Protest Exposure - and Then Support? Examining the Potential Influence of Using Humor During Protests on Mobilization

Abstract

The current research examined whether using humor during protests has a mobilizing effect on advantaged and disadvantaged group members, namely whether it increases support for the movement and collective action intentions for the cause. We explored this experimentally in the context of the women’s rights movement in Lebanon among students from the American University of Beirut (N = 238), examining in particular how exposure to pictures of humorous and non-humorous slogans, i.e., the humorous condition, (vs. pictures of non-humorous slogans only, i.e., the non-humorous condition) during protests for women’s rights can mobilize both women and men. We also extended previous literature by drawing on social psychological predictors of collective action, namely predictors of the social identity model of collective action (Van Zomeren et al., 2008), and the reward motive drawn from the dual pathway model (Stürmer & Simon, 2004), to examine the potential mechanisms through which the use of humorous content during protests (vs. the use of exclusively non-humorous content) may positively affect mobilization. A pre-study was first conducted to evaluate and accordingly choose the most humorous slogans among the ones that were tested for the main study. As for the main study, a path analysis showed that the humorous condition compared to the non-humorous one increased reward motive but decreased perceived injustice for women (n = 164). There was also a direct positive effect of humorous condition on support for the movement for women. As for men (n = 71), quantitative trends (preliminary evidence) indicated that the humorous condition increased the appeal of the women’s rights movement. Reasons for relying on trends and not inferential analyses when it came to males are explained. Implications for using humor during protests are discussed.