“If We Didn't Use Humor, We'd Cry”: Humorous Coping Communication in Health Care Settings

Abstract

Folkman and Lazarus's transactional theory of emotion and coping was used to explain how humor influences job satisfaction among health care providers. One hundred forty-two nurses completed measures of humor orientation (HO), coping efficacy, job satisfaction, and open-ended questions about their use of humor to relieve job tensions. This produced 9 categories of producing humor and 8 types of work situations identified in which humor was used to cope. Nurses (21.4%) reported using humor the most often during "patient care" situations (e.g., providing medicines, moving patients, physical therapy, and so on). More than one third (38.66%) of the nurses reported using "word-play/language" as a humorous coping strategy. Higher HO was associated with higher ratings of humor effectiveness, greater self-perceived coping efficacy, and higher emotional expressivity. Path analysis demonstrated that, as the transactional theory would predict, trait HO influences job satisfaction through its effect on heightened coping efficacy. Study limitations include the use of self-report methods and the limited number of responses to the open-ended items. Subsequent research in this area should attempt to validate the categories identified in this study and determine the most effective means of coping. Researchers also should explore differences in health care providers' coping communication based on gender, years of experience, and profession.

Positive and Negative Styles of Humor in Communication: Evidence for the Importance of Considering Both Styles

“…The benefits of effective humor use have been examined in many different interpersonal contexts, including romantic partners (Bippus, 2000;Haas & Stafford, 2005;Murstein & Brust, 1985;Ziv, 1988), teachers and students (Aylor & Opplinger, 2003;Wanzer & Frymier, 1999;Wanzer, Frymier, Wojtaszczyk, & Smith, 2006), health care providers and patients (Wanzer, Booth-Butterfield, & Booth-Butterfield, 2005;Wrench & Booth-Butterfield, 2003), managers and subordinates (D. M. Martin & Gayle, 1999;D. M. Martin, Rich, & Gayle, 2004;Rizzo, Wanzer, & Booth-Butterfield, 1999), mentors and mentees (Wrench & Punyanunt-Carter, 2005), and between conflict partners (Alberts, 1990;Bippus, 2003).…”

Educating nursing students in team conflict communication

“…The second author unitized all open-ended responses; unitizing involves identifying distinct responses that are expressed as a phrase, sentence or paragraph. These procedures have been used in previous research to understand the complex ways in which people use communication [29] . The second author used induction techniques to sort all open-ended responses and develop primary categories from the descriptive responses.…”

Relationships Among Humor, Coping, Relationship Stress, and Satisfaction in Dating Relationships: Replication and Extension

“…Research examining associations among humor orientation, coping, and satisfaction has applied the Transactional Theory of Emotion and Coping (TTEC; Lazarus & Folkman, 1987) to understand these relationships in various contexts (Booth-Butterfield, Booth-Butterfield, & Wanzer, 2007;Wanzer, Booth-Butterfield, & Booth-Butterfield, 2005;Wanzer, Sparks, & Frymier, 2009). The TTEC suggests that coping is process oriented and begins when a threatening or challenging situation occurs, resulting in a positive or negative emotional response.…”