Joke cruelty and joke appreciation revisited

Abstract

We investigated the relation between independently rated joke cruelty and joke appreciation within the thematically homogeneous category of jokes about the disabled. We found a negative linear relation between appreciation and cruelty for females and no relation for males. This remained true even after controlling statistically for four other rated joke properties: surprise, incongruity, difficulty, and resolution. There was no evidence of an inverted-U relation between appreciation and cruelty. We conclude that an optimal cruelty model of joke appreciation is not supported when thematic joke category and other rated predictors are controlled. In contrast, a previous finding that cruelty matters more for females than for males was replicated.