecation, partly because as a magnet or a sweetheart, you're trying to uplift others oftentimes, right and so, and at lower levels the status that's really you know, suboptimal for one's career. However, as you move up in the hierarchy and you increase levels of status, that's where self deprecation can be this

incredible tool. And you said, people really know it. Used to be the leaders needed to be revered, We wanted to be you know, hold our leaders in respect. And now leaders need to be understood. And so that's why authenticity or like what do you know really like has become so important, and self deprecating humor is an incredible tool to reveal that, Yeah, I think that's that's that's

that's quite right. And I guess like it depends there's an interaction there, right, Like if your lower status and you're self deprecating, that's not perceived the same way as a higher status person can be self deplicate. If you're a higher status person being self deprecating, I think that person gets respect in a way. It's like, oh respect, like that person doesn't. Is not abusing their power in a way. You know they're there. They can still be

the laugh of their own jokes. Whereas I personally, my heartbreaks sometimes when I see a lower status person being self deprecating. I don't know why, why why it hurts me sometimes, Like sometimes I'll see like someone with a disability who does stand up and their whole shtick is making fun of themselves and their disability. And I know it's supposed to be funny and and maybe it's it's empowering for that person, you know, in some way, but for me, it almost hurts to watch it. I don't

know if I'm the only one. No, I I think it's such a good point. I I I think I know exactly what you're you know, you're saying, and I think I think that that The one thing that's really interesting about self deprecation is you know, this degree to which I think it's Hannah Gatsby. You had a great show, and she talked exactly about this very point, like I'm not going to self deprecate, and it was this incredible

power to arms, especially for you know, females. I think, but maybe you know, just in general, just like saying like I'm not going to do that. That said, some of my personal favorite humor is self deprecation, especially among people that I don't necessarily know. And the reason is because it's the fastest way I've found to close the

distance between two people. So if I have a set of people that really don't know me and and maybe you know, they see that really long bio and they go that person must be important, and so it's hard to actually have a conversation or be able to engage with ideas. And you do one self deprecating joke, which is, you know why we teach the students to use a levity line in their bio. For me, it's that she won,

you know, Dance Off in the nineteen eighties. Obviously, that's not meant to be like something I'm really proud of, but something that people can kind of tease me about and invite me to dance and see exactly how bad I am now, et cetera. And so that ability to have self deprecation, you know, close the distance between two people is really powerful. Naomi is interesting because she also actually moves across different styles seamlessly. So that's yeah, that's

also been kind of interesting to watch. Oh, that's interesting. She's a humor chameleon, a humor chamelion. Yeah, as we can all be, actually, and it's exactly because of that, because humor, we code humor with all of We put so much like subconscious processing into ways into how we

interpret humor. And so there's this. We interviewed a whole bunch of comedians and I and one of the things that we loved was this idea that humor exists in the space between the comedian and the audience because it is part of the relationship and part of the dynamic so, as one example, there's a principle in comedy never punched down, and that means you never want the target of your

humor to be someone of lower status than you. And and so this, of course, this rule makes it very obvious why as you get more senior in an organization, your playing field gets narrower and narrower because everyone is getting you know, lower status. And God, the only person you could punch up to is God, yeah, exactly, which is why the butt of every joke really should be God. But but there's this, there's this other idea, which is we need to switch our style based on the context.

So so again from my personal experience, I relatively early in my career. I was in my late twenties. I was designing and facilitating these workshops. So I was at the front of the room leading people through exercises who were mostly twenty years my senior and predominantly more male than me. Right, so there is an intrinsic status dynamic that's going on there. And in that context, sniper and

stand up humor were extremely powerful for me. That if someone made a you know, an offhand comment, and I shot it down immediately with sort of a quick one liner. I remember, and I wrote this in the book, but that guy Craig, who you know, he made sort of an offhand comment like what I was designing a session or I was leading a session with, and he said, you know, when are you going to cut to the chase and tell me how to just get my people to do what I want them to do? And it

was really uncomfortable. Everyone sort of froze, and I shot back immediately, that's a great question, Craig. You're thinking about the session that I run on mind control, and that one is actually next week, So come on back. We can go over mind control then, and it would just change the dynamic, right. Everyone laughed, even Craig laughed. He said, word for word, I respect you. You can continue. And

