On sarcasm, social awareness, and gender

Abstract

Sarcastic irony, uttered in four (within and between) gender-based settings, is used here as a tool to diagnose affective attitudes toward women. The kind of sarcasm tested here is an aggressive type of humor, whereby a speaker derides another individual, turning her or him into the victim of the humorous utterance. Finding this kind of irony less or more pleasing allows indexing between-and within-group attitudes. Participants were overall nonsexist, scoring low on sexism scales, but male participants were still more sexist than female participants. Results show that, as predicted by Ariel and Giora (1998), female participants fully adopted a feminine point of view, enjoying sarcastic irony best when it was directed by women at men and least when it was directed by women at women. Being more sexist, our male participants adopted a feminine point of view only partially, enjoying sarcastic irony more when directed at men than directed at women, regardless of the speaker's gender.

Global Second Language Proficiency Predicts Self-Perceptions of General Sarcasm Use Among Bilingual Adults

“…Sarcasm directs a critical or humorous attitude at a specific target, sometimes resulting in ridicule or mockery (Glenwright & Pexman, 2010; Lee & Katz, 1998). As a communicative style, it serves various social purposes, such as softening a critical attitude (Dews & Winner, 1995), peppering humor into a conversation and maintaining a relationship (Dews, Kaplan, & Winner, 1995; Pexman & Olineck, 2002), or expressing power (Drucker, Fein, Bergerbest, & Giora, 2014). Sarcasm may also be used to reinforce one’s social identity, aggrandize out-group hostility, and foster intergroup competition (Burgers, Beukeboom, Kelder, & Peeters, 2015).…”

Do They Really Mean It? Children’s Inference of Speaker Intentions and the Role of Age and Gender

“…Research has shown that males and females’ usage of nonliteral language differs. Males not only use irony and sarcasm more (e.g., Colston & Lee, 2004; Gibbs, 2000), they also report enjoying using sarcasm more than females (Drucker, Gergerbest, & Giora, 2014). Furthermore, differences between girls and boys in terms of social cognitive development have been found in many studies.…”

Shy children's understanding of irony: Better comprehension does not always mean better socioemotional functioning

“…These differential gender results may reflect an important role that verbal irony comprehension ability may play in male relationships. There is research in the adult literature to suggest that men enjoy sarcastic humour more than women and that both genders prefer sarcasm that is directed at men (Drucker et al, ). Gibbs () also found that men endorse making more sarcastic remarks than do women, which matches general perceptions that men are more likely to make ironic statements (Colston & Lee, ) as well as recent findings that school‐aged boys indicate more willingness to use sarcasm (Mewhort‐Buist et al, ).…”

“…Although past work has not found gender differences in comprehension (Harris & Pexman, 2003), school-aged boys endorse more willingness to use sarcasm than do girls (Mewhort-Buist, Nilsen, & Bowman-Smith, 2018). Certainly, for adults, men enjoy sarcastic humour more than women and endorse using this language form more often than women (Drucker, Fein, Bergerbest, & Giora, 2014;Gibbs, 2000;Martin, Puhlik-Doris, Larsen, Gray, & Weir, 2003).…”