Humor in Advertising: A Comprehensive Analysis
Journal of Consumer Marketing
ISSN : 0736-3761
Article publication date: 3 July 2007
- Advertising
- Marketing communications
- Target audience
Wolburg, J.M. (2007), "Humor in Advertising: A Comprehensive Analysis", Journal of Consumer Marketing , Vol. 24 No. 4, pp. 251-251. https://doi.org/10.1108/07363760710756039
Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2007, Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Humor in Advertising offers an insightful, scholarly look at the use of humor as an execution strategy in advertising from its early beginnings to the present day. To begin with, we learn that humor in advertising has had a troubled past. Claude Hopkins, who is regarded by many as the most influential copywriter of the early 1900s, took a dim view of humor as a persuasive tactic and has been widely quoted in a 1923 statement: “People do not buy from clowns” (p. 10). In many ways, we learn that Hopkins was correct, but the authors show us that there is much more to the story. To begin with, new uses of technology have changed the media environment from what existed during Hopkins' era, making humor an appealing strategy for breaking through the clutter. Furthermore, certain product categories can make better use of humor than others. Essentially, Hopkins was right about avoiding humor for advertising certain high‐risk product categories such as sports cars and expensive jewelry but was wrong about products referred to as “little treats of life,” such as beer, snack food, soft drinks, etc. (p. 197). Gulas and Weinberger offer insights into why humorous advertisements for these products have usually performed better than humorous advertisements for other products as well as some exceptions to the rule.
They also point to other considerations in the various chapters, which explain why sweeping generalizations about the effectiveness of humor fall flat. We learn why the medium matters (e.g., television and radio usually lend themselves better to use of humor than the print media) and why humor exists within a context (e.g., humorous advertisements usually work better with non‐humorous media content). Furthermore, we learn why humor is dependent upon timing. What was funny on September 10 was no longer funny on September 11, 2001 – just as advertising during the 1930s depression era required a more serious approach than in earlier or later decades.
One of the puzzling aspects of humor is why it works for some audience members and not for others. The authors tackle this issue head on with a theoretical explanation of various mechanisms for how humor works, along with a discussion of audience factors that influence the likelihood of a humorous advertisement being perceived as funny. Such factors include gender, age, educational level, culture, and ethnicity, plus a host of individual traits such as need for cognition. For example, Gulas and Weinberger acknowledge a widespread belief that humorous advertisements are more appropriate for younger audiences; however, they caution that other variables may come into play. They suggest that older audience members may be less responsive to humorous advertisements because they hold a different frame of reference than the creators of the advertisements, rather than due to any fundamental differences based on age. This point will surely be well‐received by baby boomers who often fail to find the humor in current advertisements, especially those that are created by 20‐somethings.
Gulas and Weinberger also point out that the level of commonality among the agent, the audience members, and the target affect the perception of humor. They give the example that “a Jewish comedian who is telling jokes that disparage Jews to a Jewish audience is more likely to elicit a humorous response than a non‐Jew telling the same jokes to the same audience” (p. 195). Similarly, if an advertiser disparages someone disliked by the audience, the audience is more likely to find the advertisement humorous and to perceive a shared point of view with the advertiser than if the disparaged person is liked by the audience.
We learn that even an advertisement with a successful use of humor carries no guarantees for enhancing the brand or selling the product; however, an advertisement with a failed attempt at humor carries a particularly significant price for advertisers. At a minimum, Gulas and Weinberger suggest it is a lost opportunity to connect with consumers, but in the worst‐case scenario it may offend consumers and drive them away. They illustrate this risk with a 1999 Super Bowl advertisement for Just for Feet, which showed a group of white men tracking a barefoot, black Kenyan runner who was later drugged and forced against his will to wear a pair of running shoes (p. 174). It came as no surprise that the advertisement was met with outrage.
Finally, Gulas and Weinberger confront the very difficult problem of analyzing humor without destroying it. They note that the goal of humor research – not only their research, but also that of dissertations and journal articles – is not to be humorous per se but instead to be illuminating. It is safe to conclude that the authors attained their goal because readers will surely find this book illuminating.
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Humor in advertising: A behavioral perspective
- Published: September 1979
- Volume 7 , pages 285–306, ( 1979 )
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- Calvin P. Duncan D.B.A. 1
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Humorous appeals are used extensively in television, radio, and print advertising. This article examines the effectiveness of humor in accomplishing specific communications and sales objectives. A brief review of the literature on humorous advertising research is presented. The author argues that previous unsuccessful applications of light-hearted messages are attributable, in part, to our incomplete knowledge of how consumers process humorously conveyed information. The discussion focuses on the importance of recognizing and managing variables which mediate the impact of humor on audience response and on the need for further development and testing of behavioral theory as keys to the effective utilization of humor in advertising.
