How Humour Relieves Workplace Stress And Aggression


Feeling so busy, so pushed around and bullied that you don’t have time to be stressed? Australian researchers have found that workplace aggression and stressful situations get better by adding a little humour.

Dr David Cheng, of the ANU College of Business and Economics, says workplace aggression and bullying is a widespread problem which impacts the mental health of victims and has expensive ramifications for organisations.

He conducted experiments where participants were exposed to a simulation of a colleague aggressively shouting at them and then shown one of two short videos, one of which was humorous.

“The experiments consistently showed exposure to humorous stimuli is useful for victims of aggression,” he says.

“Humour helps reduce some of the damage caused to a victim’s psychological well-being by bolstering their sense of power.

“They felt more powerful, and that people would be more likely to listen to them.

“That’s important because with workplace aggression, when you get yelled at you feel belittled, you feel weaker. So humour can help counter that by making you feel more empowered.”

The study is part of a larger research project into the impact of laughter in the workplace, with another of Dr Cheng’s studies showing humour can also boost productivity.

That 2015 study had participants engaging in boring repetitive work (answering basic maths questions). After a while people were given a ten minute break, with one group again exposed to humourous videos.

“After the break we told people they could stop work at any point in time,” he says.

“Then we measured how long they went for and how they performed.

“The people in the humour group continued to work for double the length of time with the same level of performance in terms of the accuracy of their answers.”

The results of the research are published in a paper, Laughter Is (Powerful) Medicine: the Effects of Humor Exposure on the Well-being of Victims of Aggression, in the Journal of Business and Psychology.


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