Jokes are No Laughing Matter: Disparagement Humor and Social Identity Theory

Abstract

Disparagement humor is "remarks that elicit amusement through the denigration, derogation, or belittlement of a given target" (Ferguson & Ford, p. 283, 2008). This paper looks at disparagement humor through social identity theory (Tajfel & Turner, 1985) to explore how humor can be used to regain group membership after experiencing a prototypicality threat. Participants experienced a threat relating to masculinity, or experienced a threat relating to their University of Kansas student identity, or experienced a masculine social identity affirmation. Results indicate that a threat to any valued social identity can increase outgroup derogation; but the derogation target need not be related to the specific threatened social identity. Instead, participants used the immediate social group to determine appropriate targets of disparagement humor based on perceived social norms. After a threat to social identity, people derogate an outgroup that is relevant to the immediate ingroup, guided by perceived social norms about what is appropriate, to notify fellow ingroup members that they are different than the outgroup.