Zugl.: Frankfurt (Main), Univ., Diss.

Background . Sense of humor has been shown to affect the personal dynamics of leadership in many ways: it opens channels of communication, improves social relations, enhances performance, and provides a coping mechanism for stress. In leadership research, humor has been linked with improving morale, enhancing group cohesiveness, increasing creativity and motivation, and stimulating higher levels of productivity. Though humor contains the potential to greatly enhance personal and leadership dynamics in the realm of pastoral leadership, very little research has been conducted with this goal in mind. Method . This study examined the relationship between the pastor's predominant sense of humor style using the Humor Styles Questionnaire, predominant configuration of Leader-Follower Distance, and the pastor's tenure characteristics. The instrument was offered to 2,500 Southern Baptist pastors and was completed on-line by 530 pastoral leaders. Over half of the survey participants also responded affirmatively as being willing to participate in an extensive follow-up telephone interview. These qualitative interviews were conducted with a representative subsample of 13 of these pastors. Sense of humor was studied from the perspective of its ability to equip the leader to cope effectively with the stressful realities of pastoral ministry, its ability to gain a balanced perspective on reality, and its capacity to create and manage effective leader-follower relationships. Results . The adaptive humor styles (affiliative humor and self-enhancing humor) were predominant among pastors as was the proximal Leader-Follower Distance configuration. The self-enhancing humor style was shown to be significantly related to career ministry tenure (at p=.05) and also to Leader Follower Distance configuration (also at p=.05). Likewise, Leader Follower Distance configuration was shown to be significantly correlated to career ministry tenure (at p=.001). Additional significant relationships were also found between HSQ styles and certain church demographics. These data were further explored in the qualitative telephone interviews. Conclusion . The study is intended to aid pastors in dealing with the unique stressors of pastoral leadership, to help churches assess their own expectations of pastoral leadership, and to understand better how certain humor styles and LFD configurations will match with those expectations. / This item is only available to students and faculty of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. If you are not associated with SBTS, this dissertation may be purchased from <a href="http://disexpress.umi.com/dxweb">http://disexpress.umi.com/dxweb</a> or downloaded through ProQuest's Dissertation and Theses database if your institution subscribes to that service.

Thesis (M.A.I.S.)--Oregon State University, 2009. / Printout. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 54-57). Also available on the World Wide Web.

The sense of humour is a uniquely human skill and understanding humour is an important and rewarding part of social interaction. This thesis begins by discussing the definition of humour, followed by a review of the evidence we have that humour is an evolved and adaptive behaviour. Humour may play an important role in helping individuals to bond and signal cooperation, which may be further communicated by the humour style which is used to communicate. Research has also demonstrated that humour is an attractive quality in a mate, though the precise reasons for this are currently debated (Chapter 1). Empirical work in the first section of the thesis is consistent with evidence demonstrating that humour is attractive and sexually selected for. Chapter 2 tests the influence of modality and relationship context in an effort to further our understanding of why humour is attractive and provides evidence that more attractive people are rated as being funnier than less attractive people. Humour was also found to be more attractive for short-term relationships than long-term relationships, possibly due to the similarity between funniness and flirtatiousness. In Chapter 3, attractiveness ratings of vignettes in the style of personal advertisements, which contained either aggressive or affiliative humour, demonstrated the importance of humour style. An affiliative humour style was more attractive for long-term relationships whereas an aggressive humour style was more attractive for short-term relationships. Further testing provided evidence that humour styles were associated with personality traits which are highly relevant in a mating context, helping to explain the functions of different humour styles. The second section of the thesis examines the relationship between humour, cooperation, and dominance as an alternative explanation for the evolution of humour. Chapter 4 contains an extended introduction to the physical, verbal, and nonverbal cues to dominance and the sex differences that exist in expressive behaviours. Chapter 5 continues this theme and elaborates further on the function of humour in group situations, before providing empirical evidence of how humour is used in the context of a competitive ‘desert-island’ style conversation between same-sex dyads. Chapter 6 further expands on this line of research as empirical evidence presented in this chapter demonstrates that males may be using humour as a way of communicating the desire to cooperate with other males who are of a similar level of dominance. The communication of dominance is further examined in Chapter 7, where ethological evidence showed that males who were more physically dominant tended to knock doors with greater frequency than males who were less physically dominant. In the final chapter of the thesis (Chapter 8), the evolution of humour is discussed in light of the evidence presented in Chapters 2-7. The thesis presents evidence to suggest that humour production is an important skill for males for two reasons. Firstly, a good sense of humour is a highly attractive quality to females and may be a cue to genetic quality or good partner qualities, depending on the humour style used. Secondly, it may be important for males to use humour to signal cooperation to other males in order to form alliances. In females, the evidence presented in the thesis suggests that humour production may be a way for females to demonstrate romantic interest or flirtatiousness but the function of humour use between females remains largely inconclusive.

