Volume 37, Issue 3

Offering an inaugural analysis of Israeli Nonsense, this article explores humor, globalization, and Israeli identity since the early 1990s. Israeli Nonsense, a particular form of humor, emerged during Israel’s rapid shift towards neoliberal privatization and globalization. Influenced by the growing popularity of standup comedy and the rise of new commercial television channels, it became a distinctive humor style in an era marked by optimism and “normalization.” It quickly formed nostalgic classics, leaving a lasting impact on contemporary Israeli humor. Through interviews, newspaper excerpts, and sketch analysis, we identify five key attributes of Israeli Nonsense: (1) improvisation, (2) linguistic humor, (3) physical humor, (4) nostalgia, and (5) non-politicization. By challenging existing interpretations of 1990s Israeli culture and nonsense as “elitist” with anti-national and non-ideological tendencies, we highlight the popular manifestations of Israeli Nonsense to demonstrate that this distinct humor did not adopt a consciously critical and cynical stance towards society and culture but embodied an optimistic and empathetic attitude toward local identity in the age of globalization.

This paper explores the charged line between “laughing with” and “laughing at” people with disabilities. It documents how “the line” is structured, how the line between “laughing with” and “laughing at” is manifested, and how we might reasonably surmise when it has been crossed. Two television series are examined and compared. The first, Love on the Spectrum , is an Australian reality series that follows a number of young adults on the autism spectrum, as they search for love and go on dates with others who also are on the spectrum. Much of the charm of the series is that it evokes laughter, frequently at the seriousness of the people it portrays. The laughter raised during Love on the Spectrum is compared with the laughter encouraged by British comedian Ricky Gervais’s 2012–2014 series Derek , which is about a character who many viewers identified as being on the autism spectrum. The paper discusses similarities between the two series, but concludes by proposing that the laughter invited by the protagonists’ seriousness during these two series in fact is structured very differently.

Two experiments assess the validity of common criticisms against the popular party game Cards Against Humanity (CAH), namely that it promotes prejudice while absolving players of any moral responsibility. Study 1a (based on Prejudiced Norm Theory) finds no evidence that sexist humor in CAH encourages men to express prejudice against women. However, Study 1b (based on Social Identity Theory) provides evidence that sexist humor in CAH cues women to anticipate such discrimination. CAH’s reputation does not appear to contribute to these results. Exploratory analyses further reveal that, consistent with criticisms, people do allocate moral responsibility for offense differently in CAH than in traditional verbal exchanges of humor; however, this moral allocation is generally unrelated to prejudiced outcomes. Implications and future directions for refining these theories and understanding the intergroup functions of humor in party games are discussed in light of the studies’ mixed support of CAH’s criticisms.

The counter-Versailles literature (counter-VL) is born out of the resistance to Versailles literature (VL). The latter is in essence the same as humblebrags. Authors of counter-VL pretend to post VL but are essentially making up jokes or expressing ironies and self-mockeries. Based on the samples gathered from Weibo, this study divides counter-VL into two types according to how their non-VL nature is revealed. By identifying the echoed VL strategies, we investigate how the irony of VL and self-mockery are incarnated in counter-VL and result in humorous effects. This study also highlights the social and psychological factors that influence the creation and effects of counter-VL.

Memes offer responsive acute commentary on controversial societal matters, providing non-violent and democratic spaces of discussion for conflicts. The paper studies memes on the war in Ukraine that spread in Eastern (Russia, Estonia, Belarus) and Western Europe (Spain). We analyze who are the main actors/characters that personify the war in the memes in these countries, how these characters are represented in memes, and what are the global and local aspects of their portrayal. Personification is seen as a marker for psychological distance of the meme-makers and sharers to the conflict.

People who have the histrionic self-presentation style (HSP) demonstrate certain As-If-behaviors, involving pretense and role play, in their daily interactions to seek attention and amuse others. Doing As-If may be closely related to humor behaviors, so we examined this relationship in greater detail by using the Comic Style Markers (CSM) in Polish, English, and Canadian samples ( N  = 285, 383, and 305, respectively; M age  = 20.85, SD  = 5.35). We expected that the HSP might be related to fun, wit, and satire due to their pretense-based characteristics. We confirmed configurational, metric, and scalar invariance for the As-If-Scale (AIS) and the CSM in the three samples, which allowed for cross-cultural comparisons. As expected, the HSP was positively associated with fun, wit, and satire. Additionally, men scored higher on the AIS, but no cross-country differences were found.

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.