Carey (00:07):

Hello, and welcome to Carey Sperry, All Social Ya'll podcast. I'm your host, Carey Sperry and All Social Y'all. We discuss how to employ social, to become truly customer centric. We identify how social is a fuel for business growth. And we talk with some of the best and brightest business leaders, entrepreneurs, and digital marketers, our guests, Sarah inspiring stories and effective tactics to discover, interact, and emotionally connect with customers where they are on social platforms.

Carey (00:45):

Hello, and welcome everyone to episode 31. And I have such a special guest today. I've been so excited to connect and speak with her. Name is Catherine Caldwell-Harris. She is professor of psychology at Boston University. One of my favorite cities. She specializes in cross-cultural psychology and bilingualism. She was trained at the UC San Diego until 1991 has been a faculty member at BU ever since.  But I want to also quickly thank the very talented musician and singer Gustavo Trebien for sharing his gorgeous singing of Alanis Morissette's song, You Learn, played in the middle of this episode.  For the full version I strongly recommend you go to his YouTube Channel via this link!  https://youtu.be/3K64yY8OLi8

Welcome Catherine. Thank you so much for being with us today. Thank you, Carey. Pleasure to be here.

Carey (01:26):

Can you tell us a little about yourself and your work in your own words? A little more than I I described? Oh, well, I've been, I've done a lot of research on cross-cultural psychology and along with cross cultural psychology comes the issue of what happens when people immigrate to a new country. There's interesting issues of acculturation.

Dr. Caldwell-Harris (01:52):

There's interesting issues of learning a new language. One aspect of learning a new language is that when you become proficient, you still can feel like you're missing nuances in the language. And bilinguals often report that humor is a real challenge and especially difficult. So that was a topic I was drawn to and has led me to learn more about how humor works in the brain.

Carey (02:20):

Very cool. And that's what we're going to talk about today is incorporating humor into your social media content strategy and advertising strategy. But as I mentioned, well, I don't know if I mentioned it here to our listeners, but I discovered you from an article in the Boston Globe, you are quoted that "humor is used a lot during war time. For one reason, it has a lot of power to bring people together." And I just thought that was such a great way to put it. Can you tell us kind of what makes you say that?

Dr. Caldwell-Harris (03:00):

Well, a big theme in human evolution is how we can bond with members of our in group, but also be skeptical and wary of our outgroup. Certainly historically outgroup members would want to exploit us, even enslave us, go to war against us. And a whole group is needed to be united in order to win these battles. So how can you unite people? There's lots of different mechanisms for uniting people. One of them is religion. We can talk about it -- that's a whole topic of itself....sort of feelings of nationalism, anything that can bring you together as a group, but it seems that when you're in your group exchanging jokes, there's this real feeling of bonding and group cohesion and exactly how humor causes this isn't completely clear, but there is evidence that humor generally does something kind of interesting. It does two things at the same time, that sound kind of opposite

Dr. Caldwell-Harris (03:54):

It activates us; wakes up our autonomic nervous system, so that we're alert. And then it also relaxes us in the sense of making us feel secure and calm. So it's actually a lot like one of our favorite drugs, coffee, which both stimulates us and also makes us feel relaxed. So when we're using humor, it basically helps regulate our emotions. It makes us feel good when we're feeling good, we're starting to feel good about each other. And that leads to the pleasant feelings and a banter that people can have in groups where each person's playing off another person's prior remark. And there's a feeling of good cheer among everyone.

Carey (04:33):

Awesome. Yes, that is so true. And I didn't thought about it that way, but you know, I always say that social media is a way that people and companies can really just extend the face to face conversation. And that humor is also something that can be found outside of face to face interactions. It isn't just the kids who are making, like in saying funny things on social media to capture the attention of many. I think this might be a shift in culture here in America where we're responding more now than even in 2019 to funny content. And so I urge businesses to think about incorporating it into their strategy where it makes sense. And like the big insurance companies are doing a great job. I've noticed in the TV ads and many other industries as well, but like Jake with State Farm and Progressive with Flow and Allstate has their Mayhem commercials. What are your thoughts kind of around that?

Dr. Caldwell-Harris (05:33):

Look, I think it's fascinating that humor is such a recent addition to the arsenal of advertising tactics. Why haven't advertisers years ago, figured out how well humor can capture attention, galvanize us and make us think, make us pay attention? I think historically what happened was when advertising began --widespread mass advertising, with radio first, and then soon after in the early and mid 20th century, it was very important for businesses to convince people that advertising was acceptable, that it's actually acceptable to get information from someone you don't know, from a strange leaflet or radio message. And so it was important to be very authoritative and to focus on content, to get people to even accept advertising. Well, that's a century ago now. And of course advertising is part of our everyday life. So it's actually a little surprising that advertisers didn't discover humor until recently, but I kind of understand the historical background to it. That authoritative aspect was so important.

