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Abstract

A recent line of research in the field of humor has proposed the existence of two morally based comic styles. One of them, corrective humor (or satire), seeks to ridicule and mock to establish justice. In contrast, benevolent humor attempts to correct deviances using humor in a friendly manner understanding human imperfections. Considering their focus on correcting what is perceived as morally wrong, in this study we seek to examine how these styles can affect the evaluation that is made of politicians after being exposed to humor that attacks them. To achieve this, we conducted an experiment in which three groups had to evaluate two politicians after being exposed to different stimuli (memes that ridiculed them, images with the same content without its humorous content, or no exposure; total n = 160). Our results demonstrate that it is corrective humor and not benevolent humor that influences the evaluation and that it does so positively; people with higher scores in corrective humor have a better evaluation of politicians after seeing memes with anti-politician content. We discuss possible explanations for this finding and implications for political psychology and humor studies.

Keywords

political humor corrective humor benevolent humor evaluation of politicians

Political satire is an entertainment phenomenon that is part of the culture, at least based on information from the US (unfortunately, there is not much data from other countries). For example, according to The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press (2004), the preferred source of political information for young people between 18 and 29 years old is comedy television programs (21%) and internet sources of the same type (20%), and late-night shows with less political content (like The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon) have dropped in ratings compared to those that discuss politics, such as The Late Show with Stephen Colbert (Baumgartner, 2021).

Political satire and how it affects people is not a trivial topic. It can expose the defects of politicians, their flaws, and the perceptions of society about them, leading to situations such as the one of the current president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, who may have affected Ukrainians’ attitudes toward politics and politicians through his show Vechernii Kvartal (Ryabinska, 2022). However, the study on how satirical parodies affect citizens’ opinions does not consider humor as a trait that allows them to appreciate and evaluate it from a moral perspective. Thus, it is worth asking about the role of this topic in the current political context of different countries, marked by a growing political disaffection that threatens trust in institutions and how people participate in politics (Torcal & Lago, 2006). Understanding humor that targets politicians as a manifestation of discontent toward the political class, we consider it relevant to delve into how certain personal variables such as comic styles can play a role in this relation.

Humor that Targets Politicians

The study of humor at a social level has revealed that one of its primary functions is to facilitate the expression of aggression (Kuipers & Raskin, 2008). It allows the attack on authorities while maintaining ambiguity and the idea of a harmless environment, facilitating the exposure of defects and errors through ridicule (Gruner, 1997; Kuipers, 2006; Mendiburo & Páez, 2011). Also, and in line with a functionalist approach, it can help establish the limits of what is acceptable and unacceptable between hierarchical levels, thus correcting deviations (Billig, 2005; Kuipers, 2006).

Given its deep relation with aggression, one way in which humor against politicians manifest itself is disparagement humor. This type of humor seeks to entertain by belittling a group, individual, ideology, and social position while expressing aggressive impulses in a socially acceptable manner (Ferguson & Ford, 2008). It is intrinsically related to the social identity theory (Tajfel, 1974, 1979, 1982; Tajfel & Billic, 1974), because it allows the comparison of groups of belonging (ingroups) to other groups (outgroups) through comic manifestations that highlight the positive of the former and the negative of the latter. Consequently, it allows the expression of prejudice or negative affective attitudes and dispositions toward a group or individuals of a group (Crandall et al., 2002). In general, people tend to avoid displaying evident manifestations of prejudice unless they consider that the context permits them to do so (Crandall & Eshleman, 2003), but disparagement humor facilitates expressing negative attitudes in people with high prejudice (Zillmann et al., 1976). The manifestation would be also easier in the case of specific groups, given that some of them arouse more negative prejudice at the social level than others (Crandall et al., 2013), which would be the case of politicians (Mendiburo-Seguel & Ford 2019). The study by Mendiburo-Seguel & Ford, (2019) found that the manifestation of prejudice toward politicians is not specifically triggered by humor (if compared to serious messages), showing that people would consider this manifestation to be justified and acceptable.

Likewise, disparagement humor depends on the disposition toward other groups. The dispositional theory (Zillmann et al., 1976) posits that humor depends significantly on the affective disposition toward the target and that this disposition can vary between two poles (extremely negative to extremely positive). This way, something will be considered more amusing if it attacks a group for which there is high a significant negative affect (Becker, 2014). As humor is a complex phenomenon, there are also other variables that affect its appreciation, such as gender (women tend to prefer affiliative humor over hostile or aggressive humor; for a review, see Hofmann et al., 2020) or age (scores on scales that measure aggressive humor tend to decrease with age; Martin et al., 2003; Ruch et al., 2018).