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The author wishes to thank Dr. Phillip D. White for his helpful comments and critical review of an earlier draft of this paper.
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Duncan, C.P. Humor in advertising: A behavioral perspective. JAMS 7 , 285–306 (1979). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02729680
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Peer-reviewed
Research Article
Humor in parenting: Does it have a role?
Roles Conceptualization, Data curation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Methodology, Project administration, Validation, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing
Affiliation Penn State College of Medicine, Hershey, Pennsylvania, United States of America
Roles Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing
Affiliation Theatre Department, Columbia College, Chicago, IL, United States of America
Roles Data curation, Formal analysis, Writing – review & editing
Affiliation Department of Public Health Sciences, Penn State College of Medicine, Hershey, Pennsylvania, United States of America
Roles Conceptualization, Data curation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Methodology, Project administration, Supervision, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing
* E-mail: [email protected]
Affiliation Departments of Humanities & Pediatrics, Penn State College of Medicine, Hershey, Pennsylvania, United States of America
![humor advertising research paper ORCID logo](https://journals.plos.org/resource/img/orcid_16x16.png)
- Lucy Emery,
- Anne Libera,
- Erik Lehman,
- Benjamin H. Levi
![humor advertising research paper PLOS](https://journals.plos.org/resource/img/logo-plos.png)
- Published: July 17, 2024
- https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0306311
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- Reader Comments
Despite the widespread use of humor in social interactions and the considerable literature on humor in multiple fields of study, the use of humor in parenting has received very little formal study. The purpose of this pilot study was to gather preliminary data on the use of humor in the raising of children.
Materials and methods
We developed and administered a 10-item survey to measure people’s experiences being raised with humor and their views regarding humor as a parenting tool. Responses were aggregated into Disagree, Indeterminate, and Agree, and analyzed using standard statistical methods.
Respondents (n = 312) predominantly identified as male (63.6%) and white (76.6%) and were (by selection) between the ages of 18–45 years old. The majority of participants reported that they: were raised by people who used humor in their parenting (55.2%); believe humor can be an effective parenting tool (71.8%) and in that capacity has more potential benefit than harm (63.3%); either use (or plan to use) humor in parenting their own children (61.8%); and would value a course on how to utilize humor in parenting (69.7%). Significant correlations were found between the use of humor and both i) the quality of respondents’ relationships with their parents and ii) assessments of how good a job their parents had done.
Conclusions
In this pilot study, respondents of childbearing/rearing age reported positive views about humor as a parenting tool.
Citation: Emery L, Libera A, Lehman E, Levi BH (2024) Humor in parenting: Does it have a role? PLoS ONE 19(7): e0306311. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0306311
Editor: Ramona Bongelli, University of Macerata: Universita degli Studi di Macerata, ITALY
Received: January 25, 2024; Accepted: June 15, 2024; Published: July 17, 2024
Copyright: © 2024 Emery et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Data Availability: The data that support the findings of this study are openly available on Figshare at http://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.20404107 , reference number 20404107.
Funding: The author(s) received no specific funding for this work.
Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
Introduction
Parenting can be challenging, especially considering the wide array of responsibilities and other stressors most parents have in their lives. [ Parent will be used here as a general term to describe any adult who has a primary role in helping raise a child–including biological parents, stepparents, foster parents, adoptive parents, grandparents, as well as others household members who take on a significant role in child-rearing.] Yet parents are expected (by themselves and others) to know how to respond appropriately when their child needs attention. What makes this particularly difficult is that not only is there no script for raising children, but that when we’re frustrated with our children our reactions often may be driven by experiences with our own parents–which may have been less-than-ideal [ 1 ]. There is, of course, no shortage of expert advice for how to raise children [ 2 – 5 ]. A central tenet of such guidance is the importance of providing structure and consistency–which helps children better understand their environment and its interconnections, anticipate events and their consequences, and appreciate how these inter-relationships create both expectations and responsibilities [ 6 , 7 ]. That said, it’s also known that both children and parents benefit from developing flexibility and skills for adapting when situations (or our perceptions of them) change [ 8 , 9 ]. Flexibility of mind (i.e., the ability to switch between different mindsets, tasks, or strategies) [ 10 ] promotes resilience by helping us bounce back from a misfortune, recalibrate one’s goals and strategies, or carry on in the face of barriers and setbacks [ 11 – 13 ]. For better or worse, raising children offers a great many opportunities to both develop and model such flexibility of mind, to see ‘resistance’ not as a thing to be beaten down, but as an opportunity for reflection [ 14 ]. Toward this end, humor could be a valuable parenting tool in part because there are links between humor and cognitive flexibility [ 15 – 19 ]. The study described in this paper is a first step in exploring people’s views about humor as a parenting tool–both as children and raising their own children–which could help lay the groundwork for strategies about how to use humor appropriately and productively in times of frustration.
