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The Ku Klux Klan and its role in the USA
The Ku Klux Klan and its role in the USA
The Ku Klux Klan and its role in the USA
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Hate groups like the Ku Klux Klan are often seen as a serious highly threatening group and even though the Ku Klux Klan is considered a threatening group; most people do not realize the extent to which humor can affect negative views of groups like the Ku Klux Klan. According to an article done by Billig (2001) on sites that contained African American jokes that were advertised as just jokes and not to be promoting violence; these jokes contained words and phrases pertaining to extreme racist hatred. These sites also contained links to Ku Klux Klan sites and it is believed by Billing (2001) that the racist hatred portrayed in these jokes actually promotes negative beliefs and even violence towards African Americans. This example of humor being used to affect beliefs of specific groups of individuals is an extreme but often jokes that may seem to be harmless, could actually be negatively affecting an individual’s viewpoint of the group the joke is directed towards. This study will test the effect of jokes directed towards specific groups on the viewpoints of perceivers of these jokes. Specifically, it is predicted that jokes that negatively portray a specific group will also negatively affect the perceiver’s viewpoint of that group within specific characteristics of the individual.
Theories, Terms and Scales
In the study done by Crandell and Eshleman (2003), prejudice is operationalized as the negative views of a specific group that are expressed when the prejudice is viewed as more acceptable and is no longer suppressed. Also justification is operationalized to be any evidence, whether it is psychological or social that allows for the expression of a prejudice to be viewed as non-threatening to the individual because they have ...
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...pean Journal of Social Psychology, 31. doi: 10.1002/ejsp.56
Ford, T.E., Boxer, C.F., Armstrong, J., & Edel J.R. (2008). More than “just a joke”: the prejudice-releasing function of sexist humor. Society for Personality and Social Psychology, 34 (2), 159-170. doi: 10.1177/0146167207310022
Hobden, K.L., & Olson, J.M. (1994). From jest to antipathy: disparagement humor as a source of dissonance-motivated attitude change. Basic and applied social psychology, 15 (3), 239-249.
Hodson, G., Rush, J., & MacInnis, C.C. (2010). A joke is just a joke (except when it isn’t): cavalier humor beliefs facilitate the expression of group dominance motives. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 99 (4), 660-682. doi: 10.1037/a0019627
Thomas, C.A., & Esses, V.M. (2004). Individual differences in reactions to sexist humor. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 7 (1), 89-100.
“The practical disengagement of humor…helps explain the opposition between amusement and negative emotions.” (530) There are three effects of humor; irresponsibility, blocking compassion, and promoting prejudice. Humor can take away what we are/should be doing in life and sometimes there isn’t anything wrong with that. Sometimes when we hear a hateful thing we just laugh it off as if it was no big deal when it really was. “An
In the insightful article “causes of prejudice” written by Vincent N. Parillo, the author begins the intuitive argument with a three paragraph introduction explaining to the reader, briefly, about the social and psychological sides of prejudice. “Negative attitudes can lead to turbulent social relations between dominant minority groups.” (pg. 504) “Psychological perspectives on prejudice-whether behaviorists, cognitive, or psychoanalytic-focus on the subjective states of mind of individuals.”(pg.504) which help the author, not only introduce these topics to the reader, but also aids the reader in understanding the author’s reasoning for writing this article. Progressing further into the author’s argument, the author commences his argument
Sexism can have many negative impacts on the way women view themselves, research was conducted and it showed that when exposed to modern sexism, women expressed negative self-directed emotions. Modern sexism exposure also resulted in stereotypical self-presentation, where in contrast, women who were exposed to old-fashioned sexism displayed less self-defeating behavior. This research concluded that women were more likely to stand up and defend themselves against the old-fashioned gender stereotypes, but let the modern day expectations defeat them (Ellemers & Barreto, 2009).
Harkins, L. (2009). Literature analysis of humor therapy research. American Journal Of Recreation Therapy, 8(4), 35-47.
