Mediation and moderation in ratings of hostile jokes by men and women

Abstract

Two studies were conducted to examine sex differences in enjoyment of hostile jokes targeting men and women with a focus on examining mediation effects of masculinity and femininity and moderation effects of the jokes' offensiveness. These studies continued to support men and women enjoying jokes targeting the opposite sex more so than jokes targeting the same sex. However, in Study 1, masculinity and femininity mediated these differences for men with higher masculinity related to greater enjoyment of the female hostile jokes and higher femininity related to greater enjoyment of the male hostile jokes. Masculinity alone mediated the differences for women with higher masculinity related to greater enjoyment of the female-targeted jokes and yet, no relationship existed with femininity. In Study 2, both men and women rated the female-targeted jokes as more offensive than the male-targeted jokes. A moderation effect for the jokes' offensiveness occurred for women who rated highly offensive maletargeted jokes funnier than highly offensive female-targeted jokes. No effect for offensiveness occurred for men; men rated both offensive female-targeted and male-targeted jokes equally funny even though they rated the female jokes as more offensive.

On sarcasm, social awareness, and gender

“…Her results demonstrate that participants showing preference for high hostile sexism viewed wife beating as more acceptable and blamed the wife for eliciting the beating. In contrast, participants showing preference for high benevolent sexism, being protective of women, blamed the husband for the beating (see also Abel and Flick 2012;Ford 2000;Greenwood and Isbell 2002;Thomas and Esses 2004).…”

Humor norms for 4,997 English words

“…Whether or not it is unique to humans, humor has well-documented influences on well-being and health, including self-concept, coping with stress, and positive affect (Cann & Collette, 2014 ; Galloway & Cropley, 1999 ; Martin et al, 1993 ; Mora-Ripoll, 2011 ). Humor research also contains a wide body of literature concerned with understanding adult and child personality development (Martin, 1998 ; McGhee, 1971 ) and gender differences (Abel, & Flick, 2012 ; Hay, 1995 ; Mickes, Walker, Parris, Mankoff, & Christenfeld, 2012 ). The latter associated with the evolutionary hypothesis that humor plays a role in male mating displays (McGee & Shevlin, 2009 ), and which is further supported by gender differences in response to humor in the brain (Azim, Mobbs, Jo, Menon, & Reiss, 2005 ; see also Goel & Dolan, 2001 ).…”

Is it sexy to be sexist? How stereotyped humor affects romantic attraction

“…Additionally, future research could account for key individual differences. Attitudes toward casual sex (Medlin et al, 2018), hostile sexism (Greenwood & Isbell, 2002; Hall & Canterberry, 2011), masculinity (Abel & Flick, 2012), and gender identity (LaFrance & Woodzicka, 1998) would likely determine whether women would laugh at a man's sexist joke. Furthermore, apart from limiting our sample to single individuals, variation in participants' dating histories was not accounted for, and this could play a role in their receptiveness to various types of humor used in flirtation.…”

“…To the extent that men seem less affiliative and more aggressive when they tell sexist jokes about women, they may also seem less warm (Cann et al, 2016). Jokes making fun of women are often deemed less funny and more offensive than anti‐men jokes (Abel & Flick, 2012; Ford, 2000), and unfunny, inappropriate humor tends to harm joke‐tellers' perceived competence and status (Bitterly, Brooks, & Schweitzer, 2017). Thus, we predicted that women would indicate more long‐ and short‐term attraction to men using self‐directed than other‐directed sexist humor.…”

“…For example, research has shown that social roles affect how sexist humor is perceived. Women tend to react negatively to anti‐woman jokes (LaFrance & Woodzicka, 1998), finding them less funny than anti‐man jokes (Abrams & Bippus, 2011; Abrams, Bippus, & McGaughey, 2015; Jackson & Jackson, 1997), while, men often show no statistically significant difference in reactions to anti‐man and anti‐woman jokes (Abrams & Bippus, 2011; Abrams et al, 2015; Jackson & Jackson, 1997; for an exception, see Abel & Flick, 2012). Despite the utility of documenting how enjoyable or funny sexist jokes might be, a more nuanced and productive way of studying sexist humor perceptions would involve mapping those perceptions to an existing model of humor, which would then provide insight into how using such humor (i.e., the joke teller) might be evaluated in an interpersonal context.…”