Considering the above, in this study we understand political humor as any aggressively delivered comic stimulus (jokes, parodies, or satires) that targets a politician, the government, a political institution, or a political figure in general (Moy & Pfau, 2000; D. Young, 2004). It can affect people’s attitudes toward politicians because it presents negative stereotypes that are more easily accessible (La Fave & Mannell, 1976) and depicts socio-political realities in an esthetically acceptable and rewarding way, helping people assimilate and reflect on specific topics.

Political humor can negatively affect people’s opinions about political scenarios and politicians (Baumgartner & Morris, 2006; D. Young, 2004). For example, it has been observed that it can temporarily affect trust in politicians (Mendiburo-Seguel et al, 2017), likelihood of voting for a particular candidate (Baumgartner et al., 2012), trust in the electoral system (Holbert et al., 2007), political knowledge (Martinez & Atouba, 2021), internal political efficacy (Long et al., 2021) and the intention to participate in politics (Baumgartner & Lockerbie, 2018; Kim & Vishak, 2008; Morris, 2009; Xenos & Becker, 2009). The latter is especially relevant considering that trust in politics can affect political participation, political commitment, and trust in institutions or governments (Kenski & Stroud, 2006; Moy et al., 2005).

Political Memes

According to Dawkins (2006), memes are forms of cultural transmission based on imitation and analogous to genetics. Although the concept did not originally refer to virtual or humorous communications, internet memes are currently considered a representation of culture and a relevant political tool (Algaba & Bellido-Pérez, 2019; Wiggins, 2019), especially in their most typical format, which is an image and a text (Brideau & Berret, 2014; Huntington, 2020).

Online memes have allowed political humor to transcend traditional media and become a new vehicle for political criticism (Piata, 2016; Ross & Rivers, 2019; Zhang & Pinto, 2021) for two primary reasons. On the one hand, political memes and their appraisals are heavily based on humor and processes involving its appreciation (Wong & Holyoak, 2021). Since political humor can impact attitudes, reduce critical argument scrutiny, and facilitate persuasion (D. G. Young, 2008), memes could be a helpful way to accomplish this. Their humorous content can also make memes more transversal than other viral content and more likely to be forwarded when considered funny (Beskow et al., 2020; Guadagno et al., 2013; Piata, 2016).

On the other hand, and perhaps because of their humorous content, memes are considered superficial and irrelevant (Nissenbaum & Shifman, 2018). Because of this, they can carry messages that express criticism and be a form of subversive communication in the political field (Huntington, 2013; Moody-Ramirez & Church, 2019).

Memes are also an easy, powerful, and democratic form of expression. In fact, the most common producers of memes are citizens (McLoughlin & Southern, 2021), which could be due to several reasons: people do not need special equipment to create them (Huntington, 2020), their simple and seemingly innocuous presentation allows them to present arguments in a concise and easy to share way (Hakoköngäs et al., 2020), they can “skip” online censorship (Zuckerman, 2015), persuade and generate grassroots action (Shifman, 2014), generate ingroup bonds and reinforce partisan views (Beskow et al., 2020; Hakoköngäs et al., 2020; Huntington, 2020; Moody-Ramirez & Church, 2019), increase the intention for online civic engagement (Zhang & Pinto, 2021), or attract attention to particular issues (Denisova, 2019). Particularly important to this study is that memes are a vehicle of social criticism that relies heavily on humor and parody (Rodríguez, 2013; Shifman, 2014), thanks to which people can attack others and their political views, disparage people or groups and criticize governments, even in less democratic contexts (Nee & De Maio, 2019; Szablewicz, 2014; Wiggins, 2019; Yoon, 2016).

The acceptability of negative prejudice toward groups is a relevant variable when it comes to enjoying and sharing memes, and manifesting prejudice through them can enhance tolerance to discrimination (Merritt et al., 2021). Their acceptability is also based on how much people support the stereotypes they present, so people with high negative prejudice toward certain group consider memes that target it more socially acceptable and are less likely to object to their content (Duchscherer & Dovidio, 2016). In this way, the existence of memes that disparage politicians is logical since prejudice toward them is justified (Mendiburo-Seguel & Ford, 2019).