That being said, there is no consensus regarding either what constitutes humor or what grounds it–in part because the term humor is used in various contexts to mean different things [ 20 ]. Over the past half-century, a growing body of research has explored the types and structure of humor; [ 21 – 24 ] styles of humor (self-enhancing, affiliative, aggressive, and self-defeating); [ 25 ] and correlations between particular types of humor and a variety of outcomes–including subjective wellbeing, emotional regulation, healthy relationships, leadership, teaching, and others [ 26 – 33 ]. Though humor often manifests verbally (jokes, stories, puns, riddles, satire, sarcasm, parody, everyday conversation, etc.) and the written word (e.g., prose, verse, comics), humor can also take a more physical form–paradigmatically, slapstick, but also visual and performing arts [ 34 – 37 ].
Philosophical attempts to characterize humor (sometimes in terms of its progeny, laughter) include works by Plato, Hobbes, Kant, Bergson, and others [ 19 , 38 ]. At present three of the most commonly referenced theories of humor have emerged from both philosophy and psychology and were intended to encompass all situations of humor and laughter (including inadvertent laughter such as that caused by tickling). Superiority Theory holds that humor and laughter are the result of feelings of superiority over someone else (or the way that we used to be); Incongruity Theory suggests that humor occurs when there is a mismatch between expectations and experience; and Tension and Release Theory, which evolved from Freud’s Theory of the Unconscious, suggests that humor results when a buildup of energy created through repression of negative thoughts or discomfort is released through laughter [ 38 ]. A more recent theory proposed by behavioral scientist Peter McGraw combines elements of incongruity theory and superiority theory in the Benign Violation Theory, which posits that a joke or a moment can be perceived as humorous if it is perceived simultaneously as (i) a violation of norms and (ii) benign [ 39 ].
On their face, such theories might lead us to view humor as an odd strategy for parenting, and that certain types of humor (especially those involving superiority theory, which includes sarcasm and mockery) are likely to be ineffective if not unhealthy for child-rearing [ 40 ]. For example, incongruity-based humor relies on the very opposite of consistency–leveraging surprise, breaking expectations, going the other way [ 41 – 43 ]. So, too, because humor’s success is determined in part by how others react, the use of humor by parents could be seen as a ‘relinquishing of authority’ to their child. Moreover, when done poorly or thoughtlessly, humor can send the wrong message to a child or become a weapon for inflicting harm. That said, humor also has several quite promising features. Notably, humor can induce frameshifts (i.e., changes in perspective) that alter how we interpret an event or response, and thereby open new possibilities for children and parents alike. This includes serving as a distraction that helps children reframe their experience; helping parents create psychological distance (e.g., a moment for perspective-taking) between the immediate experience and their reaction to it; and helping create shared experience that can forge deeper connections amongst family members.
In popular culture, one of the strongest associations between humor and parenting is the “dad joke”–often corny, pun-based, and groan-inducing [ 44 ]. But humor’s expansive repertoire may have strategic applications for positive parenting techniques akin to how humor has been applied successfully to address various real-world challenges. Tailored improvisation games that use humor and play-based exercises have shown promise for improving the mental health of both individuals with early-stage dementia [ 45 ]. and their family caregivers [ 46 ]. In the workplace, humor-based play (often cast in terms of improv ) has been shown to improve attitudes and coping strategies, leading to greater resilience, cohesiveness, and effective leadership [ 31 , 47 – 50 ]. So, too, adaptive forms of humor (i.e., affiliative and self-enhancing) are associated with secure attachment [ 51 – 56 ], though with children their developmental stage clearly impacts their ability to appreciate different forms of humor [ 57 – 60 ].
