5/22/2020 Was that joke funny or offensive?

Who's telling it matters - Actively Learn

Was that joke funny or offensive? Who's telling it matters

Text by Michael Thai, Lecturer, The University of Queensland, and Alex Borgella, Assistant Professor of
Psychology, Fort Lewis College
Licensed under

ASSIGNMENT DIRECTIONS

As you read, ask yourself: how do we know whether something is funny or

offensive?

QUESTION 1 (POLL)

What is your reaction to this statement:

I can make fun of my family, but you can't.

That's right.

No, you can make fun of my family.

I don't make fun of my family.

I'm confused.

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5/22/2020 Was that joke funny or offensive? Who's telling it matters - Actively Learn

Was that joke funny or offensive? Who's telling it

matters
In September 2019, before the start of its 45th season, Saturday Night Live brought1 on some new cast
members. The decision to hire one of them, Shane Gillis,2 was roundly criticized after disparaging jokes
he’d made at the expense of Asian and gay people quickly surfaced.

A week after announcing Gillis’s hire, the show fired him.

On the other hand, critics widely lauded the addition of comedian Bowen Yang.3 Ironically, Yang also
tends to poke fun at Asian and gay people during his sets.

So, why did Yang get to keep his job, while Gillis lost his?

QUESTION 2 DOK 3 STANDARD RI.3

Why do you think Yang kept his job while Gillis lost his?

We study why some jokes land and others don’t – and why the identity of the person telling the joke
matters. Yang, it seems, can “get away” with this sort of humor precisely because he is both Asian and
gay, while Gillis is neither.

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5/22/2020 Was that joke funny or offensive? Who's telling it matters - Actively Learn

Being "in" on the joke

Many of us intuitively understand that it’s more permissible for people to openly judge or criticize social
groups they belong to than those they do not belong to.

For example, many Americans may feel justified in calling out the country’s faults while lambasting a
non-American for doing the same. This phenomenon is called the intergroup sensitivity effect, and we
wondered whether it applied to humor.

To test this, we ran a series of studies in which we examined whether people’s reactions to disparaging
jokes would change based on who was telling the joke.

In our first study, we showed participants a mock Facebook profile belonging to either a gay or a straight
man who had posted a joke about gay people. We then asked the participants to rate how funny,
offensive, and acceptable they found the joke. Participants considered the joke funnier, less offensive,
and more acceptable if the poster was gay.

We wanted to know whether this effect also applied to jokes about race. So, in a second study, we showed
participants a mock Facebook profile belonging to an Asian, black, or white man who had posted a joke
about Asian people. Here, participants rated the joke as funnier, less offensive, and more acceptable
when the owner of the Facebook profile was Asian.

We then ran a third study in which we directly asked participants how acceptable it was for members of
different social groups to make jokes about their in-group or various out-groups. We found that
participants, on a consistent basis, were more receptive to humor based on gender, race, and sexual
orientation if the person making the joke was also a member of the targeted group.

QUESTION 3 DOK 2 STANDARD RI.2

Which statement below accurately describes the results of the studies?

Jokes were funniest when told to people with higher intellect.

Making jokes about Asian people or gay people is never appropriate.

People who do not laugh don't understand the joke.

Jokes about people groups are most funny when told by a member of that group.

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5/22/2020 Was that joke funny or offensive? Who's telling it matters - Actively Learn

Why might group membership matter?

So why, exactly, does the group membership of the joke teller matter so much? We think it may have
something to do with how an audience interprets the joke’s intent.

Some humor researchers distinguish between what they call “antisocial intentions” – in which humor is
used to inflict harm and reinforce stereotypes about a social group – and “prosocial intentions” – where
humor is used to empower the group and challenge stereotypes about it.

When humor is deployed in a self-referential way,4 perhaps the audience is more prone to perceive it
through a prosocial lens.

For example, when Bowen Yang speaks with an exaggerated Chinese accent, audiences may more readily
construe this as coming from a benign place. Maybe he’s satirizing5 the racist ways in which others
portray Chinese people, or perhaps he’s affectionately parodying his own culture. But no matter the real
reason, he certainly wouldn’t want to inflict harm on his own group – or so the thinking goes.

On the other hand, when Shane Gillis does the same, audiences may be less likely to give him the benefit
of the doubt – and more likely to infer malign and racist intentions. He doesn’t identify with his targets
in any way. Maybe he truly does harbor disdain.

Alternatively, it may simply be the case that people are given greater “license” to make disparaging jokes
about groups they’re a part of, irrespective of their motives.6

We plan to test these potential processes across a new set of studies. Nonetheless, our findings show that
comedians and humorists, professional or otherwise, should be ever mindful of group dynamics. They
could be the difference between a joke being met with rollicking laughter or awkward silence.

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5/22/2020 Was that joke funny or offensive? Who's telling it matters - Actively Learn

QUESTION 4 DOK 2 STANDARD RI.1

What does the author mean by the statement: "Nonetheless, our findings show that
comedians and humorists, professional or otherwise, should be ever mindful of group
dynamics"?

Comedians and humorists should screen their audiences carefully before telling jokes.

Comedians and humorists have to be aware of what groups they're a part of and what
groups they are not.

Professional joke-tellers have to be mindful of whether they're being mean or not.

Dynamic groups will find jokes funny and not be offended.

QUESTION 5 DOK 3 STANDARD RI.2

How do we know whether something is funny or offensive? Use at least two examples from
the text to support your response.

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5/22/2020 Was that joke funny or offensive? Who's telling it matters - Actively Learn

Notes

MRS. RICCARDI
1
Saturday Night Live (also known as SNL) is a late-night live television sketch comedy and variety show.
The show premiered on NBC on October 11, 1975.

MRS. RICCARDI
2
Shane Gillis

MRS. RICCARDI
3
Bowen Yang

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5/22/2020 Was that joke funny or offensive? Who's telling it matters - Actively Learn

MRS. RICCARDI
4
in a way that refers to yourself—the joke-teller

MRS. RICCARDI
5
Satirizing is to use satire (the use of humor, irony, exaggeration, or ridicule to expose and criticize
people's stupidity). In this sentence, it is used to call out racism.

MRS. RICCARDI
6
no matter what their intentions are

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