"The Bitter Laughter". When Parody Is a Moral and Affective Priming in Political Persuasion

Abstract

Research on socially aware systems requires fine-grained knowledge of the mechanisms of persuasion in order to promote civic knowledge and aware political participation. Within humor studies, political parody is generally considered a simple pleasant weapon for political evaluation, currently explained by referring to the so called "just a joke effect" (Nabi et al., 2007). Indeed the funny side of parody can induce positive emotions, but it also includes a discrediting act that sometimes produces a "bitter laughter." The present study aims to understand the role played by negative and moral emotions aroused by parody. A parody is defined as a communicative behavior (a discourse, text, body movement, song) that imitates a communicative behavior or trait displayed by some Target by reproducing it in a distorted way, with the aim of making fun of the Target. Based on a socio-cognitive approach, a distinction is made between "surface" and "deep" parody (Poggi and D'Errico, 2013), with the former simply imitating behaviors actually displayed by the Target, and the latter implying a (humorous) re-categorization of the Target. The paper studies the effect of these two different types of parody on persuasion processes. Results show that the deep parody, as opposed to surface parody, triggers more negative emotions, and in particular indignation, that in turn lead to more negative evaluations of the Target. Moreover, the moral priming of parody is influenced by the Target politician's gender.

Keywords: deep and surface parody; evaluation; moral emotions; parody; political persuasion.

FIGURE 1

Mediational regression analyses of type of video and indignation on negative evaluation of character’s benevolence. The type of Video variable was processed as a progressive number 1 = imitation, 2 = surface, 3 = deep associated to the progressive “severity of parody,” so the positive relation must be read as follows: when “severity of parody” increases indignation increases too ^∗p < 0.05; ^∗∗∗p < 0.001. Solid lines between variables denote direct paths between two variables. Dotted lines denote paths when moral and negative emotions are included as mediator. Values denote standardized Beta weights.

FIGURE 2

Mediational regression analyses of indignation and negative evaluation of character’s benevolence on negative evaluation of real politician’s benevolence. ^∗p < 0.05; ^∗∗p < 0.01; ^∗∗∗p < 0.001. Solid lines between variables denote direct paths between two variables. Dotted lines denote paths when negative evaluation is included as mediator. Values denote standardized Beta weights.

FIGURE 3

Target of distrust^∗conditions.

FIGURE 4

Political orientation^∗conditions on politician’s negative evaluation.

FIGURE 5

Type of parody^∗Parodied politician’s gender on Indignation.

FIGURE 6

Type of representation^∗Parodied politician’s gender on Astute.