Despite the increasing use of political memes, most of the studies addressing them are content analyses or use qualitative (e.g., Algaba & Bellido-Pérez, 2019; Beskow et al., 2020; Chagas et al., 2019; Hakoköngäs et al., 2020; McLoughlin & Southern, 2021; Milner, 2013; Moody-Ramirez & Church, 2019; Nee & De Maio, 2019; Nissenbaum & Shifman, 2018; Norstrom & Sarna, 2021; Szablewicz, 2014), and those that focus on their effects on citizens are less frequent and more recent (e.g., Huntington, 2020; Klein, 2019; Kulkarni, 2017; Schiazza, 2022; Shao & Liu, 2019; Wong & Holyoak, 2021).

There are, however, research based on which memes could be expected to impact politicians’ evaluation. For example, it has been observed in marketing that memes are highly relatable and more effective than serious messages and that they positively impact customer engagement and brand recall (Malodia et al., 2022; Yang, 2022). However, studies specifically involving political memes show different results. The available research that focuses on their effects on the evaluation of political figures has shown that they tend not to have an impact on variables such as sympathy for politicians and that other variables, such as gender, political preference, or the congruity of the meme with the evaluator’s political position could be better predictors (Klein, 2019; Schiazza, 2022; Wong & Holyoak, 2021). This variable -political position- has been observed to be relevant when evaluating political memes. The study by Huntington (2020) showed that people that saw political memes they agreed with rated them as more effective and reported engaging in less argument quality scrutiny. However, messages presented as an image macro were neither more effective nor involved less argument quality scrutiny than those in plaintext format.

The Moral Component of Humor: Corrective Humor and Benevolent Humor

The analysis of moral-related variables in humor and politics has been in the scope of social psychology (through, e.g., research regarding political ideology and moral foundations; Buie et al., 2022). However, individual dispositions based on humor as a trait have not been studied in greater detail. As Ruch and Heintz (2016) propose, there exists a gap between the notion of humor as a personality trait (a style) and virtue-related forms of humor. This gap implies that aspects that may improve its understanding are left out, such as the complexity of its moral component or the idea of humor as a human virtue and a way to evaluate other human beings and the world ethically. In response to this, a recent line of research posits the existence of two comic styles with moral goals that individuals exhibit and enjoy to varying degrees throughout time: benevolent humor and corrective humor (Ruch & Heintz, 2016). These styles aim to highlight what is deviant and seek to correct it by using jokes, parodies, and humor in general to correct others (Heintz et al., 2018; Ruch et al., 2018).

These two styles are defined by linguistic and literary studies (Schmidt-Hidding, 1963), and they both have a prominent place in linguistic analysis (Ruch & Heintz, 2016). Their literary forms have been adapted to a psychological and an interpersonal level, considering their goals (arousing sympathy for the incongruities of life in the case of benevolent humor and decrying bad and foolish people to improve the world, in the case of satire) and six other features (object, the attitude of the agent as a subject, behavior toward other people, ideal audience, method, and linguistic peculiarities. For a complete and detailed description, see Ruch & Heintz, 2016).

Both benevolent and corrective humor involve noticing incongruities based on deviations in daily life that are not inherently comic, playfully processing them, and treating them humorously (Beermann & Ruch, 2009). The “wrong” or “deviant” is determined based on the distance between the observed and the ideal, generating an incongruity that is corrected through the use of humor (Beermann & Ruch, 2009).

While both styles share a well-intentioned common goal (correcting the negative), they are essentially different regarding how they achieve that goal. On the one hand, benevolent humor seeks to correct others with an inclusive and friendly approach, being comprehensive and tolerant of human errors and weaknesses. On the other hand, corrective humor uses mockery and ridicule, seeking to establish justice through shaming. Therefore, it is not necessarily a negative phenomenon because it is related to courage and a sense of justice (Ruch & Heintz, 2016). This is consistent with the fact that corrective humor and benevolent humor have been observed to be positively related to extroversion and that corrective humor has been negatively related to agreeableness (Dionigi et al., 2021; Ruch et al., 2018).

