Peter McGraw

Last updated
Peter McGraw
Peter McGraw .jpg

Peter McGraw is an American professor of marketing and psychology at the University of Colorado Boulder. [1] As a behavioral scientist his research spans the fields of judgment and decision making, emotion, affect, mood, and behavioral economics. [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8]

Contents

McGraw's early work examined the interplay of judgment, emotion, and choice, with an emphasis on moral judgment, mixed emotions, and behavioral economics. [9] [10]

More recently[ when? ], McGraw has examined the antecedents and consequences of humor. With Caleb Warren, he has developed a theory of humor: the Benign Violation Theory. The theory suggests that humor occurs when a person simultaneously appraises a situation as wrong or threatening some way (i.e., a violation) and yet appraises the situation to be okay or acceptable in some way (i.e., benign). [11] His TEDx talk, "What makes things funny?" documents early insights from the benign violation theory.[ citation needed ]

In 2014, McGraw co-authored The Humor Code, a book about the science of humor and his travels around the world with journalist Joel Warner. [12] In 2015, McGraw created a live comedy game show—"Funny or True?"—which pits scientists against comedians to see who has the best blend of brains and funny bone. In 2018, McGraw launched a podcast "I'm not joking" that looks at the lives of comedians, improvisers, comedy writers, and other funny people from business, science, and the arts.[ citation needed ] In 2020, McGraw published his second book, Shtick to Business: What the Masters of Comedy can Teach You about Breaking Rules, Being Fearless, and Building a Serious Career. [13] [14]

Academic career

McGraw received his Ph.D. from The Ohio State University in 2002, at which time he pursued a post-doc at Princeton University with Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahneman. In 2004, he joined the faculty at the Leeds School of Business, University of Colorado Boulder. In 2008, he received an appointment (courtesy) in the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience. At the University of Colorado's Leeds School of Business, he teaches courses in marketing management and behavioral economics. He also teaches for executive MBA programs at London Business School and the Rady School of Management at UC San Diego. He directs the Humor Research Lab (HuRL) and co-directs a virtual research lab, the Moral Research Lab (MoRL) with Daniel Bartels.[ citation needed ]

In 2007, McGraw was named a Marketing Science Institute Young Scholar. [15]

Outside academic pursuits, McGraw, from 2004 to 2010, served as academic coordinator, assistant coach, and associate head coach of the men's lacrosse team at the University of Colorado. [16] He was the head coach of the men's lacrosse club at Princeton University from 2002 to 2004. [17]

The Humor Code

In 2011, McGraw and Joel Warner created "The Humor Code Project," a two-year, 91,000-mile global search for what makes things funny. Their travels took them to Tanzania, Scandinavia, Japan, Israel, Peru, and several other destinations in North America. McGraw and Warner authored The Humor Code, a book about their travels and the experiments they conducted along the way. [12] [18] The two maintained multiple blogs about their adventures on Wired , Huffington Post , and Psychology Today . [19] [20] [21] [22] McGraw's research and the book have been widely covered by the media, including the Wall Street Journal, NPR, MSNBC, The Boston Globe, Scientific American, The Atlantic, Denver Post, and others. [23] [24] [25] [26] [27] [28] [29] [18]

The funniest cities in the United States

McGraw and his Humor Code co-author Joel Warner worked with Adrian Ward and Caleb Warren, and other members of the Humor Research Lab to create the Humor Algorithm, which ranked the 50 funniest cities in America. The team collected data for the project:

The team also conducted an extensive survey with more than 900 residents from the top ten cities determined by the objective measures above. To glean a deeper understanding of humorous daily life in these cities, researchers asked residents about the entertainment they enjoyed, asked whether they looked for humor in their friends and lovers, and subjected them to a “Need for Levity” personality test. Chicago was deemed the funniest city in the United States. [30] [31] [32]

Solo-The Single Persons’ Guide to a Remarkable Life

In December 2019, McGraw launched his second podcast called "Solo-The Single Person’s Guide to a Remarkable Life". The podcast takes a positive view of single living. He interviews singles living remarkable lives and experts who provide advice to listeners. Notable guests include Kristin Newman, Neal Brennan, and Alonzo Bodden. [33]

Selected publications

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Humour</span> Tendency of experiences to provoke laughter and provide amusement

Humour or humor is the tendency of experiences to provoke laughter and provide amusement. The term derives from the humoral medicine of the ancient Greeks, which taught that the balance of fluids in the human body, known as humours, controlled human health and emotion.

