That's not funny, that's sick: Humor, leadership, and gender

Purpose. The purposes of this study were to determine the categories of humor that male and female educational leaders found most appealing, and to compare the attitudes of male and female educational leaders about the importance of humor in leadership.; Methodology. This was an exploratory descriptive study which used a researcher-developed, two-part instrument. A seven-point Likert scale was used for all responses, with additional space provided for voluntary comments. All scaled data were analyzed using the t-test, and verified by use of the Mann-Whitney U (for non-normal distributions). Additional qualitative data were gathered from the voluntary comments.; Findings. Male respondents demonstrated a statistically significant preference for humor in both the superiority and relief categories at the .10 level. Statistically significant differences (at the .05 level) were found when comparing attitudes toward the importance of humor in leadership.; Conclusions. Both genders strongly agreed that humor is an important component of educational leadership, but neither could agree on what was funny. While females demonstrated no category preference, when they found something to be funny, they consistently rated it funnier than did the males. Implications of job stress were also examined.