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The Rating of Sexist Humor Under Time Pressure as an Indicator of Spontaneous Sexist Attitudes

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Abstract

Spontaneous vs. more controlled indicators of sexist attitudes were assessed in a laboratory experiment with 131 male German undergraduates. Participants rated the funniness of sexist and nonsexist jokes either with or without time pressure, and completed self-report measures of sexism and related constructs. With time pressure, participants showed greater liking for sexist jokes than without. No such effect was found for nonsexist jokes. Both with and without time pressure, sexist joke ratings showed meaningful correlations with standard self-report measures, which attests to the joke measure’s high reliability and construct validity. Directions for future research are discussed.

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Acknowledgments

This research and the preparation of this manuscript was supported by a grant from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (BO 1248/4-3) to Gerd Bohner and Frank Siebler.

We thank Paul Schreiber and Philipp Süssenbach for their help in conducting this study.

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  1. Department of Psychology, Universität Bielefeld, Postfach 100131, 33501, Bielefeld, Germany

    Friederike Eyssel & Gerd Bohner

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  1. Friederike Eyssel
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  2. Gerd Bohner
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Correspondence to Friederike Eyssel.

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Eyssel, F., Bohner, G. The Rating of Sexist Humor Under Time Pressure as an Indicator of Spontaneous Sexist Attitudes. Sex Roles 57, 651–660 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11199-007-9302-5

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