so in that context, that style is really powerful. However, then when I'm in the classroom teaching, and you know, Jennifer and I were at the front of the room and we are quote the highest status people in that role that we're in right relative to our students, that type of humor will not fly. I need to use sweetheart humor. I need to use magnet humor. And in fact, and Jennifer knows this in the first couple weeks of teaching, I used a sniper like comment and it was like

completely fell flat. It felt like I had kicked one of the student's puppies. And I very quickly was reminded, Oh, yeah, I'm in a very different status role here than I am in my other context, and I better be aware of that and shift. It's a wonderful context. Jennifer, did you want to add anything to that? No, I was perfect, you know, one hundred percent. Yeah, we're all at one

hundred percent now. The other the thing I was going to add to that is that also invites when you are able to be playful with each other, like Jennifer and I when we teach together, we are like we're

constantly making fun of each other. Or Jennifer will have like a very impressive presentation and I'll put a random slide in the middle of the presentation that's like her dog with a graph that says, like, you know, growth, and Jennifer has to speak to that chart, like she has to get to it and be like, oh, and you know next time talking about growth. It's just a way to invite our students to be playful and which then they end up doing pranks on us, which is

really a lot of fun. Oh I would love to hear an example like one prank, but you don't have to tell me, Jennifer, do you want to share or should I share? One prank was our students had on the on the second to last day of class. They had filled up all these water balloons and apparently they worked with our co lecturer, Connor demon Yaman, and so they knew the exact phrase that Connor a question that

he was going to ask us. And so Jennifer and I are at the front of the room, we're lecturing, and then we said that phrase, and every like forty five students pull out water balloons and start throwing them at us. What yeah, you could get You could catch pneumonia. I feel like a mother all of a sudden. Oh my gosh, you're such a sweetheart. We will show you a video clip. It is highly comical, and we did not catch pneumonia. Thank goodness, Thank goodness. I always worry

about getting wet in public. Anyway. You talk in your book about the biological basis of humor, and I was just trying to reconcile when you talk about that reconcile that with culture, the existence of cultural differences, and clearly in some cultures there are some things that shall not be joked about, right, they are more sacred than other cultures.

It's important, by the way, to know that. So you don't go to a culture and give a keynote and you know, in India and happen to make a joke that's like off limits in India, you know, or something like that. But does that mean that still biologically, even though something maybe off limits culturally, people are still responding

the same way. I don't know if I'm articuling my question in a way that is amenable to an answer, But I am curious in that interplay between the existence of cultural differences but also being kind of a universal biological basis to humor receptivity. Do you know what I

mean totally? I mean laughter is universal. What we find is when people laugh together, you know, there's a cocktail of healthy hormones that are released, So increased levels of endorphins, decreased levels of cortisol, increased levels of oxytocin, which you know is used as a hormone that you experience, you know, in childbirth or sex and so this entire cocktail of emotions is something that's quite universal. Nuomia has this great line that we love so much, which is, you know,

exercise and meditation and having sex. That's basically all three of those things together is the same thing as laughter. So it's like it's definitely a multiplayer anyway, that is a universal thing. What makes people laugh, what they find funny, to your point is obviously different. So one thing that we find in our data is, you know, sweethearts, for example,

tend to correlate with interdependent cultures. So oftentimes in you know, the risk of hurting others feelings, especially you know, depending on in group out group status, and that would be like the worst thing to do, and so and so if you put that at a premium, you're going to over index on you know, sort of sweethearts or potentially magnets, depending on whether they're introverted or extroverted. But you know, what's going to be important is making sure you're not

hurting or risking offending others in other cultures. You know, for example, you know, in Russia, there's less of a desire to have everything always be kind of necessarily happy, you know, Sonya Libermersky's work, for example a while ago, and that that looked at, you know, the propensity only only Americans really want to have, like you know, the

story have you know, happy ending, for example. In that similar way that that notion of you know, the magnet that really always uplifts others that you know, you would hypothesize would would not be necessarily you know, as as common common in certain cultures that don't enforce it. So I think the thing that's interesting to test is that the humor types people have and what people laugh at would be related to the values that the culture has

and the norms that they impose. So in America, what kind of jokes typically typically get the most positive reactions. It's a really good question, and we had I have a we have a small anecdote. I don't. I don't have an empirical answer, MEMI Naomi does, but I don't. But one thing that was interesting, and this was anecdotal, but in one of our classes, we had a student that was from Singapore and he brought basically comedy clips

