Sexist Humor and Sexual Aggression Against Women: When Sexist Men Act According to Their Own Values or Social Pressures

Abstract

Exposure to sexist humor creates a context in which some men feel comfortable expressing aggressive tendencies toward women (i.e., self-reported rape proclivity). This is in part because this type of humor makes it easier for men who have antagonistic attitudes toward women to express their prejudice without fear of social reprisal. Besides, previous research has demonstrated the influence of motivational variables such as autonomy (initiation or regulation of intentional behavior based on free choice) and control (acting under external pressure) on aggression. We conducted two experiments to explore the hypothetical influence of priming autonomy and control motivations on the relation between sexist humor and the expression of sexually aggressive tendencies toward women. Study 1 ( N = 108) revealed that control-primed men with high (vs. low) scores in hostile sexism reported a higher rape proclivity when exposed to sexist (vs. neutral) humor. These results were partially replicated in Study 2 ( N = 132), assessing the accessibility of aggressive sexual thoughts. This research contributes to our understanding of the influence of sexist humor and motivational orientations in sexist men on the expression of aggressive sexual behaviors directed against women.

I'm just joking! Perceptions of sexist humour and sexist beliefs in a Latin American context

“…On the other hand, men perceived less offensiveness and more funniness in sexist humour than women did (RQ2). Similar results were found by Ford, Woodzicka, et al (2015), Parrot and Hopp (2019) and Romero-Sánchez et al (2019). However, our results were gathered outside the laboratory, contributing to the external validity of results within this line of research.…”

“…Specifically, studies have shown that when exposed to sexist humour, men are more likely to accept this kind of humour than women, and also tend to perceive it as funnier and less offensive than women (Parrot & Hopp, 2019; Romero‐ Sánchez et al, 2019). Overall, research indicates that women feel more socially threatened by sexist humour than men, even when comparing with jokes in which both men and women were the targets (Lawless et al, 2020).…”

“Influencers” – a study investigating the messages people receive about coercive control on social media

“…This has also been referred to as Schadenfreude which means finding pleasure in another person's misfortune which fuels relational aggression (Erzi, 2020). Mallett et al (2016) also suggest that confronting sexist humour is difficult because of its interpretative ambiguity, whereby the target of the joke may be accused of lacking a sense of humour or being too sensitive This type of humour creates an environment in which individuals feel comfortable expressing antagonistic attitudes, without fear of social reprisal (Romero-S anchez et al, 2021), and this is intensified because of the distance that social media provides from the object of the humour.…”

P-Curve analysis of autonomous and controlling motivation priming effects supports their evidential value

“…Following a detailed examination, 13 of these studies were excluded. One study did not use p values (Vail III et al, 2020), two studies reported a key p value as significant that was not actually significant (Lu et al, 2017;Romero-Sánchez et al, 2019), six studies did not prime autonomous and controlling motivational states (Bargh et al, 2001;Custers & Aarts, 2005;Evans et al, 2014;Leander et al, 2011;Radel et al, 2013;Shah, 2003), two studies did not provide enough information to enable the calculation of a test statistic (necessary for conducting p-curve analysis; Milyavskaya & Koestner, 2011;Ntoumanis et al, 2014), one study included another manipulation in addition to the motivational prime (Hodgins et al, 2010), and one study did not actually test their hypothesis-upon testing it, we found it was non-significant (Radel et al, 2009). Thus, 30 studies were included in p-curve analysis (Fig.…”