When used appropriately, humor can change the dynamic of situations that are headed for conflict [ 61 – 63 ]. By introducing surprise, incongruity, humor can disrupt established patterns of behavior, which in turn can promote improvisation to yield a different outcome. Imagine, for example, a toddler throwing a full-blown tantrum that continues to escalate despite efforts to calm them. Here, humor as a parenting strategy might have the child’s parent declare “OK, it’s my turn now,” and then dramatically throw their own tantrum. Because this catches the upset toddler by surprise, many children will stop crying and watch the parent’s tantrum-performance. As the parent’s ‘tantrum’ winds down, another adult can take their own turn throwing a tantrum. When it becomes the child’s turn again, they will typically resume tantruming as if they had never stopped. After a couple of rounds of this, the parent can clap their hands and say “OK, let’s play a different game.” Playful disruption of this sort not only helps resolve tension, but also models creativity and flexibility of mind, which can serve the interests of both children and parents. Moreover, for parents, the irony of turning a tantrum into a game may provide psychological distance [ 16 ] that helps parents relieve their own stress and respond more effectively.
There is also considerable evidence that positive parent-child relationships and greater parental responsiveness to a child’s temperament are correlated with greater child well-being [ 64 – 66 ]. There is an expansive literature on the use of play in parenting [ 67 – 72 ].–a related but distinct kind of engagement [ 73 ]. So, too, several authors have written about how to promote humor development in children [ 74 – 76 ] and a few small qualitative studies have shown how families of children with disabilities sometimes use humor as an effective coping strategy [ 77 , 78 ]. But there is little, if any, empirical research on humor as a parenting strategy. In fact, in its more than 30-year existence, the premier journal for humor research (Humor) has not published any articles (conceptual, methods, or outcomes) related to the use of humor in parenting.
There is evidence that people can be taught to use humor more effectively [ 79 , 80 ]. But it is an open question whether humor (specifically, its uplifting aspects) can be leveraged to help parents respond constructively to challenging situations that might otherwise lead them to respond harshly to their children. As a preliminary step toward answering this question, this pilot study sought to explore whether 18–45-year-olds (putatively, the age range when parents are most likely to be raising young children) consider humor a valuable and viable tool for parenting. To do so, we asked respondents to reflect on their parents’ use of humor and how they (i.e., respondents) saw humor as something that could serve a useful role in parenting children.
After a review of the literature, we developed a 10-item survey to measure individuals’ experiences being raised with humor, as well as their assessment of humor as a potential tool for use in parenting (see Fig 1 ). The survey was designed using an iterative process that included focus group discussion, construction of question items, field-testing for clarity and face validity, wording revisions, and cognitive interviews to ensure that interpretation of question items corresponded to their intended objectives. Following IRB approval, a REDCap survey was made available from 12/1/21–12/31/21 for up to 400 U.S. participants between the ages of 18–45 using Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (MTurk), an online tool that matches eligible participants with public-facing surveys. Consent to participate was implied by individuals proceeding to complete the survey after reading the summary explanation of research. Responses to the 8 quantitative items were measured on a 7-point Likert-type scale and subsequently aggregated into Disagree ( Strongly disagree and Disagree ), Indeterminate ( Somewhat disagree , Neither agree nor disagree , and Somewhat agree ), and Agree ( Agree and Strongly agree ). The survey also included 2 open-ended question-items (not included here), and 5 demographic items. All variables were summarized prior to analysis to assess their distributions and determine the best course of analysis. Chi-square tests were used to determine which demographic items were significantly associated with each of the 8 quantitative outcome variables, and to investigate potential associations between 2 of the outcome variables (parent relationship, good job parenting), and the other 6 outcome variables. A significance level of 0.05 was used as the cut-off for statistical significance, and all analyses were performed using SAS version 9.4 (SAS Institute, Cary, NC).
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https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0306311.g001
Of 320 respondents, 312 provided answers to the quantitative items. Most identified as male (63.6%) and White (76.6%), of whom 11.3% were 18–25 years of age, 49.4% were 26–35 years-old, and 39.4% were 36–45 years-old (see Table 1 for full demographics). The majority Agreed that they had a positive relationship with the people who raised them (80.1%); that the people who raised them did a good job (64.7%); that they would raise (or already are raising) children in the same way they were raised (54.8%); and that the people who raised them used humor in their parenting (55.2%). So, too, the majority of participants Agreed that humor could be an effective parenting tool (71.8%) (see Fig 2 ); that humor as a parenting tool has more potential benefit than harm (63.3%); that they would value a course on how to utilize humor in parenting (69.7%) (see Fig 3 ); and that they either plan to (or already do) use humor in parenting their own children (61.8%) (see Fig 4 ).
