From humor to political dispositions: effect of disparagement humor on perceptions of political identity

Abstract An experiment ( n = 202; 136 women; 66 men) demonstrated that people use implicit theories about liberals and conservatives to guide their impression of another person based on their humor, specifically, the degree to which their humor violates the individualizing and binding moral foundations described by Moral Foundations Theory (e.g., Graham, Haidt and Nosek 2009. Liberals and conservatives rely on different sets of moral foundations. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 96(5). 1029–1046). Supporting Hypothesis 1, participants perceived a target person as more conservative when he posted to social media an immigrant-disparaging meme. They perceived him as more liberal when he posted a religion-disparaging meme. Supporting Hypotheses 2, liberals liked the target person more and conservatives less when he posted the religion-disparaging meme. Similarly, in keeping with Hypothesis 3, liberals liked the target person less and conservatives more after he posted the immigrant-disparaging meme.