Effects of Affiliative and Aggressive Disability Humor Stimuli and Individual Humor Styles on Attitudes and Anxiety Toward Persons with Disabilities

Negative attitudes and anxiety toward persons with disabilities (PWD) are prevalent in society, serving as barriers to their integration into workplace and educational settings and negatively affecting their quality of life. Given its social ubiquity and previously established influence on attitudes and anxiety, humor usage is an important factor to consider when addressing negative attitudes and anxiety toward PWD. The current study sought to determine the effects that different styles of disability humor stimuli (i.e. jokes) had on attitudes and anxiety toward PWD after controlling for participants' individual humor styles and previous contact with PWD. Data were collected from 159 participants who were recruited using Amazon's Mechanical Turk. A one-way MANCOVA was used to analyze the data, with post-hoc univariate ANCOVA's and multiple linear regressions run to clarify the results. The results indicated that participants' individual humor styles and previous contact with PWD significantly affected their attitudes and anxiety toward PWD, whereas the disability humor stimuli had no significant effect. These results have implications for our understanding of Intergroup Contact Theory, highlight the limitations of previous research on the effects of humor and attitudes toward marginalized populations, and provide preliminary support for practical applications of humor usage in social settings to promote group cohesion by creating more inclusive spaces for PWD.