Low system justification drives ideological differences in joke perception: a critical commentary and re-analysis of Baltiansky et al. (2021)
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Harry R. M. Purser
Harry R. M. Purser is a senior lecturer in Psychology at Nottingham Trent University. He has research interests in lexico-semantics, figurative language, development, and the relationship between language and memory.
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Craig A. Harper
Craig A. Harper is an Associate Professor in Psychology at Nottingham Trent University. His research interests lie in the psychological processes that underpin decision-making in relation to controversial social and political topics. He is a member of the Heterodox Academy, which is an organization seeking to promote viewpoint diversity and reduce political polarization in higher education.
Abstract
A recent study by Baltiansky et al. (2021), which was published in HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research tested two hypotheses related to system justification and the perception of stereotypical humor. They reported to have found evidence for a cross-over interaction, with judgments of jokes being contingent on a combination of the social status of the targets of jokes and raters’ system justification motivations. Here, we discuss the original analysis, presentation, and interpretation of the data in the target article, before presenting a re-analysis of the authors’ shared data file. We show that the framing of claims such as that “high system-justifiers found jokes targeting low-status groups (e.g., women, poor people, racial/ethnic minorities) to be funnier than low system-justifiers did” are misleading. Instead, our re-analyses suggest that ideological differences in joke perception are driven primarily by those scoring low on the system justification motivation rating jokes about ostensibly low-status groups as less funny than jokes about other social groups.
About the authors
Harry R. M. Purser is a senior lecturer in Psychology at Nottingham Trent University. He has research interests in lexico-semantics, figurative language, development, and the relationship between language and memory.
Craig A. Harper is an Associate Professor in Psychology at Nottingham Trent University. His research interests lie in the psychological processes that underpin decision-making in relation to controversial social and political topics. He is a member of the Heterodox Academy, which is an organization seeking to promote viewpoint diversity and reduce political polarization in higher education.
Acknowledgments
We would like to thank Baltiansky et al. (2021) for making their data and analytical code publicly available.
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Conflict of interest: The authors have no conflict of interest to declare.
References
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© 2023 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Full Length Articles
- Satire without borders: the age-moderated effect of one-sided versus two-sided satire on hedonic experiences and patriotism
- A leader or a comedian? Perceptions of politicians based on their use of humor on Twitter
- Age differences in using humor to cope during a pandemic
- Laughing to love science: contextualizing science comedy
- Semantic components of laughter behavior: a lexical field study of 14 translations of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
- Low system justification drives ideological differences in joke perception: a critical commentary and re-analysis of Baltiansky et al. (2021)
- Apples versus oranges, normative claims, and other things we did not mention: a response to Purser and Harper (2023)
- Book Reviews
- Sienkiewicz, Matt and Nick Marx: That’s not funny: how the right makes comedy work for them
- Chukwimah, Ignatius: Sexual Humour in Africa: Gender, Jokes, and Societal Change
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Full Length Articles
- Satire without borders: the age-moderated effect of one-sided versus two-sided satire on hedonic experiences and patriotism
- A leader or a comedian? Perceptions of politicians based on their use of humor on Twitter
- Age differences in using humor to cope during a pandemic
- Laughing to love science: contextualizing science comedy
- Semantic components of laughter behavior: a lexical field study of 14 translations of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
- Low system justification drives ideological differences in joke perception: a critical commentary and re-analysis of Baltiansky et al. (2021)
- Apples versus oranges, normative claims, and other things we did not mention: a response to Purser and Harper (2023)
- Book Reviews
- Sienkiewicz, Matt and Nick Marx: That’s not funny: how the right makes comedy work for them
- Chukwimah, Ignatius: Sexual Humour in Africa: Gender, Jokes, and Societal Change
