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Downward-punching disparagement humor harms interpersonal impressions and trust

  • Diana E. Betz

    Diana E. Betz (ORC ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0081-4787) is an associate professor of psychology at Loyola University Maryland. She studies consequences of disparagement humor usage for impression formation. She also studies the ways that people think about social justice challenges and the effects of health-and-fitness ideals on body image.

     ORCID logo EMAIL logo     und Theresa E. DiDonato

    Theresa E. DiDonato is a social psychologist and a professor of psychology at Loyola University Maryland. Her research interests focus on different aspects of romantic relationships, including factors that contribute to romantic attraction (e.g., humor) and how the self-concept changes through relationship participation. She is an author of the textbook, The Science of Romantic Relationships.
Veröffentlicht/Copyright: 10. Juni 2024
HUMOR
Aus der Zeitschrift HUMOR Band 37 Heft 3

Abstract

Disparagement humor may harm perceptions of joke-tellers’ core traits and trustworthiness differently when it “punches down” rather than “up” at its target. This was experimentally tested with a sexist joke in Study 1 (n = 161) and a boss/employee joke in Study 2 (n = 331). Consistently, joke-tellers who punched down seemed less competent, lower in status, and less trustworthy (assessed via a hypothetical monetary trust game). Jokes that punched “down” (versus “up”) seemed less affiliative in general, and particularly aggressive only in a sexist humor context, perhaps due to more normative expectations of aggression in gender-based contexts. Implications for curbing disparagement humor, particularly from high-status people, are discussed.

Keywords: disparagement humor; status; humor style; person perception; trust
Corresponding author: Diana E. Betz, Loyola University Maryland, Baltimore, MD, USA, E-mail:

About the authors

Diana E. Betz

Diana E. Betz (ORC ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0081-4787) is an associate professor of psychology at Loyola University Maryland. She studies consequences of disparagement humor usage for impression formation. She also studies the ways that people think about social justice challenges and the effects of health-and-fitness ideals on body image.

Theresa E. DiDonato

Theresa E. DiDonato is a social psychologist and a professor of psychology at Loyola University Maryland. Her research interests focus on different aspects of romantic relationships, including factors that contribute to romantic attraction (e.g., humor) and how the self-concept changes through relationship participation. She is an author of the textbook, The Science of Romantic Relationships.

  1. Competing interests: The authors report that there are no conflicts of interest to declare. This research was not supported by any grant in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sphere.

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Supplementary Material

This article contains supplementary material (https://doi.org/10.1515/humor-2023-0158).

Received: 2023-04-12
Accepted: 2024-03-10
Published Online: 2024-06-10
Published in Print: 2024-08-27

© 2024 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

Artikel in diesem Heft

  1. Frontmatter
  2. Full Length Articles
  3. Israeli Nonsense: humor, globalization and vegetables during the early nineties
  4. “Laughing with” or “laughing at” people with disabilities? Love on the Spectrum and Derek
  5. Party games and prejudice: are these Cards Against Humanity?
  6. What is counter-Versailles literature? – At the intersection of humblebrag, irony, and humor
  7. The power of memes: personification as a marker of psychological distance in memes about the war in Ukraine
  8. Let’s entertain others: the relationship between comic styles and the histrionic self-presentation style in Polish, British, and Canadian samples
  9. Downward-punching disparagement humor harms interpersonal impressions and trust
  10. Book Reviews
  11. Jessica Milner Davis: Humour in Asian Cultures. Tradition and Context
  12. Francisco Yus: Pragmatics of Internet Humor
  13. Chaoqun Xie: The Pragmatics of Internet Memes
  14. Esther Linares Bernabéu: The Pragmatics of Humour in Interactive Contexts
  15. Lena Straßburger: Humor and Horror – Different Emotions, Similar Linguistic Processing Strategies
https://doi.org/10.1515/humor-2023-0158
Schlagwörter für diesen Artikel
disparagement humor; status; humor style; person perception; trust

Artikel in diesem Heft

  1. Frontmatter
  2. Full Length Articles
  3. Israeli Nonsense: humor, globalization and vegetables during the early nineties
  4. “Laughing with” or “laughing at” people with disabilities? Love on the Spectrum and Derek
  5. Party games and prejudice: are these Cards Against Humanity?
  6. What is counter-Versailles literature? – At the intersection of humblebrag, irony, and humor
  7. The power of memes: personification as a marker of psychological distance in memes about the war in Ukraine
  8. Let’s entertain others: the relationship between comic styles and the histrionic self-presentation style in Polish, British, and Canadian samples
  9. Downward-punching disparagement humor harms interpersonal impressions and trust
  10. Book Reviews
  11. Jessica Milner Davis: Humour in Asian Cultures. Tradition and Context
  12. Francisco Yus: Pragmatics of Internet Humor
  13. Chaoqun Xie: The Pragmatics of Internet Memes
  14. Esther Linares Bernabéu: The Pragmatics of Humour in Interactive Contexts
  15. Lena Straßburger: Humor and Horror – Different Emotions, Similar Linguistic Processing Strategies
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