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0306311.g002
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0306311.g003
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0306311.g004
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0306311.t001
Interestingly, there were no statistically significant correlations related to participants’ age. The same was true for gender, with the exception that more females reported they use (or plan to use) the same parenting style as their own parents (62.3%) compared to males (50.5%, p = 0.036).
By contrast, we found multiple significant differences related to participants’ reports regarding the relationships they have with their own parents (see Table 2 ), and how good a job their own parents had done raising them (see Table 3 ). Specifically, the ~80% of participants who reported having a good relationship with their parents were significantly more likely to report that their parents had used humor in raising them (63.0%, p < .001) compared to those who provided an indeterminate response (23.5%) or denied having a good relationship with their parents (20.0%). So, too, participants who reported a good relationship with their parents were more likely to believe that humor can be an effective parenting tool (77.1%, p < .001) compared to those who provided an indeterminate response (49.0%) or denied having a good relationship (54.6%). Those reporting good relationships with their parents were also more likely to say they plan to (or already do) use humor in parenting their own children (65.2%, p < .001) compared to participants who provided an indeterminate response (50.0%) or denied having a good relationship (36.4%).
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0306311.t002
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0306311.t003
The same general pattern was seen with the 64.6% of participants who reported that their own parents did a good job raising them–with such individuals reporting higher rates of their parents having used humor (68.4%, p < .001) compared to participants who provided an indeterminate response (33.0%) or denied having a good relationship with their parents (28.6%). Individuals reporting that their parents did a good job raising them were also more likely to say that humor can be an effective parenting tool (82.5%, p < .001) compared to those who gave indeterminate responses (52.5%) or denied having a good relationship with their parents (57.1%); were more likely to use (or plan to use) humor in their own parenting (73.9% vs. 39.4% vs. 42.9%, respectively, p < .001); and were more likely to agree that humor as a parenting tool has more potential benefit than harm (72.8% vs. 44.4% vs. 42.9%, respectively, p < .001).
Less surprisingly, but still statistically significant was the finding that participants reporting a good relationship with their own parents were more likely to use (or plan to use) the same parenting style (63.4%, p < .001) compared to those who gave indeterminate responses (22.0%) or denied having a good relationship with their parents (9.1%). A similar association was seen between participants who reported that their parents did a good job raising them, and participants who use (or plan to use) the same parenting style (67.4%, p < .001), compared to participants who gave indeterminate responses (34.3%) or denied having a good relationship with their parents (14.3%).
Worth noting is that fewer than 1% of all respondents reported they did not believe that a brief course on how to use humor as a parenting tool would be a valuable resource, whereas 69.7% endorsed such a course, and 29.6% provided an indeterminate response. When comparing respondents currently raising children <18 years old to those who were not, no significant differences (p = .464) were found as to whether they would value such a course on humor. However, individuals currently raising children (vs. those who were not) were more likely to report that humor could be an effective parenting tool (77.0% vs. 65.9%, p = .044), and that humor has more potential benefit than harm (71.1% vs. 53.6%, p = .002). Such differences did not emerge with regard to respondents’ race and ethnicity, with the exception of how many people reported that their parents used humor in raising them (61.3% White, 48.3% Black, 30.8% Latino, and 40.0% other, p < .001), and how many planned to use the same parenting style as their own parents (59.7% White, 59.3% Black, 30.8% Latino, and 37.5% other, p = .048).
If the findings of this pilot study are generalizable, they provide preliminary evidence that a significant number of Americans of childbearing/rearing age have had positive experiences being raised with humor and would be interested in learning more about how to use humor as a tool for parenting their own children. Though the use of “play” with young children has an extensive literature, to our knowledge, this is the first study to explore the use of humor in raising children. This is particularly surprising given humor’s widespread use and prominence in American culture and well-recognized ability to both bridge differences and help people see things from a new perspective.
Emerging research is demonstrating how humor appreciation is detectable in infants as young as six months of age [ 81 – 86 ]. Over the last 40 years, various authors have discussed the developmental stages of humor as it evolves during childhood [ 15 , 87 – 89 ], with some concluding that humor is the inevitable outcome of the progressive evolution of a biological disposition to play [ 90 ]. More recently, humor has been recommended as a strategy for early childhood educators [ 16 , 91 – 93 ], and there is evidence that humor can be an effective coping strategy for families who have children with disabilities [ 78 , 93 – 95 ].
