Low system justification drives ideological differences in joke perception: A critical commentary and re-analysis of Baltiansky et al. (2020)

Abstract

A recent study by Baltiansky, Craig, & Jost (2020) tested two hypotheses related to system justification and the perception of stereotypical humor. They reported to have found evidence for a cross-over interaction, with judgments of jokes being contingent on a combination of the social status of the targets of jokes and raters’ system justification motivations. Here, we discuss the original analysis, presentation, and interpretation of the data in Baltiansky et al. (2020), before presenting a re-analysis of the authors’ shared data file. We show that the framing of claims such as “high system-justifiers found jokes targeting low-status groups (e.g., women, poor people, racial/ethnic minorities) to be funnier than low system-justifiers did” (p. 1) are misleading in their framing. Instead, our re-analyses suggest that ideological differences in joke perception are driven primarily by those scoring low on the system justification motivation rating jokes about ostensibly low-status groups as less funny than jokes about other social groups.

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“…As Ceci and Williams (2022) pointed out, many accurate interpretations of findings are still misleading because scholars are free to highlight and ignore different parts of the same information in their framing of the findings. Misleading-but-not-technically inaccurate interpretations of findings are not uncommon (for discussions of examples, see Blanton et al, 2009;Clark et al, , 2022Clark & Tetlock, 2021;Clark & Winegard, 2020;Dawson & Arkes, 2009;Purser & Harper, 2020;Sniderman & Tetlock, 1986;Wright et al, 2021), but these are not widely regarded as QRPs, nor would we expect many scholars to detect this tendency in themselves. Whereas Open Science practices can constrain QRPs that are easily detected with increased transparency, such as unplanned data exclusions and abuses of analyst degrees of freedom, ACs can help constrain subtler practices such as refusals to run certain tests, rigging methods, file drawering, and tendentious framing of conclusions.…”