More than "just a joke": the prejudice-releasing function of sexist humor

The results of two experiments supported the hypothesis that, for sexist men, exposure to sexist humor can promote the behavioral release of prejudice against women. Experiment 1 demonstrated that hostile sexism predicted the amount of money participants were willing to donate to a women's organization after reading sexist jokes but not after reading nonhumorous sexist statements or neutral jokes. Experiment 2 showed that hostile sexism predicted the amount of money participants cut from the budget of a women's organization relative to four other student organizations upon exposure to sexist comedy skits but not neutral comedy skits. A perceived local norm of approval of funding cuts for the women's organization mediated the relationship between hostile sexism and discrimination against the women's organization.     

Undertakers' sense of humor.

A group of 60 middle-aged morticians at a professional seminar in the midwestern USA who completed a multidimensional sense of humor scale scored significantly lower than another group of 136 men from other occupations. The difference between the two groups appeared almost entirely on scale items having to do with humor generation or creativity.     

"Inside Information" and Negotiator Decision Behavior

In negotiation, information about the other party may be a source of strength or weakness, depending on the context, the type of information, its availability and quality, and how a negotiator uses it. An empirical study examines the way negotiators use "inside" information specifically designed to increase bargaining strength. The scoop-privileged information about the other party′s deadline-does not inform negotiators about possible deals; rather, it suggests a process of negotiating agreement. Misuse of the scoop, therefore, poses potential costs that may diminish its possible advantages. In a two-party negotiation exercise, access to inside information affected negotiators′ thoughts and behaviors. It enhanced their feelings of success and shifted the criterion for success away from final price toward a relative, interpersonal standard. Furthermore, informed negotiators used the scoop appropriately to manage the negotiation process and enhance both joint and individual profits.     

Gender, object, and humor

Male and female respondents rated jokes with either a female initiator/male target of joke or vice versa. For male respondents, the gender of the joke target made no difference. For female respondents, however, jokes with males as the target received significantly higher ratings than jokes with females as the target.     

Gender, object, and humor

Male and female respondents rated jokes with either a female initiator/male target of joke or vice versa. For male respondents, the gender of the joke target made no difference. For female respondents, however, jokes with males as the target received significantly higher ratings than jokes with females as the target.     

Cafcaf: an Islamic humor magazine, no joke!

Cafcaf is a humor magazine published by a group of religiously conservative Turks, who esteem and uphold what they consider to be Islamic norms and principles in their cartoons. By offering a close reading of Cafcaf, this article sheds light on transformations among Turkey’s Islamic communities. Scholars from a wide range of disciplines have been examining how the Islamic movement in Turkey has shifted course since the late 1990s. To this end, they have been studying the extent to which Islamists in the country have undergone changes with regards to their political aspirations and social attitudes. However, only a handful of these works have analyzed how genres of popular culture have responded to and echoed these transformations. A discussion of Cafcaf fills this gap by demonstrating how a group of Muslim youth reacts and responds to the changing outlooks and lifestyles of Turkey’s Islamists. The cartoons shed light on the efforts among young Muslims to establish a middle ground where they can negotiate their religious identities with their secular surroundings. The cartoons indicate that Muslim youth’s enthusiasm and willingness to attain this goal is sometimes coupled by a cascade of trepidations and hesitations.     

Visual impairment, verbal humor, and conservation

Through a cerebral hemispheric specialization model, I speculated that the reported discrepancy between visually impaired children's competency in language development and lags in cognition may be explained by the use of visual-spatial measurements of cognition. The performance of 51 visually impaired and 51 sighted children, ages 7 to 15 years, on a task of joke comprehension and conservation of weight scores was analyzed. I hypothesized that the ability to comprehend verbal humor would reflect the function of the left hemisphere of the brain and the ability to perform a Piagetian visual-spatial task would reflect the function of the right hemisphere. The findings indicate that although age and IQ contributed significantly to predicting joke comprehension, the ability to conserve did not have a unique contribution. In conclusion, I suggest that the cerebral hemispheric specialization model be considered when investigating language and cognition of visually impaired children.     