Corrective humor and benevolent humor also show differences between different sociodemographic groups. For example, although less studied, religiosity seems to be negatively related to corrective humor (Mendiburo-Seguel & Heintz, 2020). It has also been consistently observed that this comic style is lower in women and diminishes with age (Heintz et al., 2018; Dionigi et al., 2021; Mendiburo-Seguel & Heintz, 2020; Ruch et al., 2018). Benevolent humor has a somewhat less consistent pattern, generally showing an increase with age and no differences between genders, except for samples such as an Italian one reported by Dionigi et al. (2021), where it was lower in women (Heintz et al., 2018; Dionigi et al., 2021; Ruch et al., 2018).

In the case of educational level, results are more varied. Ruch et al. (2018) observed no differences between educational groups for both styles. In the case of benevolent humor, Dionigi et al. (2021) reported that people with PhDs had higher scores than those with secondary school education. In the case of corrective humor, Mendiburo-Seguel & Heintz, (2020) observed that satire was predicted by a higher educational level than incomplete primary education.

The Present Study

Political humor can affect people’s evaluations of politicians. Considering that people enjoy correcting politicians through humor in different ways, this study seeks to determine how this individual internal disposition (both comic styles) can interact with external stimuli (political humor) when generating effects in evaluating politicians.

Thus, we seek to determine whether corrective humor and benevolent humor can play a role in the impact of political humor on the evaluation of politicians. Thus, we seek to determine whether corrective humor and benevolent humor can play a role in the impact of political humor on the evaluation of politicians. Existing research has shown no relationship between both styles and variables related to politics, such as political positioning (Mendiburo-Seguel & Heintz, 2020). However, and considering its nature, we propose that corrective humor transversely underlies the appreciation of political humor.

In this way, our first hypothesis is that benevolent humor does not play such role because its sympathetic and tolerant nature escapes political humor. Our second hypothesis is that, on the contrary, because political humor implies mockery and the manifestation of defects, people that are exposed to political humor and that are high on corrective humor will evaluate politicians worse because they tend to enjoy the derision that highlights their deviances.

Finally, and although it is not our primary goal, our study also has a more exploratory approach regarding political memes. Previous studies have not found any effects of political memes on attitudes, but as empirical evidence is still little, we seek to contribute to the understanding of their effects on citizens.

Methods

Procedure

We designed a post-test-only intergroup experiment. Participants were randomly assigned to one of three possible conditions: humor against politicians, serious statements against politicians, or no exposure to any stimulus. We worked with stimuli that considered two specific politicians. Before exposure, participants completed a set of instruments that considered sociodemographic variables, the Bencor scale (Ruch & Heintz, 2016) to assess corrective and benevolent humor, attitude toward politicians, and political positioning. Subsequently, participants in the meme and serious statement conditions were presented with the stimuli and asked to assess their amusement level for each of them. Following the exposure, participants had to evaluate the politician on general likeability and other aspects. The unexposed participants were divided into two groups, each of which considered only one of the politicians.

The experiment was not pre-registered and was carried out within a survey conducted between April and May 2018, which contained different humor-related studies. The participants were residents of the city of Santiago of Chile, all of whom were surveyed at home by trained interviewers. The sample selection method was probabilistic of two types. First, a cluster sampling of different blocks was performed, randomly chosen based on the website www.mientorno.cl , which allowed a heterogeneous selection regarding socioeconomic status. Based on this sampling, each interviewer received five maps with different blocks in which they had to survey five or six houses to complete a total of 21. In each block, the houses were selected following systematic sampling.

In each house, the interviewers surveyed a person who was at least 18 years old. Following the recommendations of the ethics committee from the faculty of the University of affiliation of the first author, the interviewers read an informed consent to each participant, indicating the objectives of the study and all the relevant information about it. Upon acceptance, the participants had to sign a form indicating their consent.

The survey was performed by the interviewers, who asked the participants the questions and recorded their responses on an answer sheet. To eliminate biases or pollster effects in the answers that implied humor (e.g., charisma or better ability to tell jokes), we decided to use only images as stimuli.

Stimuli

For the two conditions involving stimuli, we used memes and serious statements that attacked politicians. We created the memes using the “Pun dog” meme (Imgur, 2012), while the statements were presented using the image of an androgynous person obtained from Russell (2009). These serious statements corresponded to the jokes of the comic condition, albeit without their comic elements.