Of course, one must be careful in extrapolating the advantages of humor, as humor is not without its risks–particularly when significant power imbalances exist. So, too, the current findings do not differentiate the various types of humor or their respective utility, nor do they identify when or how best to leverage humor with children. Nonetheless, the current pilot data suggest that adults of child-raising age are open to the use of humor as one strategy for raising their children and that there is an association between parents’ use of humor and subsequent perceptions of one’s parents. As such, humor may be an over-looked strategy for helping parents develop, model, and promote cognitive and emotional flexibility. Establishing a foundation that can ground effective strategies for using humor as a parenting tool will require answering basic questions such as:
What characteristics make a situation more or less amenable to using humor as a parenting tool? Which forms of parenting humor are more effective at particular stages of child development and for which goals? What humor-related strategies are better for helping parents and children develop the flexibility of mind for solving problems that might otherwise escalate? How can such skills be taught in a way that minimizes their likelihood of misuse or unintentional harm? Would parents prefer to use humor in place of harsh discipline if it was equally (or more) effective?
Limitations
The generalizability of these pilot data is limited by several factors, chief among them selection bias. The current findings arise from a relatively small convenience sample that is predominantly white and male. It is also unknown how the views of MTurk respondents compare to the general population. Separately, there are 3 question-items that use parenthetical phrasing to acknowledge that respondents may not yet have children and that respondents’ parents may no longer be living. It is possible that respondents interpreted these items as double-barreled questions, though interviews during field-testing did not identify any such confusion. Additionally, it is not clear whether the meaning of ‘humor’ or ‘humor in parenting’ was similarly understood by all respondents, nor what factors might affect people’s various interpretations of these terms. As noted in the introduction, there is no single agreed-upon definition or interpretation of what constitutes humor. That said, the present study did seek to explore this matter with several qualitative items, but responses to these questions were too meager to offer useful data. Nonetheless, the findings of this pilot study 1) provide a good starting point for conducting a larger, more robust examination of people’s experiences and views regarding humor and parenting, and 2) suggest that using humor as a parenting tool may be associated with various beneficial outcomes.
This pilot study provides preliminary evidence that Americans of childbearing/rearing age have positive views about humor as a parenting tool, and that such use of humor may be associated with various beneficial outcomes. If these findings are generalizable, they potentially open the door to a much deeper and broader exploration of how ‘parenting humor’ functions and how it can be appropriately leveraged to enhance the experiences of both children and their parents. To that end, future research should examine the ways parents currently use different kinds of humor; children’s lived experiences with such humor; and how these uses of humor map onto existing knowledge and theory about how humor functions.
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- CAREER COLUMN
- 24 July 2024
Why you should perform a premortem on your research
- Carsten Lund Pedersen 0
Carsten Lund Pedersen is an associate professor of digital transformation and artificial intelligence at the IT University of Copenhagen in Denmark.
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Researchers can pre-empt the possibility of their ideas ending up in the morgue by challenging them early. Credit: Rafe Swan/Getty
Like all researchers, I’ve had my fair share of failed projects: papers that remained unfinished or never got through the revision process; collaborations that didn’t come to fruition; and research projects that never became the successes I anticipated. Some of this was necessary failure — such as the trial-and-error learning or hypothesis rejection needed to obtain new knowledge in research — the kind that is often fetishized in both Silicon Valley start-up culture and academia. Failure, the conventional wisdom goes, makes you better.
But I try to circumvent unnecessary failures — those made through insufficient preparation or execution. Why not try to avoid the avoidable barriers to success?
Over the years, I’ve grown fond of a simple tool that can help to prevent unnecessary failures in my research. This tool, which draws on the work of the cognitive psychologist Gary Klein , is called a project premortem. A premortem takes place before the launch of a project. To carry out the premortem, I imagine that a few years have passed since the project’s launch, and it has failed miserably. What were the underlying causes? As research by Klein and his colleagues shows, this simple method is extremely effective in revealing hidden problems.
The method makes it safe for knowledgeable objectors to voice their reservations about a project. Theoretically, such reasoning is based on prospective hindsight: imagining that an event has already occurred. The true value, however, comes from thinking through how to proactively reduce potential problems and thereby prevent a project from failing.
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Carsten Lund Pedersen is an associate professor of digital transformation and artificial intelligence at the IT University of Copenhagen. Credit: Carsten Lund Pedersen
For instance, some years ago I dedicated weeks to learning the nuts and bolts of a statistical software tool, because I felt some pressure from collaborators to use it. I was initially reluctant to master it, fearing that this would take away much valuable research time. I have not done any research with the tool since that time, vindicating my initial hesitance. In hindsight, it’s obvious that a premortem could have been useful and prevented me from wasting my time.
