Work–life conflict is a ubiquitous challenge for employees juggling work and family roles, yet little research has examined individual strategies to manage and mitigate its negative effects. We direct attention in this literature to a common-yet-understudied practical strategy: humor. Further, we take next steps in this literature to distinguish between co-worker and employees' own use of coping humor. Integrating benign violation theory with the transactional theory of stress and coping, we develop and test a theoretical model of how both individual and co-worker coping humor may buffer the negative effects of work–life conflict on stress and subsequent withdrawal. In Study 1, we conducted an experiment to examine the causal effects of humor on the stress appraisals arising from work–life conflict. In Study 2, we conducted a three-wave survey to replicate these findings and disentangle the contributions of individual coping humor and co-worker humor. We found opposing effects of individual coping humor and co-worker humor; we further replicated and unpacked the unexpected stress-amplifying effects of co-worker humor in a post-hoc exploratory Study 3. Overall, these results suggest that we need to consider where humor is situated in order to understand when humor mitigates the negative consequences of work–life conflict on stress and withdrawal.

工作与生活的冲突对于杂耍工作和家庭角色的员工来说是一个普遍存在的挑战，但是很少有研究研究个体策略来管理和减轻其负面影响。在这篇文献中，我们将注意力转向了一个尚未被人们普遍理解的实践策略：幽默。此外，我们将在本文献中采取下一步措施，以区分同事和员工自己对应付幽默的使用。将良性侵犯理论与压力和应对的交易理论相结合，我们开发并测试了一个理论模型，该模型探讨了个人和同事应对幽默如何缓冲工作与生活冲突对压力和随后退缩的负面影响。在研究1中，我们进行了一项实验，研究幽默对因工作与生活冲突而产生的压力评估的因果关系。在研究2中，我们进行了三波调查，以复制这些发现，并弄清个人应对幽默和同事幽默的贡献。我们发现个人应对幽默和同事幽默的对立效果。我们在事后探索性研究3中进一步复制并解开了同事幽默的意料之外的压力放大效应。总的来说，这些结果表明，我们需要考虑幽默的位置，以了解幽默何时减轻了幽默的负面影响。因压力和退缩而产生的工作与生活冲突。