ASSOCIATION FOR CONSUMER RESEARCH Labovitz School of Business & Economics, University of Minnesota Duluth, 11 E. Superior Street, Suite 210, Duluth, MN 55802 The Influence of Humor on Sharing Caleb Warren, Bocconi University, Italy Jonah Berger, University of Pennsylvania, USA We explore the influence of humor on social transmission. Drawing from the benign violation theory of humor, we show that violation severity and benignity jointly influence the perceived humor and, consequently, the virality of youtube videos and text messages. The relationship between humor and sharing may depend on the recipient. [to cite]: Caleb Warren and Jonah Berger (2011) ,"The Influence of Humor on Sharing", in NA - Advances in Consumer Research Volume 39, eds. Rohini Ahluwalia, Tanya L. Chartrand, and Rebecca K. Ratner, Duluth, MN : Association for Consumer Research, Pages: 712-713. [url]: http://www.acrwebsite.org/volumes/1009247/volumes/v39/NA-39 [copyright notice]: This work is copyrighted by The Association for Consumer Research. For permission to copy or use this work in whole or in part, please contact the Copyright Clearance Center at http://www.copyright.com/.