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. 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. This phenomenon is called the intergroup sensitivity effect, and we wondered whether it applied to humor. 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.įor example, many Americans may feel justified in calling out the country’s faults while lambasting a non-American for doing the same.
Yang, it seems, can “get away” with this sort of humor precisely because he is both Asian and gay, while Gillis is neither. We study why some jokes land and others don’t – and why the identity of the person telling the joke matters.
