Finding humor in work-life conflict: Distinguishing the effects of individual and co-worker humor

Work-life conflict is a ubiquitous challenge for employees juggling work and family roles, yet little research has examined individual strategies to manage and mitigate its negative effects. We direct attention in this literature to a common-yet-understudied practical strategy: humor. Further, we take next steps in this literature to distinguish between co-worker and employees' own use of coping humor. Integrating benign violation theory with the transactional theory of stress and coping, we develop and test a theoretical model of how both individual and co-worker coping humor may buffer the negative effects of work-life conflict on stress and subsequent withdrawal. In Study 1, we conducted an experiment to examine the causal effects of humor on the stress appraisals arising from work-life conflict. In Study 2, we conducted a three-wave survey to replicate these findings and disentangle the contributions of individual coping humor and co-worker humor. We found opposing effects of individual coping humor and co-worker humor; we further replicated and unpacked the unexpected stress-amplifying effects of co-worker humor in a post-hoc exploratory Study 3. Overall, these results suggest that we need to consider where humor is situated in order to understand when humor mitigates the negative consequences of work-life conflict on stress and withdrawal.