Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, August 24, 1993 TAG: 9308240073
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-3 EDITION: STATE
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: TORONTO LENGTH: Medium
College students who heard sex-stereotyped jokes before watching female lecturers later rated the women in a more stereotyped fashion than did students who heard nonsexist jokes.
"This study suggests that exposure to stereotyped humor can affect people's judgments of other people, and that we should be on guard about that," said study co-author Christine Weston.
She said she was not calling for censorship of stereotyped humor, but just trying to show its possible effects.
"This study showed a short-term effect, but we're constantly bombarded with stereotypes of all kinds, which may influence our judgments of people we encounter," she said.
Weston, a graduate psychology student at Boston University, did the work with Cynthia Thomsen of Tufts University. Weston presented it Monday at the annual meeting of the American Psychological Association.
"It could be an important finding," commented Robert Priest, a research psychologist at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y. "It does demonstrate that it's possible for these spillover effects to occur." But it's not clear whether the effect would appear in the real world, as opposed to an experimental setting, he said.
Weston replied that the study was as realistic as possible, using real comedians and judgments of real people, rather than artificial experimental methods.
For the study, 52 male and 50 female students were told they were participating in a study of the effects of television on learning. Each watched tapes of standup comedy routines by male comedians that had appeared on cable television.
by CNB