All Joking Aside: A Serious Investigation into the Persuasive Effect of Funny Social Issue Messages

Abstract

This research was designed to assess the effects of contemporary political humor on information processing and persuasion, focusing specifically on two competing processes: processing motivation/counterargument distraction and message discounting. In Study 1, 212 undergraduates read one of four monologues by political comedian Bill Maher. Correlations and path modeling suggested that, in general, humor associated with greater source liking, closer information processing, and reduced counterargument, but also with greater message discounting. In Study 2, 204 undergraduates read one of four versions of a message based on the comedy of Chris Rock, manipulated to be more or less funny and attributed to the comedian or not. Results largely replicated those from Study 1. In addition, the humorous messages promoted more discounting than the serious messages, though they were processed with comparable depth. Although no more likely to be persuasive in the short run, the comedic transcript evidenced a sleeper effect after one week. In sum, the data were consistent with the notion that humorous messages might be processed carefully (but not critically) yet simultaneously discounted as irrelevant to attitudinal judgments. Implications for humor research and the sleeper effect are discussed.

Keywords:

• Humor
• Persuasion
• Discounting
• Counterargument
• Message Processing

The authors wish to express their sincere thanks to Alan Sillars and two anonymous reviewers for their generosity in time and insight, which undoubtedly improved this manuscript. Further thanks to Ed Fink, René Weber, Naomi Wetzel, Tamar Sarnoff, and Jeff Halford for their assistance at various stages of this project.

Notes

1. Pilot testing of the closed-ended measures relative to the open-ended thought list supported the validity of these measures (see also Wolski & Nabi, 2000).

2. These associations changed little when controlling for age, gender, issue salience and attitude strength. Similar considerations were made in Study 2, and again, gender, issue salience, and having seen the segment before had minimal impact on the reported associations.

3. Our early attempts at designing control messages for political satire proved very difficult. For example, in one monologue, Maher argues that gun policy should be based on the guns available when the Founding Fathers were alive (i.e., muskets). Asserting Americans should be allowed to carry muskets in a “serious” message surely appeared ludicrous, thus lowering perceptions of argument quality. Yet, to introduce progun control arguments not included in the satirical piece would create discrepancies not only in argument content but in conclusion explicitness.

4. Because the respondents were initially more in favor of the market-driven nature of medical research than Chris Rock, attitude shift consistent with the message appears as a negative correlation.

5. We also ran models with initial attitude, but fit was not meaningfully higher nor were the relationships among the variables altered. Thus, we present the more parsimonious model.

6. Recall in each of the humorous conditions was about 62%, and recall in the serious conditions was about 39%.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Robin L. Nabi

Robin L. Nabi (PhD, University of Pennsylvania) is an associate professor of communication in the Department of Communication at the University of California, Santa Barbara

Emily Moyer-Gusé

Emily Moyer-Gusé (MA, Michigan State University) is a doctoral student

Sahara Byrne

Sahara Byrne (MA, University of California, Santa Barbara) is a doctoral student