The memes and statements attacked two politicians, Michelle Bachelet and Sebastián Piñera. We chose them because they were both former or present presidents of the Republic of Chile, which guaranteed a high level of visibility and familiarity. In addition, Bachelet is part of the left-wing political coalition, while Piñera is part of a right-wing political coalition. At the time of the study, Sebastián Piñera was the President of the Republic. However, Michelle Bachelet had left the presidency in March 2018, a month before the experiment was carried out. According to political polls, they both received similar evaluations regarding unfavorability (27% for Bachelet and 30% in the case of Piñera) and favorability (42% in the case of Bachelet and 41% in the case of Piñera; Centro de Estudios públicos [Center of Public Studies], 2021).

The stimuli were selected after an online pilot with 189 people (52.9% women; M_age = 25.83, DT_age = 7.04). In the pilot, eight memes and eight statements previously selected by the first author were presented, of which we finally selected five. An example of the jokes used in the memes showed the pun dog asking “How is Sebastián Piñera/Michelle Bachelet like a 15-watt light bulb?” and then responding “Neither is very bright!”. The non-humorous version showed the androgynous face from Russell (2009) with the statement “Sebastián Piñera/Michelle Bachelet is not very bright.”

Participants

A total of 160 people between 18 and 89 years of age participated (M = 42.18; SD = 18.78). Of them, 85 (46.9%) were women and 75 (53.1%) were men. The description of the sample, depending on the condition, is presented in Table 1.

Table 1.

Descriptive Statistics of the Sample by Condition.

	Memes (N = 52)	Statements (N = 51)	Not exposed (N = 57)	p-Value	Total (N = 160)
Female	25 (48.1%)	25 (49.0 %)	35 (61.4%)	.294^a	85 (46.9%)
Male	27 (51.9%)	26 (51.0%)	22 (38.6%)		75 (53.1%)
Age	41.89 (18.74)	38.61 (10.02)	45.63 (19.17)	.151^b	42.18 (18.78)
Political positioning	4.48 (2.23)	5.39 (1.60)	4.84 (2.30)	.084^b	4.90 (2.10)
Attitude toward politicians	3.64 (1.60)	3.75 (1.91)	3.12 (1.63)	.130^b	3, 49 (1.72)
Corrective humor	3.69 (1.44)	4.13 (1.29)	3.64 (1.43)	.150^b	3.81 (1.40)
Benevolent humor	5.18 (0.99)	5.00 (0.84)	5.17 (1.24)	.631^b	5.12 (1.04)

χ²

ANOVA.

Instruments

Corrective Humor and Benevolent Humor

We used the BenCor scale (Ruch, 2012; Ruch & Heintz, 2016), validated in different countries, including Chile (Heintz et al., 2018). It assesses benevolent humor and corrective humor with two subscales, each of which has six marker items that explore styles, considering them as psychological traits derived from literary and linguistic analyses. In this way, it seeks to determine differences regarding the tendency to engage in benevolent humor and corrective humor. Different studies support its structure, reliability, and validity in several countries (Dionigi et al., 2021; Heintz et al., 2018, 2020; Mendiburo-Seguel & Heintz, 2020). It uses a 7-point Likert scale ranging from 1 on a 7-point Likert disagree-agree response scale (1 = “Totally disagree” and 7 = “Totally agree”). Two example items are “I am a realistic observer of human weaknesses, and my good-natured humor treats them benevolently” (benevolent humor) and “I have a critical attitude toward arrogant and unfair people and my mockery serves to establish equality and justice” (corrective humor). Cronbach’s alpha for both subscales was satisfactory (.71 for benevolent humor and .81 for corrective humor), considering a lower limit of .70 as proposed by Nunnally and Bernstein (1994).

Attitude Toward Politicians

We used one item (“How much would you say you like politicians in general?”) on a 10-point Likert response scale (1 = “I absolutely dislike them” to 10 = “I absolutely like them”).

Political Positioning

We used the item “In politics, it is normal to speak of ‘Left’ and ‘Right’. On a scale where 0 is ‘Left’ and 10 is ‘Right’, where would you position yourself?”

Funniness

We assessed funniness with one item after each meme and each statement (“How funny do you think this meme/statement is?”) on a 5-point Likert response scale (0 = “Not funny” to 4 = “Very funny”). Cronbach’s alpha was .90 for the memes and .78 for the statements.

Likeability and Evaluation of Politicians

We assessed how much participants declared liking each politician after the exposure using one item (“How much would you say you like Michelle Bachelet/Sebastián Piñera?”) that they had to answer using a 10-point Likert response (1 = “I absolutely dislike her/him” to 10 = “I absolutely like her/him”).

