Positive Humor and Work Withdrawal Behaviors: The Role of Stress Coping Styles in the Hotel Industry Amid COVID-19 Pandemic

Working in the hospitality industry is stressful due to the intensive workload and extended work hours; this stress has increased after the COVID-19 pandemic due to high levels of job insecurity, downsizing, and laying off procedures. Employees in the hotel industry can deal with stress positively by utilizing task-coping styles or negatively by emotion- and avoidance-coping styles. Building on the transactional theory of stress and coping, and the benign violation theory of humor, the current study explores the relationships between positive humor and work withdrawal behaviors with the mediating effects of coping styles. A total of 407 hotel employees participated, and the obtained data were analyzed by structural equation modeling with partial least squares (PLS). The results asserted that affiliative humor is able to reduce coping with stresses via the negative styles and to increase coping with stresses via the positive style. The results also demonstrated the ability of task-coping in reducing work withdrawal behavior. Significant insights into theoretical and practical implications are further discussed.

The Feeling of "Face" in Confucian Society: From a Perspective of Psychosocial Equilibrium

Previous research on the feeling of “face” has long described “face” as a complicated phenomenon in Confucian societies. Indeed, the feeling of face is highly context dependent. One may have very different (having or losing) face perception if the same face event occurs in a different context. To better capture the features of how face is felt, effects on possible responses need to be considered. Therefore, this article adopts a perspective of psychosocial equilibrium to elaborate people’s feeling of face in Taiwan, a Confucian society. The first section illustrates the concept of psychosocial equilibrium and its psychodynamic effects on people’s feeling of face. Then, the second section of this article takes positive social situations (having face events) as backdrop to exhibit how people balance their psychosocial equilibrium with different relationships. Following the positive social situations, the third section of this article then focuses on the negative situations (losing face events) to explain how losing face is felt due to unbalance of psychosocial equilibrium with one’s relation in that specific context.