Time-lagged survey reveals leader humor promotes follower thriving through coworker humor and team-member exchange in real estate employees, highlighting social ripple effects.
Based on social information processing theory and role congruity theory, this study explores dual serial mediation mechanisms linking leader humor to follower thriving at work and examines the moderating effect of follower gender. A three-wave time-lagged survey design was utilized to gather data from 307 employees across five real estate companies in South China. Serial mediation and moderated regression analyses were conducted to test the hypothesized model. Results showed that leader humor was positively correlated with follower thriving at work. This relationship was serially mediated via two pathways: (1) follower humor and team–member exchange (TMX); and (2) coworker humor and TMX. Contrary to expectations, the interaction of leader humor and follower gender on follower humor was not statistically significant. This research advances the literature by uncovering TMX as a pivotal mediating mechanism between leader humor and employee thriving, and by confirming two differentiated social exchange pathways that are consistent with the ripple-like social influence of leader humor in work teams. The findings highlight leader humor as an important socioemotional resource linked to positive team dynamics, with practical implications for management.
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Chen et al. (2026) studied this question.