Dirty Joking: An Investigation of the Linkage between Gender, Sexual Jokes, and Status of the Joke Teller Open Access

Abstract

Telling sexual jokes in social interaction is a pervasive form of humor that influences interpersonal dynamics such as fostering in-group cohesion and maintaining in-group norms. Sexual jokes, however, are often implicitly exploitative, perpetuating gender stereotypes and reinforcing gender hierarchy. My study asks, do women face more scrutiny than men when telling sexual jokes in casual settings? Specifically, I investigate how the gender of a sexual joke teller affect respondents’ perceptions of the sexual joke teller’s status and competence. Utilizing an online platform MTurk, I gathered a sample of 291 adults (ages 18-30) to participate in a vignette experiment to test my hypotheses. Gender of the joke teller (man/woman) and type of joke (sexual/non-sexual) were randomized. Drawing upon Social Role Theory and Expectancy Violation Theory, I hypothesize that: (1) A sexual joke teller of any gender will be perceived as lower in status and less competent than a non-sexual joke teller; (2) A woman sexual joke teller will be perceived as lower/higher (competing hypotheses) in status and competence than a man sexual joke teller. Through quantitative analysis, my study finds that (1) There is no statistically significant evidence to support any of my hypotheses; (2) Participants tend to perceive the assigned gender of the joke teller in my vignette as their own gender, resulting in significant noncompliance pattern to my randomized treatments. My study builds upon our knowledge of under what conditions using humor increases or decreases status in casual interaction (most studies have focused on the formal workplace setting). Second, it contributes to our understanding of the relationship between sexual double standard and humor by demonstrating how a common type of humor – sexual humor – may or may not differentially affect perceptions of status and competence for men and women.

Table of Contents

Section 1: Introduction                                  1

Section 2: Background Literature                 4

Section 3: Methods                                       13

Section 4: Results                                           21

Section 5: Discussion                                    33

Section 6: References                                    38

Section 7: Appendix A                                   46

Section 8: Appendix B                                   48

About this Honors Thesis

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School	Emory College
Department	Sociology
Degree	B.A.
Submission	Honors Thesis
Language	English
Research Field	Sociology, General
Keyword	Status Humor Gender
Committee Chair / Thesis Advisor	Johnson, Cathryn, Emory University
Committee Members	Ananth, Abhishek, Emory University Hegtvedt, Karen, Emory University

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