A joke is just a joke (except when it isn't): Cavalier humor beliefs facilitate the expression of group dominance motives.

Abstract

Past research reveals preferences for disparaging humor directed toward disliked others. The group-dominance model of humor appreciation introduces the hypothesis that beyond initial outgroup attitudes, social dominance motives predict favorable reactions toward jokes targeting low-status outgroups through a subtle hierarchy-enhancing legitimizing myth: cavalier humor beliefs (CHB). CHB characterizes a lighthearted, less serious, uncritical, and nonchalant approach toward humor that dismisses potential harm to others. As expected, CHB incorporates both positive (affiliative) and negative (aggressive) humor functions that together mask biases, correlating positively with prejudices and prejudice-correlates (including social dominance orientation [SDO]; Study 1). Across 3 studies in Canada, SDO and CHB predicted favorable reactions toward jokes disparaging Mexicans (low-status outgroup). Neither individual difference predicted neutral (nonintergroup) joke reactions, despite the jokes being equally amusing and more inoffensive overall. In Study 2, joke content targeting Mexicans, Americans (high-status outgroup), and Canadians (high-status ingroup) was systematically controlled. Although Canadians preferred jokes labeled as anti-American overall, an underlying subtle pattern emerged at the individual-difference level: Only those higher in SDO appreciated those jokes labeled as anti-Mexican (reflecting social dominance motives). In all studies, SDO predicted favorable reactions toward low-status outgroup jokes almost entirely through heightened CHB, a subtle yet potent legitimatizing myth that "justifies" expressions of group dominance motives. In Study 3, a pretest-posttest design revealed the implications of this justification process: CHB contributes to trivializing outgroup jokes as inoffensive (harmless), subsequently contributing to postjoke prejudice. The implications for humor in intergroup contexts are considered.

The Role of Peers in Predicting Students' Homophobic Behavior: Effects of Peer Aggression, Prejudice, and Sexual Orientation Identity Importance

“…First, this finding could align with prior reports from some adolescents that they use homophobic epithets as part of banter among friends (Korobov, 2004;Pascoe, 2007;Phoenix et al, 2003), or other findings that some adolescents and adults express prejudice attitudes through humor (Guerin, 2003;Hodson, Rush, & MacInnis, 2010). Indeed, many of these studies have highlighted the occurrence of homophobic banter particularly among boys, which could also relate to our finding that boys reported more homophobic behavior than girls, as in other prior studies (Mata et al, 2010;Poteat et al, 2012).…”

Too much experience: A desensitization bias in emotional perspective taking.

“…Pretest Results of the Percentage of People Who Chose Each Joke as the Funniest From the List Provided % of participants who chose Joke (from Hodson, Rush, & Maclnnis, 2010) joke as funniest Chicken joke: A man went for a meal at a chicken restaurant. He asked the manager, "How do you prepare the chickens?"…”

Why do right-wing adherents engage in more animal exploitation and meat consumption?

“…For instance, both broad legitimizing myths such as modern or symbolic racism (Pratto et al, 1994;Sidanius & Pratto, 1999) and more specific beliefs such as outgroup dehumanization (Costello & Hodson, 2010) and cavalier humor beliefs (Hodson, Rush, & MacInnis, 2010) have been identified as mediators between SDO and expressed outgroup bias. Such legitimizing myths typically promote rejection and exploitation of low-status groups (Pratto et al, 1994;Sidanius & Pratto, 1999; see also Hodson et al, 2010;, in our case non-human animals. Therefore, we hypothesized that, in addition to perceived vegetarianism threat, those higher in SDO are expected to feel more entitled to exploit animals and eat meat as a result of holding greater human supremacy beliefs.…”