Suppression of Adult Laughter: An Experimental Approach

Social Consequences of Disparagement Humor: A Prejudiced Norm Theory

“…By displaying cues of approval of disparagement humor, recipients might further encourage the person high in prejudice to adopt a noncritical mindset for interpreting the underlying derision and to perceive a shared norm of tolerance of discrimination in the immediate context. On the other hand, others can also decrease one's enjoyment of humor material by displaying cues of disapproval and disinterest (e.g., Chapman & Chapman, 1974;Osborne & Chapman, 1977;Young & Frye, 1966). Thus, we hypothesize that by displaying cues of disapproval of disparagement humor, recipients would prevent the person high in prejudice from switching to a noncritical humor mindset to interpret the humor and from perceiving a shared norm of tolerance of discrimination in the immediate context.…”

Effects of Sexist Humor on Tolerance of Sexist Events

“…Young and Frye (1966), for instance, found that a con fed er ate's laugh ter enhanced amusement of sex ist humor by fur ther relax ing the social taboos asso ci ated with the expres sion of sex ist sen timents. Sim i larly, expres sions of dis ap proval by one person have been shown to decrease another per son's enjoyment of humor mate rial (e.g., Chap man & Chap man, 1974;Osborne & Chap man, 1977). It is pos si ble, then, that by influ enc ing per cep tions of whether sex ist humor should be con sid ered in a crit i cal ver sus non crit i cal manner, other peo ple's reac tions to the humor could mod erate its effects on one's tol er ance of sex ist events.…”

Bilingual Couples in Conversation

“…In natural group interactions, Mehu and Dunbar observed that people tended to smile and laugh more when more people were involved in the interaction 329 10.2 Previous work on laughter and humour (2008: 1766). Moreover, the participants in Osborne and Chapman's (1977) study, who were exposed to identical humour stimuli, laughed the most when their partners responded with laughter, less often by themselves, and the least in the presence of partners who did not respond to the stimuli with laughter (in Glenn 2003: 26). In addition, laughing behaviour depends on the relationship between the conversational partners, since "facilitation is more likely to occur when the co-participant is a friend, classmate or familiar other; when the other is unfamiliar, inhibition more likely occurs" (Glenn 2003: 27).…”