Also, after the exposure, we asked the participants to rate the politician on a scale from 1 (“Very bad”) to 7 (“Very good”) concerning seven characteristics (honesty, ability to solve problems, ability to reach agreements, firmness in decision-making, ability to represent the country, ability to lead, and ability to carry out her/his government plan). We calculated the mean of these items to have a compound indicator (Cronbach’s alpha = .93).

Results

We started by checking if the manipulation was successful. Since the Levene’s test showed that there was a violation of the assumption of equal variances (p = .006), and the Shapiro-Wilk test showed there was a violation the assumption of normality (p < .001), we run a Mann-Whitney U test to determine if there were differences in funniness. The results showed that the memes were considered funnier (Mdn = 0.80) than the serious statements (Mdn = 0.20), U = 1,030, p = .022, Rank biserial correlation = .223.

Second, and to determine if the evaluations of politicians differed depending on the condition, we compared likeability and the compound indicator between groups. Although participants in the meme condition had better evaluations of politicians regarding likeability and the compound indicator (M_likeability = 5.13; SD_likeability = 2.64; M_compound = 4.18; SD_compound = 1.44) than those in the serious statements condition (M_likeability = 4.47; SD_likeability = 2.23; M_compound = 3.74; SD_compound = 1.61) and non-exposed participants (M_likeability = 4.79; SD_likeability = 2.88; M_compound = 4.11; SD_compound = 1.63), none of these differences were statistically significant (F(2,158) = 0.835, p = .436 for likeability and F(2,158) = 1.18, p = .309 in the case of the compound indicator).

We then performed different regression analyses to compare possible differences in the dependent variables. In all of them, we used political position, attitude toward politicians, and the politician presented in the stimuli as covariates.

Following the recommendation by Jaccard et al. (1990), we coded the three conditions into two variables to represent the effect. In the first variable, memes were coded as “1” and the other two conditions as “−1.” In the second variable, the serious statements were coded as “1” and the other two conditions as “−1.” The control condition was always coded as “−1.” We then calculated the interaction by multiplying the standardized corrective/benevolent humor score by each of the two variables.

Next, we performed a hierarchical regression analysis considering in the first block the main effects of the standardized corrective/benevolent humor scores and the two re-coded variables over the dependent variables and then adding the interaction terms in a second block. In this case, a statistically significant change in R² between both models indicated an interaction between the condition and the corrective/benevolent humor.

Evaluation of Politicians

In the case of corrective humor, statistical assumptions were met, as assessed with the gvlma package (Pena & Slate, 2019) for R (R Core Team, 2017). The main effects model was statistically significant (R² = .11, F (6,153) = 3.08, p = .007). When adding the interactions, the change in the value of R² was .05, F (2,151) = 4.12, p = .018. Considering this, the achieved statistical power (using the GPower software [Faul et al., 2009]; f² = 0.18) was .80. This interaction between conditions and corrective humor can be observed in figure 1, where the predicted mean of likeability for each condition is presented as one standard deviation above and below the standardized mean of corrective humor. As it can be observed in Table 2, simple slope analysis for each condition indicated a positive relationship between corrective humor and likeability in the meme condition, but not in the serious statement conditionnor in the control. In other words, people with higher scores in corrective humor liked the politician more than those with lower scores in corrective humor only in the meme condition.

Figure 1.

Regression lines for predicted likeability scores depending on condition and standardized corrective humor.

Table 2.

Simple Slope Analysis Results for Each Condition (Likeability and Compound Indicator).

	Condition	Estimate	SE	95% CI [lower, upper]	β	t	p-Value
Corrective humor - Likeability	Meme	0.727	0.336	[0.064, 1.390]	.279	2.167	.032
	Serious	−0.510	0.380	[−1.260, 0.240]	−.196	−1.343	.181
	Control	−0.426	0.325	[−1.067, 0.216]	−.163	−1.310	.192
Corrective humor - Compound indicator	Meme	0.574	0.208	[0.163, 0.985]	.362	2.758	.007
	Serious	−0.344	0.228	[−0.794, 0.106]	−.217	−1.512	.133
	Control	−0.209	0.195	[−0.594, 0.176]	−.132	−1.073	.285

Note. Simple effects were estimated considering the rest of the variables in the model as constants.

