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Abstract
While many behaviors have been tied to status processes, humor has largely been ignored despite its overwhelming presence within interaction. Humor is theoretically relevant to group dynamics as it may be conditioned by and/or a way of negotiating status structures. The goal of this project is to further develop a sociological theory of humor. This goal is pursued on twofronts, both theoretically and methodologically. Theoretically, this paper extends Robinson and Smith-Lovin (2001) by exploring how characteristics about individuals and groups effect humor usage. Results indicate that humor attempts, successes, and the type of humor used are related toindividual-level and group-level characteristics. Methodologically, this paper investigates the implications of analytic choice by comparing results obtained through event history and hierarchical linear modeling techniques. Results of the methodological comparison revealed substantial overlap between the analyses. Overall, this research emphasizes how micro-level interactional processes can be conditioned by macro-level structures.