Inside baseball and ethics consultation: a comment on "ethics been very good to us"

In response to the article by Scofield, I consider the that, how, and why of ethics consultation, moral expertise, and the rules of the game. The question still to be engaged is, how does all of this work out for patients and families?     

Effects of sex and type of humor on humor appreciation

Examined humor appreciation of cartoons as a function of sex of subject and type of humor. Four broad types of humor were presented: sexual-exploitative, sexual-nonexploitative, nonsexual-hostile, and nonsexual-nonhostile. Sexual-nonexploitative humor was rated as funnier than the other three types but nonsexual-nonhostile humor was given a more positive overall rating than the other types. Relative to males, females gave greater ratings of hostility to the cartoons and rated them less positively. Correlational analyses further suggested that females were not as affected as males by variations in sexuality, exploitation, and hostility. For males, greater ratings of sexuality were associated with greater funniness ratings while the reverse was true for greater ratings of hostility. Possible interpretations of these data were discussed.     

Sense of humor, emotional intelligence, and social competence

Associations among sense of humor, emotional intelligence (EI), and social competence were examined in 111 undergraduate students using measures of humor styles, trait cheerfulness, social competence, and an ability test of EI. Emotional management ability was positively correlated with self-enhancing humor and trait cheerfulness, and negatively correlated with trait bad mood. Ability to accurately perceive emotions was negatively related to aggressive and self-defeating humor. Positive humor styles and trait cheerfulness were positively correlated with various domains of social competence, whereas negative humor styles and trait bad mood were negatively correlated with social competence. Finally, the emotional management facet of EI was positively correlated with several social competence domains.     

Language ability and sex affect humor appreciation.

Subjects (63 men and 63 women) completed a humor appreciation scale and 20 trials on a word-recognition task using a divided visual field. Factor analysis extracted eight factors from the humor scale most of which differentiated subjects on the basis of liking for various humorous contents including disparagement and non-sense humor. Subsequent analyses showed that greater liking for specific types of humor was associated with basic language abilities. The results also support sex differences in humor preferences and Freud's tripartite taxonomy of humor contents.     

Anger,aggression, and humor in newfoundland floor hockey: An evolutionary analysis

This paper examines patterns of anger, aggression, and humor during 95 floor hockey games in a small fishing village in Newfoundland. The observed behaviors meet the prediction, based on evolutionary theory, that anger and aggression will be more frequent among males at the age when mate competition is most intense. Aggression was also found to be combined with humor most frequently in interactions among players attempting to form social relationships. This last finding is consistent with the hypothesis that combining humor (smiling and laughing) with what would otherwise be interpreted as aggressive behavior is a means of establishing trusting relationships between individuals. The potential contribution of an evolutionary approach to studies of anger and aggression is discussed. ©1993 Wiley-Liss, Inc.     

Comments on Abrahamsen's (2004) "Linguistic humor comprehension in children with articulation impairments"

This commentary expresses concerns about the validity of the results of Abrahamsen's study of "Linguistic humor comprehension in children with articulation impairments" (2004). Some of the problems noted included overlapping of lexical and phonological humor categories, the nature and placement of several of the stimulus items, lack of demonstrated equivalent difficulty of the stimuli presented to each group, and limited analysis of other factors that may have affected children's responses.     

Orienting and humor responses: A synthesis

Evidence is presented for a hypothesis that a humor response is an instance of a more general orienting response. The two responses both occur to stimulus novelty or incongruity and are identical behaviorally and physiologically, althouth their subjective components may differ. Evidence for the hypothesis is based on a series of paremeters that affect orienting and humor responses identically. Parameters on which the responses show strong parallels are the effects of habituation and the degree of stimulus change. Weaker parallels exist for such parameters as direction of stimulus change, number of habituation trials, stimulus complexity, salience, intensity, and the subject's arousal level. The weaker parallels are also areas in which additional humor research is needed.