Prejudice reducing effects of affiliative minority-performed comedy

Research on humour and prejudice has predominantly focused on the use of negative, or disparaging humour and its prejudice enhancing effects. This new study investigated whether a positive ‘affiliative’ humour, could elicit a reduction in prejudice. Participants (n = 184) were randomly assigned to the trans-positive, general humour or word-task control condition after which data were collected measuring their prejudice, system justifying beliefs and intention to engage in collective action. In the trans-positive humour condition participants were exposed to stand-up comedy performed by transgender comedians. Results showed a main effect of condition on attitudes and although attitudes were most positive in the trans-positive condition a pairwise comparison revealed this effect not to distinguish between it from both other conditions. Interestingly, participants who found the trans-positive humour funny were significantly more willing to engage in collective action to support the transgender community compared to those in the control condition irrespective of attitudes