from Singapore into the class. On the last day of class, he talks a little bit about what actually, you know, people laugh at and One of the things that he talked about was this whole idea of don't punch down isn't necessarily this universal kind of thing, and so there was a lot of like punching down in some of the clips that he showed by very popular comedians, and it was interesting to think about, you know, what was

the different meaning in that. I would say in America though, that the kind of common belief that you don't want to punch down, that you want to laugh at life to a greater degree, or you want to be self deprecating. At least anecdotally, that seems to be true. What do you think, Naomi, Yeah, I think I well, first, I think that humor is such an interesting mirror to the values of a society, and in some ways, so Ann liber who okay, great, Yeah, so a Libra talks about

these three elements of humor, truth, pain, and distance. And pain could be anything from stubbing your toe to a real taboo topic in society. Humor in some ways pushes on the edge of our cultural boundaries. And so if you look at what SNL Saturday Night Live is joking about today versus what Saturday Night Live was joking about ten years ago, or if you look at similar shows in other countries and what they're joking about, you get a sense of what is the shape of appropriateness for

that culture because humor pushes on those boundaries. Humor pushes on like tiptoes over the line of appropriateness and can get away with it because it's cloaked in humor. And so I think my broader observation about about humor is

that it is a deep reflection of a society. So, and there's a quote that I'm going to butcher, so I'm not going to try it, but it's basically, when you change cultures and you change languages, the first thing to go is your sense of humor because you're totally blind to what are the nuances of this culture, what are the what are the inside references that we as a society know, and you just lose all of that and so you're sort of floating blind and all you

can do is just poke at whatever elements have shared you experience are universal to the human experience rather than are unique to that culture. So that would be sort of my broader, my broader view on why humor is so interesting when when not just as a way of us having fun together, but as a way of deeply understanding Scott, what is your truth about the world, and what is our truth about America? And what is you know, other culture's truths about the about their experience of the world.

Do you think there should be moral codes for comedy or moral rules, you know, I think of I think of I saw Dave Chappelle bit and he was punching down at trans people and the audience found it absolutely hilarious, and I assume many trans people did not find it so funny, and they were you know, a large part of the trans community went on Twitter and said, like, cancel Dave Chappelle. You know, we he shouldn't be able

to have the microphone. And I think it raises interesting questions, you know, like, you know, does a society want to condone certain types of humor? Should the trans people who were offended by that quote light and dut just lighten? Do you know what I mean? And it's so many interesting questions about this. I don't have the answers. I'm just want to get your thoughts. Yeah you go, No,

you go if you want. I was please edit this out, Scott rock Paper Scissor shoot, yeah, Jennifer, would you like her? Would you like me to go? Okay, I can go. I was just gonna talk about workplace. That was funny. You know, you take that one. No, I'm not taking that one. I'm like, I'll take it. I'll done the sword. You know what what dynamic Jennifer and I don't have is I'll go. No, No, I'll go. I want this one. It's always like no, no, would you like to go? Please? No,

you go? You go? You go first, Jennifer, you go, Okay, got wait to take control. Scott. All right. So I think what we do, at least in our class which is very different than you know, if you're actually on stage, is we talk a lot about this idea of like just joking. You know, if your point is that someone's less good than you or different than you, even if it's arguably the point, it's not worth saying. You know, if you have to explain that you were just joking,

you've already lost. It doesn't matter if your favorite comedian like Dave Chappelle gets away with it. So I'm not talking necessarily about that. I'm talking about more about what we try and do in the classroom and how we talk a little bit about it. It's that you know, your workplace is not one of those spaces. Now, you could argue when you enter a comedy club that there are a different set of norms than you know when

you're in the workplace or the classroom, et cetera. And there's a common understanding of what we're doing in this place is we're going to put poke fun at this. And you know, Kelly Leonard and Libera talk about this as well. Right, is that your job, you know, to reveal humor in a situation is to do some poking around and there will be times where you actually cross boundaries. And the job there is to be able to have, you know, created this environment where people know the norms

and there is an openness. One that we try and simulate that type of environment in our classroom is with an exercise that Connor de Mignhelman, who teaches with us,

