An exploration of the relationships between elementary school teachers’ humor styles and their emotional labor

Teaching requires emotional labor. Humor is a promising but under-explored means of coping with such labor. A questionnaire was administered to 302 primary teachers to assess three kinds of emotional labor (surface, deep, and genuine acting) and four humor styles: two adaptive (affiliative and self-enhancing) and two maladaptive (aggressive and self-defeating). Affiliative and self-enhancing humor were positively correlated with emotional labor, whereas aggressive and self-defeating humor were negatively correlated with such labor. These results can help raise awareness of teaching’s emotional demands, and encourage teacher-training and professional-development programs to showcase appropriate ways, including humor, of coping with workplace emotions. •Primary teachers’ affiliative and self-enhancing humor had positive relationships with deep and genuine acting.•The same respondents’ aggressive humor and self-defeating humor were negatively correlated with genuine acting.•The results can help to raise awareness of teaching’s emotional demands.