I host solo.
My old friend and former roommate, Tony Hermann, is doing research on self-esteem. Recently, I asked him: Why are people with low self-esteem doormats? His answer is consistent with recent research in psychology that positives and negatives should be treated as distinct constructs and not as opposites along a single continuum. Said in a way […]
With Joel Warner. Adapted from our Wired.com post. The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy has a problem: Seven out of 10 pregnancies among unmarried 18-to-29-year-olds in this country are unplanned. The organization also has an unusual potential solution: comedy. Unlike the organization’s work with teens, the goal is not to get the […]
Funny sells Tomorrow, we leave Colorado to get a glimpse of the big business of humor. Although comedy can be found almost anywhere (as we discovered during our trip to Palestine) it’s most apparent where people have substantial resources to commit to creating – and enjoying – comedic entertainment. New York City is one of those places. […]
Why bother studying humor? Because it may be one of the most important topics of all. With Joel Warner (originally posted at Psychology Today; based on one of my earliest posts ) Humor has been around for as long as there has been humanity — and considering that chimps and other primates laugh, humor has […]
I recently spent a day in the West Bank city of Hebron. Simply put, Hebron is a wacky place. To put it’s wackiness into perspective, I mentioned to Jacob Gough, the new director of the Freedom Theater (which is in the refugee camp of Jenin – the location of a high-profile murder of its founder, […]
Recently, one of my papers, co-authored with Alex Todorov and Howard Kunreuther received some (good) press (NPR and Washington Post). The gist of the argument we make is that anti-terror policy in the U.S. (and I suspect elsewhere) is guided not only by a scientific assessment of risk, but also by the potential blame that […]
I teach an undergraduate Consumer Behavior course at the Leeds School of Business. On the first day of the course, I surveyed the class (mostly Juniors and Seniors) about their social media usage and their basic job market preparation. We are moving to a world where potential employers will type your name into Google after […]
With Joel Warner (Cross posted on The Humor Code’s Psychology Today blog) “Trying to define humor is one of the definitions of humor.” So said Saul Steinberg, someone who wielded humor so expertly that he became one of America’s most beloved cartoonists. If Steinberg didn’t need to define humor in order to use it beautifully, […]