I now feel I’ve learnt my lesson, and often create premortems for my own research efforts. Before submitting an article to a premier journal, I ask myself: if I presume this article will be rejected, what will be the underlying reasons for that outcome? Sometimes this makes me aware that my data are not strong enough or that the theoretical logic is incomplete or inconsistent. I also increasingly do premortems with my collaborators, and when designing new courses for students.
However, awareness of the issues that premortems raise is just the first step — there is also a need to identify remedies for these problems. In my own work, I’ve forced myself to spend extra time trying to make a certain theoretical logic more consistent with existing debates in the field, and intuitively understandable, before reviewers find my work lacking. In some cases, it might be difficult to address the issues, but at least you can think about how best to approach the concerns with a revision, thereby getting a head start.
Adding collaborators to the premortem
A premortem often becomes even more effective when you include collaborators. In my experience, they help to overcome any biases or blind spots you might have and improve the overall quality of the input to the premortem. A group can also generate more ideas on how to proactively address different issues.
Recently, I asked a close collaborator if we should pull the plug on a project in which we’ve invested a lot of resources. In the end, we reasoned that the timing of the project probably wasn’t right (and wouldn’t improve in the near future), so it would be best to make the tough decision to stop the project altogether.
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How researchers and their managers can build an actionable career-development plan
However, a group setting can also be a potential minefield. Failure could result from a collaborator acting as a bottleneck or not communicating sufficiently with the rest of the group. Such actions have the potential to disrupt group harmony or cause conflict.
Although showing sensitivity remains crucial, the premortem setting might provide a ‘safe space’ for people to air potential concerns, because it is framed as an imaginative thought-experiment with the premise that all potential causes of failure should be broached. Dealing with interpersonal issues doesn’t get any easier once a collaboration has failed, so it’s often better to have difficult conversations early on.
A quick checklist for your premortem
How else can you use the premortem in your research? In my experience, a premortem works best during the preparation stages of papers, projects and partnerships.
I’ve developed a quick checklist for conducting your premortem. The process has five simple steps, each with a related key question. Print out the checklist and keep it in your office or take it to your next meeting. Once you’ve conducted an individual step, tick it off.
The bottom line is that academic life might be full of failures, but we should still try to avoid the avoidable ones. The premortem method provides a simple approach for doing just that. And in case you were wondering: yes, this article survived my initial premortem.
doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-024-02344-2
This is an article from the Nature Careers Community, a place for Nature readers to share their professional experiences and advice. Guest posts are encouraged .
Competing Interests
The author declares no competing interests.
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2.1 The effects of humor and message sidedness on brand attitudes. Two-sided advertising research has provided evidence of small, but positive, effects of two-sided advertising on attitudes due to higher credibility, more novelty and stimulation, and better creation of counterarguments (Cornelis et al., 2013; Crowley & Hoyer, 1994; Eisend, 2006).The extant research has shown that the ...
In average, h umor has been used worldwide in 44% of the advertising campaigns in. 2016, 47% o f the ads o f 2017 and 56% in 2018, which shows a tendency o f growth f rom year to. year. In the ...
Prior reviews have outlined the state of research of humour in advertising and showed that some findings deserve further explanations. This paper makes the point that evolutionary psychologists' explanations of the functions of humour can provide new or alternative explanations for these findings and suggest new research avenues. The ...
the effects of humor in advertising and thus quantifies, updates, and expands previous literature reviews on the effects of humor in advertising. In line with previous reviews, the meta-analytic correlations demonstrate that humor in advertising significantly enhances A AD, attention, and positive affect. Contrary to the assumptions of previous
Research on advertising containing negative information, such as two‐sided messages, has neglected the potential of including humor in the advertisements, although both theory and practical examples suggest that humor might help to sell negative information. This paper presents the results from three studies that showed that humor can increase the persuasive influence of two‐sided ...
The purpose of this study is to provide an integrative meta-analysis of research on humor effects in advertising. The meta-analysis quantifies, updates, and expands previous literature reviews, the most recent one having been published 15 years ago. The meta-analytic findings substantiate (or disprove) the conclusions of those earlier ...
