Effect of the target and ambivalent attitudes on the appreciation of humor targeting men and women.

Abstract

Sexist humor (a form of humor that disparages a target based on gender), may promote discrimination (Ford et al., 2014). The present study aimed at demonstrating that 1/ theappreciation and aversiveness of sexist humor targeting men and women depends ofgender (in- group/out-group) and adherence to stereotypes, 2/ prejudices towardswomen predict the evaluation of the jokes targeting women.College students (N=181) completed the Ambivalent sexism Inventory measuringprejudices towards women (Glick & Fiske, 2001) and stereotypes adhesion towardsmen and women (Gender Role Stereotypes Scale, Mills et al. 2018). One month later,they rated four jokes targeting men or women based on their perceived appreciationand aversiveness.Results : The effect of the gender disparaged by the jokes and the effect of reading thesexist jokes on prejudices were controlled. Results revealed that the more participants(men and women) presented prejudices about women, the more they appreciated jokestargeting women (β = .392, t(159) = 5.36, p .16). Results will be discussedregarding the scientific literature, especially the prejudiced norm theory (Ford et al.,2004) and the normative window of prejudices (Crandall et al., 2013)