helped to create. He called it the spectrum exercise. And so the way you do it is all the students line up on an appropriate inappropriate dimension, so like half the students are kind of over on the right hand side of the classroom, the other half on the left and you show them one particular tweet or joke or comedy sketch, et cetera, and you ask them to go where on that spectrum they believe that joke was, you know,

in terms of appropriateness. Right, So let's say that you thought Dave Chappelle's joke was highly inappropriate, you would go, you know, to the anchor of inappropriateness next to the whiteboard there, and then people on the extreme sides are asked to discuss their viewpoint. Why did you think it

was inappropriate? Why did you think it was appropriate? And then, because you're supposed to listen in a very open minded way, it's a very inclusive environment, the next step is to really move See if you are persuaded, see if you are open minded. So it's based on these things that stay open, you know, don't judge in a way that's like you know, claimed, and then allow other opinions to be heard. And then there's a real celebration for people

shifting their perspective. And I think that you know, that type of activity actually allows there to be not its censorship per se, but an open dialogue of why exactly that was inappropriate and an openness to moving your perspective, and I think that's what we need in the world right now, right we need individuals to be more open minded to hearing very different opinions about what is appropriate or not. This is the least funny podcast you've ever done.

And yes, moral code, okay, okay, before we close though, before we close out, we do need to talk a little bit about I really love that point that the and we brought up about truth, because at the core of comedy, as you know, is truth and misdirection. So if people you know all over the world can kind of all understand this is the truth, then just better understanding, you know, what does misdirection mean, or how do you use these tools from comedians to better understand how to

make others laugh and how to laugh with them. When people laugh with each other, they feel thirty percent closer and are more open to disclosing information about themselves. And yeah, you know, people that even reminisce about shared laughter versus just shared happiness tend to say that they're twenty three percent more satisfied in their relationships. So this stuff is

really really potent and powerful. So one of my favorite tools after you know the truth, is thinking about misdirection or or even just like putting in a lighthearted line. So one of our favorite studies is where people came into the lab and it was a negotiations study, and there was confederate in ra in the lab, and they either ended a negotiation with like, this is my final offer, or this is my final offer and I'll throw in a pet fraud. And those individuals in that second condition

received eighteen percent more money. So basically they were richer because they have a six word little laughline that wasn't even good, but it indicated, you know, that the person had a sense of humor and a sense of humanity, and that's enough to really shift things. And it has a very concrete ROI and oh my god, I forgot the best looking hat we have ever. Oh my gosh, I'm sorry. Technical difficult is we said? Technical difficult is nail me? Would you on that note on us trying

to end on a humorous ending, NAILI? Would you like to have the last word? Oh I, Oh my gosh, I always love the last word. What I want to point out is how easy what Jennifer just said is, so we think of humor as being this incredibly hard thing. But it is just naming what's true. So, right before Jennifer gave you that answer, she gave this whole line of thinking around the risks of humor and the downside, and she talked about the spectrum exercise that we do

with our students. And then at the end of that answer, she said, isn't this the least funny podcast you've ever done?

Or something like that, right, And what she was doing was naming the truth that we're all here to talk about humor and yet shockingly, it's actually a serious conversation because there's a lot of research underneath this, right, and so, but it was this great moment where all she needed to do was acknowledge that the little bit of tension that she was feeling, which was, oh my gosh, we're here to talk about humor and yet we're having a

serious conversation about it. You notice that you name it, and that's it's just the easiest way to get a laugh. And so as you're thinking about how do you have more humor in your life, just ask yourself, what's true? What's going on for me right now? What is weighing on me? What am I irrationally excited about? And it's those places where we're going to be able to unlock more humor, both with ourselves and how we view the world, but also with the people around us. I love that.

I think that it was a serious conversation. But I the word that sticks in my mind more about today's conversations, that it was an important conversation. And I think that you two are shining a really important spotlight. And there's a time and place to be funny, and you two can be very funny, trust me. But I'm glad you came on here and you could have this important conversation with me today. So thank you one eighty four, Thank you, thank you, thanks Thanks. Next time, we'll all wear our

matching cats. Thanks for listening to this episode of The Psychology Podcast. If you'd like to react in some way to something you heard, I encourage you to join in on the discussion at the Psychology podcast dot com. That's the Psychology Podcast dot com. Thanks for being such a great supporter of the show, and tune in next time for more on the mind, brain, behavior, and creativity.