Low system justification drives ideological differences in joke perception: a critical commentary and re-analysis of Baltiansky et al. (2021)

Abstract A recent study by Baltiansky et al. (2021), which was published in HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research tested two hypotheses related to system justification and the perception of stereotypical humor. They reported to have found evidence for a cross-over interaction, with judgments of jokes being contingent on a combination of the social status of the targets of jokes and raters’ system justification motivations. Here, we discuss the original analysis, presentation, and interpretation of the data in the target article, before presenting a re-analysis of the authors’ shared data file. We show that the framing of claims such as that “high system-justifiers found jokes targeting low-status groups (e.g., women, poor people, racial/ethnic minorities) to be funnier than low system-justifiers did” are misleading. Instead, our re-analyses suggest that ideological differences in joke perception are driven primarily by those scoring low on the system justification motivation rating jokes about ostensibly low-status groups as less funny than jokes about other social groups.