H1: Humor in one‐sided advertising increases attitude toward the brand, while there is no difference in brand attitude in two‐sided advertising between using and not using humor. 2.2 | The mediating effect of surprise Both humor research (e.g., Yoon, 2018) and research on two‐sided persuasion (e.g., Cornelis et al., 2013) have put forward ...
A recent meta-analysis on humor in advertising (Eisend 2009) provides meta-analytic correlations for the relationship between humor and advertising outcome measures. The data for this meta-analysis are retrieved from studies published in marketing, consumer research, psychology, and communication journals; and dissertations, proceedings, and ...
Assessing the Use and Impact of Humor on Advertising Effectiveness: A Contingency Approach. Journal of Advertising. 26 (3):17-32. DOI: 10.1080/00913367.1997.10673526. Authors: Harlan Spotts ...
This paper presents the results from three studies that showed that humor can increase the persuasive influence of two-sided advertising due to a positive surprise effect. However, it can also ...
explanations of the effects of humor along with a new affective-cognitive model. Results are derived from meta-analytic data and show how previous explanations may be integrated in order to explain how humor in advertising works. Humor reduces negative cognitions related to the ad because it serves as a distraction from counter-argumentation.
Humor in Advertising offers an insightful, scholarly look at the use of humor as an execution strategy in advertising from its early beginnings to the present day. To begin with, we learn that humor in advertising has had a troubled past. Claude Hopkins, who is regarded by many as the most influential copywriter of the early 1900s, took a dim view of humor as a persuasive tactic and has been ...
Humor and Attention. Studies have shown that 94% of advertising practi-tioners see humor as an effective way to gain atten-tion. Furthermore, 55% of advertising research ex-ecutives believe humor to be superior to non-humor in gaining attention (Madden and Weinberger 1984).
The current paper provides two important contributions to advertising research. First, this study underlines and explains the role of gender as a moderating factor for the effects of humor in advertising. Prior research does not elucidate the conditions under which humor does or does not lead to a favourable response for either men or women.
For white goods, information-focused humor is used. most often (59%) and image-focused humor least of-ten (18%). Although the Starch noted scores increased with information-focused ads, we actually found a more uniformly positive impact on all three Starch scores when image-focused humor was present. That.
Research on advertising containing negative information, such as two-sided messages, has neglected the potential of including humor in the advertisements, although both theory and practical examples suggest that humor might help to sell negative information. ... This paper presents the results from three studies that showed that humor can ...
Humor in advertising is known to enhance product liking, but this attitude change is often considered nonpredictive of product choice. ... This paper reviews the relevant research and develops ...
of humor, medium, placement and audience (see Figure), generalizations about tbe effect of bumor are fraught witb pitfalls (Stewfirt-Hunter 1985). Though the broad question of humor's effectiveness in advertising is unan-swerable, we can compile the accounts of humor research in tbe context of proper constraints to gain insights about its effects.
provides definition, categorization and impact of hu-mour (1). Then, the consumer decision making process and purchase behaviour will be studied and presented in detailed (2) to deliver a theoretical foundation for the empirical research of humorou. advertising on Vietnamese consumer's buy-ing behaviour (3). Therefor.
Academia.edu is a platform for academics to share research papers. On humor and humor in advertising ... Prior investigations of the impact of humor on advertising message comprehension have generally found humorous commercials to be no more effective than comparable serious messages. This study reexamines humor's influence by focusing on type ...
conclude that some humor is probably more effective than no humor.4 Phillips observes that employing humor involves a risk: if humor does not come off, it is a disaster; if it does, it can be very effective.5 Hepner asserts that humor Journal of Marketing, Vol. 37 (October 1973), pp. 12-18. 1. J. Weingarten, "Is 'Far Out' Advertising Entertaining
Humorous appeals are used extensively in television, radio, and print advertising. This article examines the effectiveness of humor in accomplishing specific communications and sales objectives. A brief review of the literature on humorous advertising research is presented. The author argues that previous unsuccessful applications of light-hearted messages are attributable, in part, to our ...
This research paper explore the mediating role of attitude towards advertisement and attitude towards brand in the relationship between disparagement as a processing stimulus for humor in Advertising and purchase intention of the customer. Data has been collected form 202 individuals.
Background Despite the widespread use of humor in social interactions and the considerable literature on humor in multiple fields of study, the use of humor in parenting has received very little formal study. The purpose of this pilot study was to gather preliminary data on the use of humor in the raising of children. Materials and methods We developed and administered a 10-item survey to ...
Carsten Lund Pedersen introduces a tool for improving the success rate of your papers, projects and partnerships.