Abstract
Past research suggests that a sense of humour plays a role in the workplace. The present study builds upon this work by exploring how individual differences in various positive and negative humour styles (affiliative, self-enhancing, self-defeating, aggressive humour) related to organizational citizenship behaviours, counterproductive workplace behaviours, and workplace anxiety and depression. Survey results from 190 employed undergraduate participants indicated that affiliative humour use is associated with reduced anxiety, depression and counterproductive workplace behaviours, and with increased engagement in organizational citizenship behaviours. In addition, self-enhancing humour moderated the relationship of organizational stressors with OCBs, anxiety and depression. In order to assess the interpersonal aspects of humour, convergence between self- and observer reported humour styles was examined. The relatively low correlation indicates we may need to move beyond the traditional measurement of self- and observer agreement to capture the unique variance of each perspective. Implications of these findings and future research directions are discussed.
