Sexist humor increases rape proclivity and victim blaming
The effect of sexist humor and type of rape on men's self-reported rape proclivity and victim blame | Manuela Thomae - Academia.edu
Just so you know, whenever you're laughing at sexist jokes, there is objective and scientific evidence that doing so normalizes the belief portrayed in the joke, even though it may have been portrayed sarcastically or ironically.
Here is a review of the publication I made, with a tl;dr:
Introduction:
The operational definitions (rape proclivity, rape myth acceptance, etc.) seem well operationally defined through previous, cited research.
But I don't think the end of the second paragraph is a valid statement for a scientific article ("This finding is consistent with the feminist argument that rape functions as an instrument of social dominance of women by men in broader society"). While true that it's consistent (unproven if the theory is true), there is no reason to bring in that particular theory as opposed to other theories, and I ultimately think such a focus will do more to harm the publicity of this research, since again, the theory is not proven but merely not disproven.
Prejudiced Norm Theory:
Lots of citations to previous research that essentially said the same thing -- bigoted humor begets bigot tolerance. Do note that it does not find that it spawns actual bigotry, but merely tolerance to perceived bigotry. Instead, only a correlation is found between sexists and their enjoyment of sexist humor, with the causal relationship being between all people (technically, the average person) being exposed to sexist humor and their tolerance of sexism.
The last study listed does attempt to make a causal relationship between sexist jokes and sexism (high rape proclivity), but it also states that the people most receptive to adopting sexist norms already scored high in sexism. Without seeing the data (and even so, depending on how much data was collected), it's hard to say if an already-present sexist mindset skewed the average or if everyone did actually show in increase in sexism. That is, mathematically, after being exposed to sexist humor, you will see something along the lines of a 50% increase in sexist norm acceptance -- which is no change at all if you are not sexist to begin with. I imagine this study itself was designed to address the lacking conclusion of its citation here, to close the open gap of interpretation.
The Present Research
Question: Does the rapist being an acquaintance or stranger make a difference?
Application: To what extent do these newly adopted sexual norms influence victim blaming? i.e. What effect will sexist humor have in the real world, such as in court or through social communication?
I think the application question is precisely why this research is important. If a behavior is having a real world impact, such as legal and social ramifications for citizens, it needs to be known. It is not longer a debatable philosophical issue of what constitutes well-being, and it enters into a much harder science of causal relationships. The application becomes that is much harder to dispute and much more important for us as a society to acknowledge.
This study was only ran on men. Perceptions by women of rape as a result of sexist humor was not studied.
Prediction: Sexist humor will only have an influence on perception of rape scenarios wherein the rapist is an acquaintance of the victim.
Results:
The sexist jokes were rated to be equally as funny as the non-sexist jokes, thus the hilarity of the different jokes should have had no impact on the results.
Rape Proclivity and Sentence Length:
Confirmed: Sexist humor increased rape proclivity against acquaintances (but not strangers!). In fact, rape proclivity is higher against acquaintances without sexist humor than it is against strangers with sexist humor.
In the same vein, sentence length for rapists was determined to be lower after exposure to sexist humor when the victim was an acquaintance (but not a stranger!). The second shortest sentence length was for acquaintances following no exposure to sexist humor.
Like rape proclivity, sexist humor had no influence on sentence length when the rapist was a stranger.
Victim Blame and Seriousness of Rape:
Victim blame and seriousness of rape were increased by sexist humor only when the rapist was an acquaintance.
Unlike the other two areas, being an acquaintance without sexist humor created no change. Like the other two areas, being a stranger with sexist humor created no change either.
TL;DR:
Sexist humor will create sexist belief and sexist action, but only when the rapist is an acquaintance.
Sexist humor will create sexist belief, but only when the rapist is an acquaintance.
If the rapist is a stranger, sexist humor has no impact on sexist belief or action.
And lastly, if the rapist is an acquaintance, sexist action is more likely with or without sexist humor.
