The Affect Effect of Political Satire: Sarcastic Humor, Negative Emotions, and Political Participation

Abstract

Building on the Orientation-Stimulus-Orientation-Response (O-S-O-R) framework, the current study proposes a mediation model wherein negative emotions serve as a second O. An online experiment using a representative sample demonstrated that consuming sarcastic political humor can indirectly increase the likelihood of political participation by eliciting negative emotions toward a government policy. In addition, we introduced education as a first O, illustrating that the indirect mobilizing effect of the viewing of sarcastic humor through negative emotions is stronger for political sophisticates. The proposed model suggests avenues for exploring the role of emerging media genres that are presumably less enlightening yet are more emotionally provocative.

Notes

¹Because the primary goal of this study was to determine the role of entertainment programming in promotion of political behavior, the conceptual definition of satirical humor was confined to more politically oriented comedy programming (e.g., The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report) as compared to standard nighttime talk shows (e.g., The Late Show with David Letterman and The Tonight Show with Jay Leno). In this vein, Holbert (2005) delineated an important typology of political humor, which explains that satire shows tend to give primary attention to political content and address political topics much more explicitly vis-à-vis other entertainment programs. Moreover, Hoffman and Young (2011) highlighted distinct consequences of political humor, documenting that exposure to the former genre of parody programs spurred political participation, whereas viewing the latter type of traditional late-night shows failed to produce an equivalent mobilizing effect.

²Contrary to our hypothesis regarding the influence of satire exposure on negative emotions, some past works suggested that the viewing of humor may entail positive affective states such as enjoyment (Nabi, Moyer-Guse, & Byrne, 2007; Young, 2008). We offer three explanations to reconcile these seemingly conflicting predictions. First, considerable research evidence has accumulated to show that positive and negative affective dimensions can exist independent of each other (Marcus, Neuman, & MacKuen, 2000; Russell, 1980), which accordingly implies that the viewing of political humor can elicit positive and negative emotions simultaneously. Second, our conceptual and operational definition of a negative emotion has a clear reference to its specific target (i.e., government policy), whereas past studies considered rather generic affective states following exposure to humor. Third, negative and positive reactions that may all stem from the viewing of sarcastic humor may refer to a distinction between an emotion directly elicited by a stimulus and an emotion resulting from an assessment of the directly experienced emotion (Krishnan & Olshavsky, 1995). Just as fear aroused by a horror film may later translate to enjoyment upon assessment of the level of the immediate experience of fear, exposure to political satire may initially trigger anger and/or worry about politics due to the negative tone of humor. These emotional reactions can, however, fulfill viewers' emotional needs such as superiority and enjoyment (Jones, 2010).

³Although greater engagement in public life is more often than not deemed a democratic good, normative values of emotion-driven participation may be questionable. In particular, a more profound level of normative assessment (Althaus, 2012) may find this trend troublesome, given that it may refer to ill-informed citizens drawn into engagement devoid of fundamental knowledge to make thoughtful and responsible decisions. Nonetheless, recent research illustrated that emotion is not antithetical to but could instead exert favorable influence on an individual's knowledge and rational decision-making (see Neuman, Marcus, Crigler, & MacKuen, 2007, for an extensive review). Furthermore the democratic principle of an informed citizenry has been challenged by proponents of low-information rationality (e.g., Lupia, 1994; Popkin, 1994; Sniderman, Brody, & Tetlock, 1991); those who have demonstrated that even poorly informed citizens are capable of sophisticated thought and rational behavior in so much as informational shortcuts and heuristics are available. Dealing specifically with the role of emotions, Sniderman et al. (1991) showed that emotions, when appropriately arranged, could facilitate the efficiency of reasoning. All in all, synthesis of literature lends credence to the renewed conceptualization of emotion as a useful tool to encourage reasoned calculation and rational choice. Hence a normative criticism of an emotion-motivated active citizenry for its shortage of sufficient information may raise a less serious concern to a functioning democratic process (see also Young, 2013).

⁴We also assessed the extent to which the overall indirect effect of humor viewing is conditional on alternative measures of political sophistication (for review, see Krosnick, 1990) such as political interest, internal efficacy, and willingness to learn (as a proxy for knowledge), but none of these yielded a comparable moderating influence (all p values > .10). Although we acknowledge that these also can serve as a valid measure of political sophistication, our rationale for employing education as a first O, which can moderate the overall indirect effect of humor viewing on participation, is threefold. First, McLeod et al. (1994) emphasized the role of education as a first O, augmenting the message influence in their original O-S-O-R framework. Second, education affords more advanced cognitive capacity (Rosenberg, 1988), which is key to processing and understanding political humor (Young, 2008). Third, additional analyses reveal that education is significantly associated with other indicators of political sophistication, including internal efficacy (Spearman's ρ = .669, p < .001), political interest (Spearman's ρ = .352, p < .001), and willingness to learn (Spearman's ρ = .279, p < .001).

⁵All three edited versions of video clips used in this study are downloadable at https://www.dropbox.com/sh/b7ph8j2s8ym22u5/WgM7yUR1R7.

⁶For a categorical independent variable with k categories, it is recommended to create k–1 dummy variables and then conduct analyses k–1 times (Preacher & Hayes, 2008). For each analysis, one dummy variable is treated as the independent variable and the other one(s) is (are) entered as the covariate(s). Because the independent variable in this study has three categories (political satire, hard news, and control), we created two dummy variables (satire dummy and hard news dummy) and ran an analysis twice. Therefore any effects of stimuli reported here represent the impacts of those relative to the control condition.

Note. N = 768. CI = confidence interval; LL = lower limit; UL = upper limit; S = satire exposure; T = television news exposure; NE = negative emotions; P = political participation. Estimates were calculated using the PROCESS macro provided by Hayes (2013). CIs are bias-corrected 95% CIs based on the bootstrapping of 5,000 samples.

Note. N = 768. Estimates were calculated using the PROCESS macro provided by Hayes (2013). CIs are bias-corrected 95% CIs based on the bootstrapping of 5,000 samples. The output displays the conditional indirect effect at five levels of education: some high school or less (n = 53), high school graduate (n = 159), some college or associate degree (n = 294), bachelor's degree (n = 155), and postgraduate education (n = 107). CI = confidence interval; LL = lower limit; UL = upper limit.

⁷An index of internal efficacy was created by averaging responses on three items measured on a 7-point scale (M = 3.93, SD = 1.36, α = .75). Political interest was measured with a single item asking respondents to report on a 7-point scale to what extent they were interested in politics (M = 4.29, SD = 1.80). A willingness to learn index was created by averaging responses to three items measured on a 7-point scale (M = 5.01, SD = 1.23, α = .81). Finally, an index of cynicism was created by averaging responses to four items measured on a 7-point scale (M = 5.31, SD = 1.03, α = .73).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Hoon Lee

Hoon Lee (Ph.D., University of Michigan, 2012) is a Korea Foundation Visiting Assistant Professor at the Nam Center for Korean Studies at the University of Michigan. His research interests include social impacts of entertainment media and new communication technologies.

Nojin Kwak

Nojin Kwak (Ph.D., University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2001) is an associate professor in the Department of Communication Studies at the University of Michigan. His research interests include political and civic effects of news media, entertainment talk shows, informal social associations, and new technologies.