Green, Daniel. "A World Worth Laughing At: Catch-22 and the Humor of Black Humor." Studies
As the crudest and most brutal expression of sexism, misogynistic attitudes tend to be portrayed by the dominant culture as an expression of male deviance. In reality they are part of a sexist continuum, necessary for the maintenance of patriarchal social order (Hooks qtd. In Adam and Fuller 943)
One very controversial topic in the field of social psychology is the debate as to whether stereotyping is inevitable or not. When it comes to the concept of stereotyping the idea of prejudice often comes up making it very important to understand the definitions of both stereotyping and prejudice. A stereotype is a “widely held but fixed and oversimplified image or idea of a particular type of person or thing”. In other words, it is a prototypical schema of a person or group. When defining prejudice, the definition is “a preconceived opinion that is not based on reason or actual experience”, therefore, it can be thought of as an unjustifiable/irrational opinion that someone possess. Being that there is no definite
The basis for this concept, begins with the causes of prejudice. While there are many causes that relate to prejudice, the context ...
Psychologists, sociologists and anthropologists study humor because it is a fundamental culture value, but they still can’t determine why certain things make some people laugh and others not. There are “humor quotient” tests that are designed to measure an individual’s sense of humor, but these tests are questionable. These tests aren’t accurate because almost all humor depends on cultural background knowledge and language skills. Not every person in the whole world, or even in one country share the same background knowledge and skills, therefore they cannot have the same type of humor. “The fact remains that individuals vary in their appreciation of humor” (Rappoport 9). Since humor varies from individual to individual, humor lies in the individual. How successful or funny a joke is depends on how the person receives the joke, humor cannot be measured by a statistical
In Alain de Botton’s book, Status Anxiety, he argues that the aim of humorists is not solely entertainment, but also to convey a message that isn’t always okay to state directly. There are many places where his argument can apply. Even with humor, some topics are still too controversial to joke about; However, in most cases, humor can lighten things up and make it easier to discuss topics that otherwise would not be as easy to talk about without heavy arguments. There are many cases that would make his argument true. There are many examples that support his argument, and that help to show the importance of humor in arguing, including cartoons, comics, works of literature, and also when thinking of hosts of television programs.
Prejudices shape our perceptions of various people and influence our attitudes and actions toward particular groups and prejudicial attitudes that are negative often lead to hostile relations between domi...
As Hodson and Victoria (p.344) note, human beings are not born prejudiced. They develop prejudice through socialization process. The role of family, media, and education is crucial in the prejudice in individuals. Stereotyping involves the construction of unfounded ideas and thoughts concerning an individual. Stereotyping involves the construction of unfounded ideas and thought concerning an individual in the same social context (Farley, p.21). The development of stereotypes revolves around the association of individuals with particular labels of identity. The truth is such ideas and propositions cannot be proven in most situations (Brown, p.68). Hence, the individuals who uphold stereotypes in society become prejudiced toward the victims. The difficulty associated with changing stereotypes is connected to the length of time required for internalization. Individuals in particular classes of society are exposed to stereotypes in their social environment for a considerable amount of time. In consideration of the Emmanuel Church shooting, the perpetrator expressed stereotypical idealization of the African American community. He expressed biased attitude through the sole target of African
Parks, J.B, Roberton, M.A. (2004). Attitudes Toward Women Mediate the Gender Effect on Attitudes Towards Sexist Language. Psychology of women Quarterly, 28(3), 233-239.
Stereotypes are defined as schemas through which social information is processed regarding the traits or characteristics believed to be shared by a social group (Baron & Branscombe, 2012). Gender stereotypes are more specifically defined as the unique distinguishing traits and characteristic believed to be possessed by each gender-males and females (Baron & Branscombe, 2012; Fiske & Stevens, 1993). In their article, What’s so special about sex? Gender stereotyping and discrimination, the authors, Fiske and Stevens, argue that the stereotype of gender is much more complex than other stereotypes. Fiske and Stevens differentiate the stereotype of gender from other stereotypes, concluding that there are five distinctive characteristics of the stereotype of gender, which causes this stereotype to have a greater effect on interactions between people (Fiske & Stevens, 1993). Fiske and Stevens suggest that the following are the five ways that the stereotype of gender is more
3. Apte, Mahadev L. Humor and Laughter: An Anthropological Approach. Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 1985.