Carey (06:40):

Yeah. Cool. Yes. And it really captures the attention, which is so tough to do on social media. So that being said, what should businesses keep in mind when they're trying to figure out how to incorporate?

Dr. Caldwell-Harris (06:57):

Well, I'm a huge fan of using humor and advertising because it is a natural way to get people's attention and humor. So interesting that it rewards us. One problem with a lot of ads is they're annoying. They're just a drag on our attention and we regret and are kind of angry about the time that our brains are captured by advertising. People want to fast forward through, as you know, don't want to pay attention, feel manipulated. The great thing about humor is that humor is inherently rewarding. There are -- one of the main theories of humor involves reward . The idea that during evolution, our brains needed to detect errors in information processing. This is the theory that when our brain detects an error, it’s is a mistake in the conclusions that we've come to. We actually reward -- our brain rewards itself with a squirt of Dopamine into the nucleus acumbens or the reward centers of the brain.

Carey (07:55):

So humor, when you detect a mistake, you actually get a little jolt of Dopamine. So the way humor takes advantage of this is it sets up a context using just automatic associations where you're going to think that the, the whole meaning is going one direction. And then all of a sudden the script switches, and you realize that your prior assumption was wrong and you have to reconceptualize. The whole idea of what's being said to you being purposely miseading, this is called the incongruity resolution theory of humor. And the idea is that when your brain resolves that mistake you get that burst of Dopamine. So the point that I want to make here is that there's a key theory of humor is that we get rewarded with Dopamine. So to get back to advertising topic, I said, advertising is often exploitative and manipulative when we, we don't like being manipulated, having to watch ads, but when ads use humor, they are giving us a reward. And in way, it's of like this introduces some equality into the interaction. Hey, if you pay attention to me and record my product name, I'm going to reward you with a little joke that will give you a burst of Dopamine.

Carey (09:07):

Yeah. Sometimes my husband comes up to me with his phone and says, watch this. He replays it. And I mean, you know, cause he wants me to laugh, right? So, so Catherine, that's very interesting. What, what should businesses keep in mind then?

Dr. Caldwell-Harris (09:24):

Well, as I said, I'm a fan of businesses using humor in their advertising. But one thing to keep in mind is that a key part of humor, one of the key theories of humor is called derogation theory. This is the idea that we get, we feel extra pleasure, an actual award when the joke being made is at the expense of a member of an outgroup, a stigmatized minority or someone that we don't associate with. And that the function of humor in this case is making the in group look good; the idea of putting down the outgroup. This is the basis of ethnic humor. A lot of sexual jokes draw upon putting someone down, which makes ourselves feel good.

Dr. Caldwell-Harris (10:03):

And because these aspects of humor areso deeply intertwined, all of them are in the works. I want businesses to being very careful when they use humor to avoid falling into the trap of getting, adding in some of the outgroup, - the denigration aspects.

Carey (10:22):

Hm, yes. Super important. So what, what are some ways to avoid that then?

Dr. Caldwell-Harris (10:29):

If advertisers can just keep in mind that the main way that humor works is first group cohesion, making people feel good about being member of group, but also keep in mind, incongruity resolution, just focus on the reward aspect of bringing together two opposing scripts and pointing out an incongruity and letting people laugh over them - focus on that. And that can keep advertisers away from brushing up against the putting-people-down aspect of humor.

Carey (11:15):

How have you noticed with COVID-19 has affected people's sense of humor?

Dr. Caldwell-Harris (11:21):

Well, early on in the COVID epidemic, it was observed that South Korea was trying to post some humorous ads and actually trying to get teens and young adults to go on social media and use humor to do things like mask wearing and social distancing. And then the teens started picking up on it and making some humorous TikTok and other posts that were actually kind of mean, and that weren't so nice. And there was a lot of discussion over this saying, isn't it bad that these teens are making fun of some aspects of COVID? However, most of the (in my observation), most of the jokes about COVID have been pretty positive and it seems to serve the purpose of bringing the group together and actually encouraging good behavior like the mask wearing and social distancing.

Dr. Caldwell-Harris (12:14):

So while teens and young adults have been so good at trying to use humor in the COVID epidemic, it's been really important too, to try to find a way to increase group cohesion and make everybody feel like we're all in this together and we all need to work together. But second, when you use humor, you really get people's attention and you're relevant. So when people use social media, they want to get eyeballs, they want to feel relevant. So if COVID is what everyone's talking about, then humor about COVID is going to be a natural outcome.

