The Effect Of Disparagement Humor On Ambivalent Sexism: The Mediating Role Of Moral Disengagement And The Moderating Role Of Social Dominance

Disparagement humor is humor that denigrates,belittles,or maligns an individual or social group.Foreign studies have found that disparagement humor can increase individuals’ expression of prejudiced attitudes.In Chinese cultural environment,humorous information that disparage women is also likely to lead to prejudiced attitudes towards women.Sexism is gender bias,especially against women,according to the theory of ambivalent sexism,ambivalent sexism consists of hostile sexism and benevolent sexism.Similar to the traditional sexism,hostile sexism is a demeaning and negative attitude towards women.Benevolent sexism,on the other hand,is a stereotype of women with positive emotions,but it is still an attitude of gender inequality.Compared with traditional sexism,ambivalent Sexism can better reflect people’s attitude towards women in modern social environment.Therefore,exposure to disparagement humor messages about women is likely to affect the level of ambivalent sexism in male individuals.Disparagement humor can have negative consequences,such as increasing antagonism between groups and increasing prejudice against the group being derogated against,so giving or endorsing disparagement humor is sometimes seen as immoral.Moral disengagement,as a psychological mechanism to explain unethical behavior,may play a mediating role in the effect of disparagement humor on ambivalent sexism.Social dominance is an important factor affecting the level of individual prejudice,Therefore,Social dominance may have a moderating effect on the relationship between disparagement humor and ambivalent sexism.This study attempts to explore the impact of disparagement humor on ambivalent sexism and its subdimensions,and establish a moderated mediation model with moral disengagement as the mediating variable and social dominance as the moderating variable.The study adopted the experimental survey,a total of 125 male college students were randomly selected and divided into the experimental group(derogatory humor)(n = 61)and the control group(neutral humor)(n = 64).The experimental study was carried out,and the " Ambivalent Sexism Inventory "," Moral Disengagement Scale " and "Social dominance Scale" were used to measure the relevant variables.SPSS26.0 was used for descriptive statistical analysis,independent sample t test,correlation analysis to and regression analysis verify the the relationship between variables.Process plug-in was used to analyze the mediating effect,moderating effect and moderated mediating effect of the model.The research conclusions are as follows:(1)Disparagement humor significantly positively predicted the hostile sexism dimension of ambivalent sexism,but not benign sexism.Individuals exposed to disparagement humor had higher levels of hostile sexism than those exposed to neutral humor.(2)Disparagement humor positively predicts moral disengagement.Individuals exposed to disparagement humor had higher levels of moral disengagement than those exposed to neutral humor.(3)There is a significant positive correlation between moral disengagement and hostile sexism.Individuals with higher levels of moral disengagement had higher levels of hostile sexism.(4)Moral disengagement plays a partial mediating role between disparagement humor and malicious hostile sexism.(5)There is a significant correlation between social dominance and ambivalent sexism(and both subdimensions).Individuals with higher levels of social dominance tendencies had higher levels of ambivalent sexism.(6)Social dominance moderates the relationship between moral disengagement and hostile sexism.The higher the social dominance,the more significant the relationship between moral disengagement and hostile sexism.These results indicate that disparagement humor can affect the overall level of ambivalent sexism of individual men toward women through moral disengagement,but has different effects on the two subdimensions of ambivalent sexism.Specifically,disparagement humor has significant effects on hostile sexism,but has no significant effects on benign sexism.On this basis,social dominance moderates the mediating effect of moral disengagement on disparagement humor and ambivalent sexism.The higher the social dominance,the more significant the relationship between moral disengagement and hostile sexism.According to the results of the study,exposure to disparagement humorous information can significantly improve the level of ambivalent sexism of individual men towards women,and moral disengagement plays a certain mediating role,while social dominance plays a certain moderating role.In the theoretical sense,this study has enriched the research on the psychological mechanism of the effect of disparagement humor on prejudice,and provided more references for future research.In practical sense,this study reveals the negative effects of disparagement humor on sexism,and puts forward specific suggestions on how to prevent and intervene its negative consequences.