In the case of benevolent humor, the analysis indicated the existence of three outliers that affected the statistical assumptions. After removing them, all of the assumptions were met, as assessed with the gvlma package (Pena & Slate, 2019) for R (R Core Team, 2017). The main effects model was also statistically significant (R² = .17, F (6,150) = 5.03, p < .001. However, the change in R² in the second model was not (Δ = .02, p = .218), indicating an absence of interaction between benevolent humor and the different conditions.

In the case of corrective humor and the compound indicator based on seven characteristics, statistical assumptions were met as assessed with the gvlma package (Pena & Slate, 2019) for R (R Core Team, 2017). The first model was statistically significant (R² = .10, F (6,152) = 2.80, p = .013). When adding the interactions, the change in the value of R² was .06, F (2,150) = 5.55, p = .005. Considering this, the achieved statistical power (using the GPower software [Faul et al., 2009]; f² = .18), was .81. This interaction can be observed in Figure 1. The simple slope analysis for each condition showed a positive relation between corrective humor and the indicator only in the meme condition, but not in the one with the serious statements, nor in the control condition (Table 2).

In the case of benevolent humor, statistical assumptions were met, as assessed with the gvlma package (Pena & Slate, 2019) for R (R Core Team, 2017). The main effects model was statistically significant (R² = .10, F (6,152) = 2.82, p = .013), but not the change in R² (Δ = .01, p = .643) in the second model (Figure 2).

Figure 2.

Regression lines for the predicted compound indicator scores depending on condition and standardized corrective humor.

Discussion and Conclusion

This study aimed to determine the possible influence of two morally based comic styles on the evaluation of politicians after the exposure to different types of messages against them. Both styles have the same purpose (to correct what is considered incorrect), however, they work in different ways, either through satire, ridicule, or benevolently.

Our results are only partially consistent with our hypotheses. On the one hand, benevolent humor did not play a role in the relation between message type and the evaluation of politicians, unlike corrective humor, which is logical considering that satire is linked mainly to political humor because the latter must be aggressive.

However, the effect of corrective humor was not the one we expected, even being counterintuitive at first look. We predicted that people who use and enjoy humor as a method of aggressive correction would have a greater capacity to view politicians’ shortcomings and highlight their defects contained in the jokes so that they would have an effect of “reinforcement” on the negative evaluation of politicians. However, people with high corrective humor evaluated politicians better than those with low corrective humor only in the meme condition. We believe that there may be at least three explanations for this finding.

The first explanation refers to the nature of disparaging humor. Although it expresses aggressive impulses, it does not necessarily imply an intention to correct a behavior. That is to say, it is possible that people captured only the aggression and not the correction from these memes. In this regard, it is also worth asking about the nature of disparaging humor. Although it is considered a form of aggressive humor, it is possible that its appreciation is more influenced by comic styles different than satire. According to Ruch et al. (2018), there are other aggressive (or “dark”) comic styles, such as sarcasm or cynicism, each of which has different goals (to hurt in the first case or to make fun of moral values and beliefs in the case of the latter). Thus, it is possible that in our experiment the appreciation of political memes did not imply correction but mockery. However, this would not explain why people with higher scores on corrective humor had a better impression of politicians after the exposure to political humor. Considering this, a second explanation is that after the exposure to memes, people consider that “justice has already been done” because the wrongdoings have already been ridiculed, so they react in a compensatory way by giving better evaluations. This would also explain why people who use less corrective humor do not evaluate politicians better: as they do not use humor to correct or seek justice, being exposed to it does not affect their attitudes. It could also imply that how political humor is presented (e.g., if politicians are shown as ill-intentioned or only as not very intelligent) may affect to a greater or lesser extent the idea that “justice has been done.” This way, understanding the characterizations in political satire would also help understand its effects.

A third explanation refers to how the participants understood the meme itself. Although some research has shown that corrective humor is not related to well-being (Dionigi et al., 2021), other (Mendiburo-Seguel & Heintz, 2019) has observed that people with higher scores in corrective humor tend to also have higher scores in variables such as happiness. Various studies regarding comic styles have shown that people who score higher in one style also tend to score higher in others, as well as in other variables such as self-reported funniness, frequency of laughter, and sense of humor (Mendiburo-Seguel & Heintz, 2019). Therefore, the positive evaluation of politicians was possibly related to a cheerful mood or state of mind caused by humor. Thus, it is possible that it is the disposition to any comic style the cause of the effects that we observed, in line with the logic of the trait cheerfulness (Ruch & Carrell, 1998). However, this relation did not occur in benevolent humor, probably because its “kind” nature opposes the aggressive essence of political humor. This is an indicator that it is not only the willingness to enjoy or experience humor that causes the differences that we observed in the evaluation of politicians, but the mockery and more aggressive nature of corrective humor.

