Nir Halevy
On Think Fast Talk Smart: Communication Techniques
“We discovered in our research that when you add to a CV sent to recruiters, we did it just one line of humor bragging in the CV gets significantly more callbacks from recruiters. When we analyzed four seasons of Shark Tank, we discovered that humor bragging actually works better than other types of humor.”
Think Fast Talk Smart: Communication Techniques · October 2026
Context
Halevy defines "humor bragging" as talking about your achievements in a funny way, so you come across as both competent and warm. Self-deprecating humor shows warmth but not competence, he says, and mocking competitors doesn't come across as relatable.
Transcript
…communication with me? Same thing when the distant leader engaged in concrete feedback. Why would you tell me about a type on page 27? Is that really your job to kind of check for that? So we really want to achieve this constrail fit to increase fluency, to increase effective communication.
…that's really powerful. So thank you. Many of us have heard of humble bragging. I've probably been guilty of doing that. But you and your co-authors did research into humorous bragging. How does humor bragging work? And how can job candidates, entrepreneurs, and others leverage humor bragging?
…happens when you're combining kind of two desirable standards of impression management. One is coming across as competent. Another one is coming across as relatable, as warm. And when you're talking about your achievements, your accomplishments in a way that's humorous, you're sending the message that you're kind of relatable colleague. We want to spend time with you. We want to get to know you. We discovered in our research that when you add to a CV sent to recruiters, we did it just one line of humor bragging in the CV gets significantly more callbacks from recruiters. When we analyzed four seasons of Shark Tank, we discovered that humor bragging actually works better than other types of humor. So self-effacing humor might show that you're relatable, but it doesn't speak to your achievements and accomplishments. It doesn't signal competence. When you're ridiculing your competition on the show, right, it doesn't come across as very relatable. Maybe you're more successful than your competitors, but really, To resonate with your audience, you want to come across as competent and warm. So…
I like this idea of using levity as a tool to demonstrate both competence and warmth. The very first concept that we teach in my strategic communication class is how to balance that tension of competence and warmth. They're both important. And using levity humor can help, and you studied it in some…
Yes.
One of the things that I think is so cool that you did is you've actually created a card game and you help people play it in your classes and in some of the consulting you
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