The Effects of Humor in the Media: A Critical Review of Experimental Research

Humor has long been of interest to media effects scholars. As meta-analyses and systematic reviews accumulate, there is a need to continue scrutinizing the means of knowledge production. The purpose of this review was to investigate how humor was examined in experimental media effects research. In particular, we focused on how humor stimuli were constructed and how humor responses were measured. Based on a review of 47 published articles, we concluded that most studies examined herein did not manipulate humor message attributes, but rather employed a simple comparison between a piece of humorous content against a piece of non-humor content. Additionally, while most of the studies were guided by theory, only a minority of them included a humor theory; most of the studies used a measure of perceived humor for the manipulation check; the majority of studies used the humor response variable solely for the manipulation check; and only a few studies used the humor measure as a dependent variable. Recommendations are advanced to continue refining our understanding of the effects of humor in the media.