You're Not Listening: What You're Missing and Why It Matters

by Kate Murphy

A vast body of evidence indicates humor is an asset in forming and maintaining relationships both professionally and personally. In work environments, successful attempts at humor lead to perceptions of competence and confidence.7 In romantic relationships, successful humor is a gauge of intimacy and security.8 But the operative word here is successful. Unsuccessful humor has the opposite effect. Taking an improv class taught me that people don’t so much have a fixed sense of humor as a variable ability to sense humor, depending on how well they listen. Whether telling jokes in front of a crowd at a comedy club or just trying to inject a little levity into a normal conversation, you won’t be funny unless you accurately read your audience. The cartoon and humor editor for Esquire and former New Yorker cartoon editor, Bob Mankoff, told me, “Dating is a ritual of getting to know another person well enough to laugh.” To have an inside joke, to be able to make someone smile even when that person is mad at you, to have license to let down your guard and be silly, requires the investment of listening. “You have to listen to them long enough to be able to repeat back something they said and put a funny twist on it and also to know what the lines are that you’d better not cross,” said Mankoff, who has a background in experimental psychology and has taught humor theory at Fordham University and Swarthmore College. Making a joke also involves being vulnerable. You’re putting yourself...