Sexist Humor and Rape Proclivity: The Moderating Role of Joke Teller Gender and Severity of Sexual Assault

When presented with a series of sexist jokes, men harboring high levels of hostile sexism reported greater rape proclivity in moderately violent rape scenarios if a woman told the jokes than if a man told them. This rape proclivity was not limited to the specific woman described in the scenario, but generalized towards women as a whole.

In moderately violent rape scenarios:

• Men higher in hostile sexism reported greater rape proclivity than men low in hostile sexism.
• Men higher in hostile sexism reported greater rape proclivity when a woman had previously told sexist jokes than when a man told sexist jokes.

In highly violent rape scenarios,

• Men higher in hostile sexism reported greater rape proclivity than men low in hostile sexism.
• Rape proclivity among men high in hostile sexism did not differ as a function of the gender of the joke teller.   

The authors replicated these findings in a second experiment measuring rape proclivity in general, rather than in reference to a specific fictitious woman. Taken together, these findings demonstrate that sexist humor, particularly when initiated by women, fosters a social context of tolerance of sexism among men high in hostile sexism. In the context of sexist humor, sexist men feel freer to express their antagonism against women through subtle sexist acts as well as sexual violence.

This study was composed of one pilot study and two experiments. For each, male university students at the University of Granada volunteered to participate. In the pilot study, 49 participants answered questions on the violence of a particular rape scenario. Their responses were used to categorize each of the four rape scenarios as moderately or highly violent.

In the first of the two experiments, 144 male participants were assessed for either high or low hostile sexism using the Ambivalent Sexism Inventory. They were then assigned into one of two experimental conditions: in one condition a male told the sexist jokes, while in the other a woman told the sexist jokes. After reading the jokes, participants read the same rape scenarios as in the pilot study. They were then asked a series of questions designed to determine their rape proclivity to the specific woman mentioned in the rape scenarios.

In the second experiment, a different group of 128 male participants were assessed for either high or low hostile sexism using the same method as the first experiment. They then read the same series of sexist jokes, except that the name of the joke teller was not specified (it was only said that a man or a woman sent the sexist jokes). Participants then read the same rape scenarios as the pilot study. They answered the same questions as the first experiment, but these questions were designed to determine their rape proclivity of all women by asking questions about women as a whole, instead of the specific woman in the rape scenarios.