<i>Psychological Review</i> Academic journal

Psychological Review is a bimonthly peer-reviewed academic journal that covers psychological theory. It was established by James Mark Baldwin and James McKeen Cattell in 1894 as a publication vehicle for psychologists not connected with the laboratory of G. Stanley Hall, who often published in his American Journal of Psychology. Psychological Review soon became the most prominent and influential psychology journal in North America, publishing important articles by William James, John Dewey, James Rowland Angell, and many others.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Elaboration likelihood model</span> Dual process theory

The elaboration likelihood model (ELM) of persuasion is a dual process theory describing the change of attitudes. The ELM was developed by Richard E. Petty and John Cacioppo in 1980. The model aims to explain different ways of processing stimuli, why they are used, and their outcomes on attitude change. The ELM proposes two major routes to persuasion: the central route and the peripheral route.

Daniel G. Goldstein is an American cognitive psychologist known for the specification and testing of heuristics and models of bounded rationality in the field of judgment and decision making. He is an honorary research fellow at London Business School and works with Microsoft Research as a principal researcher.

Social neuroscience is an interdisciplinary field devoted to understanding the relationship between social experiences and biological systems. Humans are fundamentally a social species, rather than solitary. As such, Homo sapiens create emergent organizations beyond the individual—structures that range from dyads, families, and groups to cities, civilizations, and cultures. In this regard, studies indicate that various social influences, including life events, poverty, unemployment and loneliness can influence health related biomarkers. The term "social neuroscience" can be traced to a publication entitled "Social Neuroscience Bulletin" which was published quarterly between 1988 and 1994. The term was subsequently popularized in an article by John Cacioppo and Gary Berntson, published in the American Psychologist in 1992. Cacioppo and Berntson are considered as the legitimate fathers of social neuroscience. Still a young field, social neuroscience is closely related to affective neuroscience and cognitive neuroscience, focusing on how the brain mediates social interactions. The biological underpinnings of social cognition are investigated in social cognitive neuroscience.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dan Ariely</span> Israeli-American professor of psychology and behavioral economics

Dan Ariely is an Israeli-American professor and author. He serves as a James B. Duke Professor of psychology and behavioral economics at Duke University. Ariely is the founder of the research institution The Center for Advanced Hindsight, as well as the co-founder of several companies implementing insights from behavioral science. Ariely's TED talks have been viewed over 15 million times. Ariely wrote an advice column called Ask Ariely in the WSJ for over ten years; he stepped away from the column at the end of 2022. Ariely is the author of the three New York Times best sellersPredictably Irrational, The Upside of Irrationality, and The Honest Truth about Dishonesty, as well as the books Dollars and Sense, Irrationally Yours – a collection of his The Wall Street Journal advice column Ask Ariely; and Payoff, a short TED book. Ariely appeared in several documentary films, including The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley and produced and participated in (Dis)Honesty: The Truth About Lies.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John T. Cacioppo</span> American academic

John Terrence Cacioppo was the Tiffany and Margaret Blake Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago. He founded the University of Chicago Center for Cognitive and Social Neuroscience and was the director of the Arete Initiative of the Office of the Vice President for Research and National Laboratories at the University of Chicago. He co-founded the field of social neuroscience and was member of the department of psychology, department of psychiatry and behavioral neuroscience, and the college until his death in March 2018.

There are many theories of humor which attempt to explain what humor is, what social functions it serves, and what would be considered humorous. Among the prevailing types of theories that attempt to account for the existence of humor, there are psychological theories, the vast majority of which consider humor to be very healthy behavior; there are spiritual theories, which consider humor to be an inexplicable mystery, very much like a mystical experience. Although various classical theories of humor and laughter may be found, in contemporary academic literature, three theories of humor appear repeatedly: relief theory, superiority theory, and incongruity theory. Among current humor researchers, there is no consensus about which of these three theories of humor is most viable. Proponents of each one originally claimed their theory to be capable of explaining all cases of humor. However, they now acknowledge that although each theory generally covers its own area of focus, many instances of humor can be explained by more than one theory. Similarly, one view holds that theories have a combinative effect; Jeroen Vandaele claims that incongruity and superiority theories describe complementary mechanisms which together create humor.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Philip E. Tetlock</span>

Philip E. Tetlock is a Canadian-American political science writer, and is currently the Annenberg University Professor at the University of Pennsylvania, where he is cross-appointed at the Wharton School and the School of Arts and Sciences. He was elected a Member of the American Philosophical Society in 2019.

Martin Reimann is a psychologist and marketing researcher. He is an associate professor of marketing at the Eller College of Management at the University of Arizona.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gary Berntson</span>

Gary Berntson is an emeritus professor at Ohio State University with appointments in the departments of psychology, psychiatry and pediatrics. He is an expert in psychophysiology, neuroscience, biological psychology, and with his colleague John Cacioppo, a founding father of social neuroscience. His research attempts to elucidate the functional organization of brain mechanisms underlying behavioral and affective processes, with a special emphasis on social cognition.