Orientador: Sandro Caramaschi / Resumo: Estudos científicos apontam que a expressividade do humor é um componente que pode favorecer ou firmar interações pessoais, e ainda, um dos critérios de predileção utilizado como característica para escolha de parceiros amorosos. Esta pesquisa de caráter quantitativo, descritivo, comparativo e correlacional com universitários, estudantes de uma universidade pública do interior do estado de São Paulo e tem o intuito de identificar o estilo de humor pessoal, o estilo de humor como critério na escolha de parceiros amorosos e as relações entre estilos de humor e habilidades sociais desses estudantes por meio dos pressupostos teóricos da Psicologia Evolucionista. Para isso, um questionário (Humor Styles Questionnaire) foi traduzido e adaptado a dois instrumentos para uso no contexto brasileiro, favorecendo a identificação do estilo de humor pessoal e do estilo de humor apontado pelos participantes como critério à escolha de parceiros amorosos, além do uso do Questionário de habilidades sociais, comportamentos e contextos para universitários (QHC-Universitários) para verificar as habilidades sociais dos estudantes em correlação ao estilo de humor. Este estudo buscou verificar as possíveis semelhanças entre os estilos de humor e sexo dos participantes, estilos de humor enquanto critério de escolha de parceiros idealizados e correlação ente estilos de humor e comportamentos habilidosos e não habilidosos. Resultados apontaram a prevalência do princípio da homogamia na comparação de es... (Resumo completo, clicar acesso eletrônico abaixo) / Abstract: Scientific studies indicate that expressiveness of mood is a component that can favor or establish personal interactions, and also a criterion of predilection used as a characteristic for choosing partners. This quantitative, descriptive, comparative and correlational research with university students from a public university in the interior of the state of São Paulo aims to identify the personal style of humor, humor style as a criterion in the choice of loving partners and the relationships between styles of humor and social skills of these students through the theoretical assumptions of Evolutionary Psychology. For this, a questionnaire (Humor Styles Questionnaire) was adapted to two instruments for use in the Brazilian context, favoring the identification of the style of personal humor and the style of humor pointed out by the participants as criterion to the choice of loving partners, besides the use of the Questionnaire of social skills, behaviors and contexts for university students (QHC-University) to verify the social skills of students in correlation with the style of humor. Thus, we sought to verify the possible similarities between the humor and sex styles of the participants, humor styles as a criterion for choosing idealized partners and correlation between mood styles and skilful and non-skilful behaviors. Results pointed out the principle of homogamy to prevail, coming to the encounter of the findings of the theory of evolutionary psychology, however, for the ... (Complete abstract click electronic access below) / Mestre

Orientador: Marina Célia Mendonça / Banca: Luciane de Paula / Banca: Maria Isabel de Moura / Resumo: Os avanços tecnológicos observados na contemporaneidade modificaram as formas de interação, produção, configuração e interpretação de enunciados. Essas modificações atingem diferentes campos de atividade, como o didático-pedagógico, que, hoje, possui fronteiras além do espaço físico escolar. Neste cenário, esta pesquisa de mestrado coloca em foco "novas" modalidades de ensino/aprendizagem praticadas na internet, nas quais estão presentes gêneros discursivos incomuns na esfera didático-pedagógica. O corpus selecionado são posts com fins didáticos do blog do Cursinho Pré-Vestibular Descomplica. A análise é centralizada na presença de gêneros que produzem humor - em especial, o meme - nestas práticas de ensino/aprendizagem. Interessa-nos a presença do humor como recurso didático nas relações de ensino e as modificações possíveis desta presença pensando em um histórico sobre as relações em ambientes de ensino/aprendizagem. Neste contexto, outras discussões foram suscitadas, como o próprio entendimento do meme como gênero do discurso, como memórias discursivas do espaço escolar, da imagem de aluno e de professor e o "uso" de gêneros do discurso no ensino de língua materna. O que pôde ser percebido, por meio das análises, é que os materiais disponíveis e suas respectivas formas de apresentação dialogam com o que temos tido, nas últimas décadas, nas salas de aula dos cursinhos presenciais do país: docentes que utilizam piadas e outros recursos humorísticos em seus discursos. No blog... (Resumo completo, clicar acesso eletrônico abaixo) / Abstract: The technological advances observed in contemporaneity modified the ways of interaction, production, configuration and interpretation of utterances. These modifications reach different activity fields, like the didactic-pedagogical, which has boundaries beyond the physical school space. In this scenario, this research focuses on "new" modalities of teaching/learning practiced on the internet, in which are present discourse genres that are uncommon in the didactic-pedagogical sphere. The selected corpus are didactical posts from the vestibular preparation course Descomplica. The analysis is centered on the presence of humor generating genres, especially the meme, in these teaching/learning practices. It is of our interest the presence of humor as a didactical resource in the teaching relations and possible modifications of this presence when we think about the history of the relations in teaching/learning environments. In this context, other discussions were raised, like the own understanding of meme as a discourse genre; the discursive memory of school space, student and teacher; and the "use" of discourse genres in mother tongue teaching. What could be perceived, through the analysis, is that available resources, and their respective ways of presentation, dialogue with what we had, in the last few decades, in the face-to-face vestibular preparation courses in Brazil: teachers who use jokes and other humor resources in their discourse. In the blog, this humor discourse takes ... (Complete abstract click electronic access below) / Mestre