Leaders are frequently put in the difficult position of repudiating critical questions in front of their followers. To help manage this situation, leaders sometimes express laughter in the hopes that it will "lubricate" their interaction and reduce perceptions that they are aggressive or confrontational with the critical questioner. Ironically, leaders' laughter may backfire by diminishing their apparent friendliness and approachability in the eyes of the witnessing followers. In this article, we employ an emotional aperture perspective to examine two seemingly contradictory theoretical perspectives regarding the potential impact of laughter on the witnessing followers' perception of a leader's warmth and effectiveness. Findings from nine studies across 2,012 adults show that leader laughter-even expressed briefly-bolsters or damages leader effectiveness depending on one important contingency: whether the leader's laughter is shared by the questioner. Unshared laughter reduces leader effectiveness by undermining leaders' apparent warmth, while shared laughter increases leader effectiveness by enhancing leaders' apparent warmth. We discuss implications for the literature on emotion expression, leadership events, and leader perception and influence. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

中文翻译：

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领导者在火线中大笑：从情绪孔径角度看待领导者在回答关键问题时的笑声。


领导者经常陷入在追随者面前否认关键问题的困境。为了帮助应对这种情况，领导者有时会表现出笑声，希望这能“润滑”他们的互动，并减少他们对批评性提问者具有攻击性或对抗性的看法。具有讽刺意味的是，领导者的笑声可能会适得其反，因为会削弱他们在目击追随者眼中明显的友善和平易近人。在本文中，我们采用情感孔径视角来检验两种看似矛盾的理论观点，即笑声对见证追随者对领导者热情和有效性的感知的潜在影响。对 2,012 名成年人进行的 9 项研究的结果表明，领导者的笑声（甚至是短暂的表达）会增强或损害领导者的效率，具体取决于一个重要的意外事件：提问者是否分享领导者的笑声。不分享的笑声会削弱领导者表面上的热情，从而降低领导者的效率，而共同的笑声会通过增强领导者表面上的热情来提高领导者的效率。我们讨论了关于情绪表达、领导事件以及领导者感知和影响力的文献的含义。 （PsycInfo 数据库记录 (c) 2024 APA，保留所有权利）。