George Katona was a Hungarian-born American psychologist who was one of the first to advocate a rapprochement between economics and psychology.

Processing fluency is the ease with which information is processed. Perceptual fluency is the ease of processing stimuli based on manipulations to perceptual quality. Retrieval fluency is the ease with which information can be retrieved from memory.

Humor styles are a subject of research in the field of personality psychology that focuses on the ways in which individuals differ in their use of humor. People of all ages and cultures respond to humor, but their use of it can vary greatly. There are multiple factors, such as culture, age, and political orientation, that play a role in determining what people find humorous. Although humor styles can be somewhat variable depending on social context, they tend to be a relatively stable personality characteristic among individuals. Humor can play an instrumental role in the formation of social bonds, enabling people to relate to peers or to attract a mate, and can help to release tension during periods of stress. There is a lack of current, reliable research that explores the impact of humor usages on others because it is difficult to distinguish a healthy humor usage from one that is unhealthy. Justifications for harmful versus benign humor styles are subjective and lead to varying definitions of either usage.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jennifer Aaker</span> American psychologist, author, and professor

Jennifer Aaker is an American behavioural scientist and General Atlantic Professor and Coulter Family Fellow at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. She is known for her research on time, money, and happiness. Aaker also focuses on the transmission of ideas through social networks, the power of story in decision making, and how to build global brands across cultures. She is the recipient of the Distinguished Scientific Achievement Award from the Society for Consumer Psychology and the Stanford Distinguished Teaching Award.

In psychology, the positivity offset is a phenomenon where people tend to interpret neutral situations as mildly positive, and rate their lives as good, most of the time. The positivity offset stands in notable asymmetry to the negativity bias.

Joel Warner is an American author and journalist. He is the managing editor of The Lever investigative news outlet, and formerly worked as a staff writer for International Business Times and Westword. He has also written for Esquire, Wired, Men's Health, Men's Journal, Bloomberg Businessweek, The Boston Globe, Slate, Grantland, and other publications. He is co-author of the The Humor Code: A Global Search For What Makes Things Funny, and the forthcoming The Curse of the Marquis: A Notorious Scoundrel, A Mythical Manuscript, And The Biggest Scandal In Literary History.

The Good Judgment Project (GJP) is an organization dedicated to "harnessing the wisdom of the crowd to forecast world events". It was co-created by Philip E. Tetlock, decision scientist Barbara Mellers, and Don Moore, all professors at the University of Pennsylvania.

Vicarious embarrassment is the feeling of embarrassment from observing the embarrassing actions of another person. Unlike general embarrassment, vicarious embarrassment is not caused by participating in an embarrassing event, but instead by witnessing another person experience an embarrassing event. These emotions can be perceived as pro-social, and some say they can be seen as motives for following socially and culturally acceptable behavior.

A superforecaster is a person who makes forecasts that can be shown by statistical means to have been consistently more accurate than the general public or experts. Superforecasters sometimes use modern analytical and statistical methodologies to augment estimates of base rates of events; research finds that such forecasters are typically more accurate than experts in the field who do not use analytical and statistical techniques. The term "superforecaster" is a trademark of Good Judgment Inc.

