A Multimodal Approach to Humor Recognition and an Analysis of the Influence of Leader Humor on Team Performance in Major European Soccer Leagues

• Applicants: Professor Dr. Andreas König; Professor Dr.-Ing. Björn Schuller
• Subject Area: Accounting and Finance ; Image and Language Processing, Computer Graphics and Visualisation, Human Computer Interaction, Ubiquitous and Wearable Computing
• Term: since 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 461420398

In this project, scholars active in the fields of management and computerized psychometry take the unique opportunity to join their respective perspectives and complementary capabilities to address the overarching question of “How, why, and under which circumstances does leader humor affect team processes and team performance, and how can (leader) humor be measured on a large scale by applying automatic multimodal recognition approaches?”. Our project builds on the idea that our research questions and competences call for close collaboration. Trait humor, which is one of the most fundamental and complex phenomena in social psychology, has garnered increasing attention in management research. However, scholarly understanding of humor in organizations is still substantially limited, largely because research in this domain has primarily been qualitative, survey-based, and small scale. Notably, recent advances in computerized psychometry promise to provide unique tools to deliver unobtrusive, multi-faceted, ad hoc measures of humor that are free from the substantial limitations associated with traditional humor measures. Computerized psychometry scholars have long noted that a computerized understanding of humor is essential for the humanization of artificial intelligence. Yet, they have struggled to automatically identify, categorize, and reproduce humor. In particular, computerized approaches have suffered not only from a lack of theoretical foundations but also from a lack of complex, annotated, real-life data sets and multimodal measures that consider the multi-faceted, contextual nature of humor. We combine our areas of expertise to address these research gaps and complementary needs in our fields. Specifically, we substantially advance computerized measures of humor and provide a unique view into the contextualized implications of leader humor, drawing on the empirical context of professional soccer. Despite initial attempts to join computerized psychometry and management research, these two fields have not yet been successfully combined to address our overall research question. We aspire to fill this void as equal partners, united by our keen interest in humor, computerized psychometry, leader rhetoric, social evaluations, and team performance. We are committed to linking our highly complementary, discipline-crossing knowledge and methodologies. Our substantial prior contributions to basic science in management research and computerized psychometry will allow our symbiosis to develop novel and substantial contributions to each of our fields and beyond. Over the course of the project, we and our teams will work closely together to exchange data, co-develop tools and ideas, and publish the results of our research in highly regarded journals across both of our research domains.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: USA
• Cooperation Partners: Professor John Busenbark, Ph.D.; Professorin Cecily Cooper, Ph.D.; Professor Nathan Hiller, Ph.D.; Professor Mike Pfarrer, Ph.D.