As we have mentioned before, aggression and mockery toward politicians could be a reflection of political disaffection, which is a threat to the functioning of contemporary democracies (Torcal & Montero, 2006). Therefore, how it manifests and presents is not trivial. Political humor and satire are more likely to be an effect of distrust and disaffection (more than its cause), but that does not mean they do not have an effect at a social level. Manifesting negative prejudice toward certain groups using humor expands the norm of what is considered socially acceptable, as proposed by the Prejudiced Norm Theory (Ford & Ferguson, 2004), so the more discontent is demonstrated through political humor, the more it is accepted to attack politicians. This is consistent with what Mendiburo-Seguel and Ford (2019) found regarding the fact that expressing negative prejudice toward politicians is considered highly acceptable. In this way, the key implication of this study is that it contributes to understanding how individual dispositions such as comic styles can have a role in that relation.

Finally, and in line with previous research regarding political memes, we did not find differences in the evaluations of politicians based solely on condition; that is, political memes did not affect either positively o negatively what people thought of political figures. Although political humor has been observed to affect attitudes toward politicians, maybe the simplicity of memes makes them an appropriate tool to communicate ideas, but not a powerful enough one to impact people’s attitudes regarding politicians. To accomplish this, other variables, such as the ones considered in this study, should be considered.

Limitations

Our results must be interpreted considering some limitations. On the one hand, there was no pre-exposure assessment of people’s evaluations of the politicians who appeared in the stimuli, or control of some variables that could intervene on the studied relations (such as personality or source of humor), so it is not possible to determine if there is an effect of these on the results. Although we considered this limitation and tried to address it via cluster sampling and randomization in the assignment of participants to different groups (which resulted in no differences between them regarding other relevant variables), it is possible that this effect existed.

Also, the stimuli may not have been “strong” enough to have the desired impacts on manipulation, as suggested by the effect size of the difference in funniness assessment. Although the observed effect size is considered medium (Ben-Shachar et al., 2020), a larger effect could be more suitable to have more certainties regarding the manipulation’s success. In the same vein, one might wonder how differences in perceived funniness between stimuli may be showing that a stimulus “is funny or not.” In this regard, we think that the appreciation of humor implies differences at an individual level (what is funny for some people is not for others). Therefore, what is sought in experimental scenarios is not to have a “funny” stimulus, but instead one that is considered “funnier” than a serious counterfactual.

Other aspects regarding the stimuli should be considered. On the one hand, it referred to situations for which politicians are usually judged negatively (e.g., illegal financing of their campaigns). However, it is possible that the comic correction should be based on real situations or events and not on generic stereotypes that cannot be directly attributable to a particular politician. On the other hand, the characteristics of the politicians that were assessed were not necessarily linked to the content of the memes, so there would not necessarily be a correction of deficiencies related to them.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: AM-S received funding from the National Research and Development Agency (ANID), Fondo Nacional de Desarrollo Científico y Tecnológico (Fondecyt Regular) Project N° 1210556

Ethical Approval

This study was carried out in accordance with the recommendations of the ethics committee of the Faculty of Education of Andres Bello University. All subjects gave written informed consent in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki. The protocol was approved by the ethics committee of the Faculty of Education of Andres Bello University.

ORCID iD

Andrés Mendiburo-Seguel

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Laughing at Politicians to Make Justice: The Moral Component of Humor in Appraising Politicians

Abstract

Keywords

Humor that Targets Politicians

Political Memes

The Moral Component of Humor: Corrective Humor and Benevolent Humor

The Present Study

Methods

Procedure

Stimuli

Participants

Instruments

Corrective Humor and Benevolent Humor

Attitude Toward Politicians

Political Positioning

Funniness

Likeability and Evaluation of Politicians

Results

Evaluation of Politicians

Discussion and Conclusion

Limitations

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

Funding

Ethical Approval

ORCID iD

References