References

  1. ↑ Colorado University profile page Retrieved April 20, 2010.
  2. ↑ "McGraw, A.P., Larsen, J.T., Kahneman, D., & Schkade, D. (2010). Comparing gains and losses. Psychological Science" (PDF). Retrieved 18 October 2018.
  3. ↑ "McGraw, A.P., Shafir, E., & Todorov, A. (2010). Valuing money and things: Why a $20 item can be worth more and less than $20. Management Science" (PDF). Retrieved 18 October 2018.
  4. ↑ "Levav, J., & McGraw, A.P. (2009). Emotional accounting: How feelings about money influence consumer choice. Journal of Marketing Research, 46, 66-80" (PDF). Retrieved 18 October 2018.
  5. ↑ McGraw, A.P., & Tetlock, P.E. (2005). Taboo trade-offs, relational framing and the acceptability of exchanges. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 15, 2-15.
  6. ↑ Larsen, J.T., McGraw, A.P., Mellers, B.A. & Cacioppo, J. (2004). The agony of victory and thrill of defeat: Mixed emotional reactions to disappointing wins and relieving losses. Psychological Science, 15, 325-330.
  7. ↑ McGraw, A.P., Tetlock, P.E., & Kristel, O.V. (2003). The limits of fungibility: Relational schemata and the value of things. Journal of Consumer Research, 30, 219-229.
  8. ↑ Larsen, J.T., McGraw, A.P., & Cacioppo, J. (2001). Can people feel happy and sad at the same time? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 81, 684-696.
  9. ↑ Persaud, Raj (2005). Go for Gold, Be Happy With Less. "Financial Times." Retrieved April 20, 2010.
  10. ↑ "McGraw, A.P., Mellers, B.A, & Tetlock, P.E. (2005). Expectations and emotions of Olympic athletes. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 41, 438-446" (PDF). Retrieved 18 October 2018.
  11. ↑ "McGraw, A.P. & Warren, C. (2010). Benign violations: Making immoral behavior funny. (2010). Psychological Science" (PDF). Retrieved 18 October 2018.
  12. 1 2 results, search (1 April 2014). The Humor Code: A Global Search for What Makes Things Funny. Simon & Schuster. ISBN   978-1451665413.
  13. ↑ McGraw, Peter (2020-04-14). "4 clever strategies from master comedians to help you succeed during COVID-19". Fast Company. Retrieved 2020-05-22.
  14. ↑ "Ideas in the Wild: How Peter McGraw is Helping Business Leaders Level Up with Lessons from the Masters of Comedy". Business 2 Community. Retrieved 2020-05-22.
  15. ↑ List of Marketing Science Institute Young Scholars for 2007. Archived 2010-09-29 at the Wayback Machine Retrieved April 20, 2010.
  16. ↑ http://cuindependent.com/2009/08/24/3139/ Knabenbauer, Ron (2009). Lacrosse coach steps down: Men’s club lacrosse coach leaves program after seven years. CUIndependent.com. Retrieved April 20, 2010.
  17. ↑ Grabowski, Carly (2005). Men's club lacrosse among nation's best. "Daily Princetonian." Retrieved April 20, 2010.
  18. 1 2 ""The Humor Code" takes unlikely Colorado pair around the world". 27 March 2014. Retrieved 18 October 2018.
  19. ↑ Warner, Joel (2011). One Professor’s Attempt to Explain Every Joke Ever. "Wired." Retrieved May 27, 2012.
  20. ↑ McGraw, A.P. & Warner, J. (2012). The Humor Code. "Wired." Retrieved May 27, 2012.
  21. ↑ McGraw, A.P. & Warner, J. (2012). The Humor Code. "Huffington Post." Retrieved May 27, 2012.
  22. ↑ McGraw, A.P. & Warner, J. (2012). The Humor Code. "Psychology Today." Retrieved May 27, 2012.
  23. ↑ Adams, Russell (2011). How About Never—Is Never Good for You? Celebrities Struggle to Write Winning Captions. "Wall Street Journal." Retrieved October 24, 2012.
  24. ↑ Taranto, James (2010). Political Stooges. "Wall Street Journal." Retrieved October 24, 2012.
  25. ↑ Vedantam, Shankar (2011). To Dodge Blame, Officials Prepare Public For Worst. "NPR." Retrieved October 24, 2012.
  26. ↑ Bryner, Jeanna (2010). Science explains the gross-out comedy. "NBC News." Retrieved October 24, 2012.
  27. ↑ Baker, Billy (2011). The science of laughter. "The Boston Globe." Retrieved October 24, 2012.
  28. ↑ Baker, Billy (2011). Low-Level Moral Transgressions Make Us Laugh. "Scientific American." Retrieved October 24, 2012.
  29. ↑ Khazan, Olga (27 February 2014). "The Dark Psychology of Being a Good Comedian". The Atlantic . Retrieved 18 October 2018.
  30. ↑ Roberts, Sam (2014-04-19). "So These Professors Walk Into a Comedy Club ..." The New York Times. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved 2020-05-22.
  31. ↑ "These Are the 10 Funniest Cities in America". Time. Retrieved 2020-05-22.
  32. ↑ Berkowitz, Joe (2014-04-22). "Infographic: These Are The Funniest (And Least Funny) Cities In America". Fast Company. Retrieved 2020-05-22.
  33. ↑ "Solo – The Single Person's Guide to a Remarkable Life on Apple Podcasts". Apple Podcasts. Retrieved 2020-05-22.
  34. ↑ McGraw, A.P., Warren, C., Williams, L., & Leonard, B., (2012). Too close for comfort, or too far to care? Finding humor in distant tragedies and close mishaps. Psychological Science. Retrieved October 24, 2012.
  35. ↑ McGraw, A.P., Schwartz, J. & Tetlock, P. (2012). From the commercial to the communal: Reframing taboo trade-offs in religious and pharmaceutical marketing. Journal of Consumer Research. Retrieved October 24, 2012.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.