CareySpeaker 1 (12:50):

Yeah. I follow this guy on TikkTok that it's more subtle. He is - it's obvious that he's quarantined. Cause he films all his TikTok videos from his home and he's a young adult. I think he's in like his early thirties and he's he plays a dad and he makes funny dad remarks and talking to his kids. And in real life, he's not even a dad, but he it's hilarious. And it just it's like, like you say, it's relevant, but it's around COVID but it's not necessarily in your face, COVID, it's more subtle. So it's done in a lot of different ways. So what you know, around emotion - humor being one emotion. But what are some important aspects of emotion that comes from using language to make someone laugh? I think it's important for business owners and for them as marketers to remember that when advertising or branding it elicits emotion in a buyer and that's really important.

Dr. Caldwell-Harris (13:51):

So key thing about humor is that it gets us aroused and it wakes us up and makes it alert, alert, and it's pleasurable. So the emotion is basically one of pleasure. Researchers use the word "hedonic" state meaning a pleasurable state. Even even when the humor is denigrating others. You know, if we're in the in-group, we still feel good and we feel good about ourselves. So the emotion of humor actually – hm, let me switch gears. One of the useful things about the emotion that goes along with humor is that it helps our memory. So humor and laughter activates the autonomic nervous system, that's the fight or flight response, and we kind of wake up and we're alert whenever something arouses us whatever's going on then is more easily remembered. So the one thing to keep in mind for advertisers is that humor is a a good way to get memories laid down and strengthened and solidified. There was actually one funny study that my thesis advisor did back in the nineties where a researcher wanted to find out what do students in college classrooms remember from a lecture? Do they remember the main ideas or do they remember the actual literal words? It's like referring to  a surface content versus where the deep content. And so when I asked my advisor about that famous study, she said, you know, we didn't really write this in the results, but the actual main thing that students remembered was the jokes.

Carey (15:29):

Wow. That was going to be my next question is about learning ....that funny teachers get kids and people more engaged, but there is a lot of social media content that is to teach people things. Right?

Dr. Caldwell-Harris (15:43):

Right. So humor is going to help with that because humor rewards us. It keeps us staying with the material and wanting to learn more. I mean, so much of the way we learn things today draws on this. The last 15 years or so these political shows, for example, a lot of people's news and information about the world actually comes from learning from John Oliver or Stephen Colbert or some of the other famous talk shows.... People who incorporate so much humor into their content, but actually give you good information at the same time.

Carey (16:20):

Absolutely. Yes. I've seen some, even financial industry people and other more serious industries, I guess you could say that do short form video - like less than 60 seconds and they are teaching like how to save money or how to make a side hustle and they put it in a light and kind of humorous way. And then not in a way that, like you said earlier, that will annoy people. So it's very creative. There's a lot of ways that if you really sit down and think about it and you map out what is it that challenges my customer or my prospective customer? What is it that I want to teach them and what message do I want to get across to them? And, you know, breaking it down. Some people might say, you know what, I'm not funny, or I can't be funny.

Carey (17:16):

And I want to help you dismiss that and open up your mind and try to not judge yourself and your team and consider this, consider it because if you don't consider it, other people will and your competitors might get ahead. So, and you might even get (this is kind of a whole nother episode), but I've been reading that corporations are incorporating humor, exercises, team building, and creative sessions to stimulate helping people during their employees during COVID, relax; maybe not feel so stressed at work, maybe being more receptive to teamwork. There's all kinds of stuff that's being done in the corporate world now in the big corporate world. So that's another thing that you might hit two or three or four birds with one stone. So yes, I think it's so interesting. So, we're out of time, but Catherine Caldwell Harris, you have been amazing.

Carey (18:24):

I can't wait to get the show notes typed out and kind of reread over because you know, you're so knowledgeable. And I think that if people do refer to the show notes as well, that I post with every episode, it might kind of help you have some of these concepts sink in and kind of reflect on them to help you. Thank you so much for being with us today. I so appreciate your time. I know how busy you are. Thank you so much. It's my pleasure. Okay. Have a great day, everyone. Thanks for listening to the All Social Ya'll podcast. For free resources and materials, head over to all social y'all dot com. That's all social Y a L L.com. Also we'd love to hear from you. What subject areas would you like to hear about in future episodes? You can share that with us, by dropping me a comment on our website or in Instagram at all social y'all.