Effect of the target and ambivalent attitudes on the appreciation of humor targeting men and women.
Résumé
Sexist humor (a form of humor that disparages a target based on gender), may promote discrimination (Ford et al., 2014). The present study aimed at demonstrating that 1/ the
appreciation and aversiveness of sexist humor targeting men and women depends of
gender (in- group/out-group) and adherence to stereotypes, 2/ prejudices towards
women predict the evaluation of the jokes targeting women.
College students (N=181) completed the Ambivalent sexism Inventory measuring
prejudices towards women (Glick & Fiske, 2001) and stereotypes adhesion towards
men and women (Gender Role Stereotypes Scale, Mills et al. 2018). One month later,
they rated four jokes targeting men or women based on their perceived appreciation
and aversiveness.
Results : The effect of the gender disparaged by the jokes and the effect of reading the
sexist jokes on prejudices were controlled. Results revealed that the more participants
(men and women) presented prejudices about women, the more they appreciated jokes
targeting women (β = .392, t(159) = 5.36, p < .001) and the less they evaluated them as
being aversive (β = -.319, t(158) = -4.22, p < .001). Women also presented a higher
appreciation and inferior aversiveness for jokes targeting men than the same jokes
targeting women (t(179) = 3.95, p < .001 , d = .58) while this difference was not found for
men for both appreciation and aversiveness (ps > .16). Results will be discussed
regarding the scientific literature, especially the prejudiced norm theory (Ford et al.,
2004) and the normative window of prejudices (Crandall et al., 2013).