Does Satire Soften the Blow of Criticism?

The kind of satire highlighted in these examples has become an increasingly common way to criticize people. But because the criticism is couched in humor, it can be easy to pass it off as harmless.

Kellogg professor of marketing Derek Rucker and his postdoctoral fellow Hooria Jazaieri (now a professor at Santa Clara University) wondered if satire is actually harmless or if it hurts the reputation of the person it targets. Together, these researchers tested how satire affects someone’s reputation compared with more-straightforward criticism.

“We had two competing hypotheses: Does satire soften the blow of criticism, or does it sharpen the blade?” Jazaieri says.

Over a series of experiments, they found strong evidence that satire did, in fact, sharpen the blade. “Satire is viewed as a funny alternative to criticism, a parody that’s not harmful,” Rucker says. “But our experiments reveal it is actually worse than direct criticism for the target’s reputation.”

“Satire sharpens the blade of criticism because it makes individuals the punchline of a joke and dehumanizes them,” adds Jazaieri.

Is the reputational damage that satire causes inevitable? Not necessarily. The researchers identified at least one intervention that might help reduce its dehumanizing effect.

Satire’s growing presence

People have long used satire as a tool to criticize perceived wrongs while evading the potential consequences that might result from direct criticism. Once relegated to print publications, satire is now found widely on digital-media publications, television shows (like Saturday Night Live), and perhaps most prominently, on social-media platforms.

Amid its growing presence, people are now consuming satirical news as an alternative to traditional news. Many Americans report learning something from satirical content, and some have even called it the “genre of the masses.”

Prior research into the effects of satire on people’s reputation has shown mixed results.

One study showed that people who watched political comedy had more positive views about the U.S. Congress than those who watched traditional political news coverage. In contrast, a different study showed that political comedy can have a negative effect: Tina Fey’s Saturday Night Live impersonation of then vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin decreased people’s approval of Palin.

Rucker and Jazaieri thought that this negative effect might be due to the capacity for humorous criticism, particularly satire, to dehumanize the people it targets. Indeed, Jon Stewart, host of The Daily Show, said that the key to late-night comedy “is reducing these guys to monosyllabic stereotypes”—the very definition of dehumanization.

“You think that satire and parody are just fun and games, but when you’re poking fun at people, there is a risk that you make them appear as if they are not human beings,” Rucker says.

Satire versus direct criticism

Rucker and Jazaieri conducted a series of studies to explore this potentially negative, dehumanizing effect of satire.

In the first, over 1,300 participants viewed a YouTube video featuring one of twenty well-known male personalities. Half the group viewed videos that directly criticized the men, and the other half viewed parody videos that criticized the men through humor. For example, some participants watched a satirical video lampooning former NFL quarterback Tom Brady’s “deflategate” scandal, while others viewed a press conference that directly criticized Brady’s involvement in the scandal.

After the participants viewed a video, they rated how funny and how critical it was, on a 1-to-7 scale. They also rated the target’s reputation on a 1-to-7 scale.

Both groups (those who watched satire and those who watched directly critical videos) rated the videos as equally critical of the target. But those in the satire group gave the target a lower reputation score than did those in the direct-criticism group.

“This was an indication that satire could sharpen the blade,” Rucker says.

The team also analyzed the comment sections of the same YouTube videos using a text-analysis tool, the Mind Perception Dictionary (MPD), which identifies the proportion of words in a text that have more human qualities. They found that the comments to the satirical videos contained fewer humanizing words.

For example, a comment about Jeff Bezos made in response to a directly critical video was, “What is with these insane early comments suggesting Bezos is the second wealthiest man in the world and you’re encouraging him to leave America, think about it, idiot trolls.” In contrast, a comment left about Jeff Bezos in response to a satirical video was, “Except Bezos is a bit more like Satan, than Mr. Rogers, but great job SNL!” The Mind Perception Dictionary showed that the former comment contained more humanizing words (2.7 percent of the words) than did the latter (0 percent).

True for both celebrities and regular citizens

The researchers then showed another group of nearly 300 participants a photo of soccer manager José Mourinho, who is known for repeatedly getting fired or suspended. After receiving a brief explanation about his background, the participants saw one of three pictures of Mourinho: one that simply showed his photo, one that included a headline directly criticizing his employment woes, or one that included a satirical headline that poked fun at his employment woes. Participants then rated his reputation.

Those who saw the satirical headline gave Mourinho the lowest rating for reputation.

When the team repeated the study with a fictious, non-famous person, they found the same result: the satirical headline led to a lower reputation score compared with direct criticism or no criticism. “We wanted to make sure it wasn’t just inherent to celebrities,” Rucker says.

The same outcome emerged yet again when they ran a similar experiment centered on a woman celebrity.

A measure of dehumanization

To gain a deeper understanding of just how dehumanizing satire can be, the team ran another study similar to the one featuring soccer manager José Mourinho. But this time, 185 participants rated, on a 1-to-7 scale, whether they believed the soccer manager was capable of acting with intention, engaging in higher-order thought, and experiencing emotions. These items were used to assess participants’ perception of Mourinho and whether differences occurred as a result of satire or direct criticism.

“We wanted to know, do you really view targets as less human when they are satirized?” Jazaieri says. “This scale was a means to measure that.”

Those who viewed a satirical headline, compared with those who viewed the directly critical headline, responded in a manner that indicated more dehumanization of Mourinho.

“Because satire is a combination of humor and criticism,” Rucker says, “it makes people seem less human.”

A way to humanize

Finally, the researchers tested whether giving people an opportunity to have a positive experience with a target of criticism could help counter the negative effect of satire.

They recruited 477 people to view either a satirical video clip of former Juul CEO Kevin Burns or a clip that was directly critical of him. After viewing the video, some participants were asked to imagine a generic outdoor scene, whereas the rest were asked to imagine having a “positive, relaxed, and comfortable interaction” with Burns.

Among those who imagined the nature scene, the previous results held true: satire led to a worse reputational rating than direct criticism. But among those who imagined having a positive interaction with Burns, satire and direct criticism led to the same reputational rating.

“[The outcome] shows that even just imaging positive contact with the target can be a means to humanize them and thus reduce the sharpened blade of satire,” Jazaieri says.

The research team repeated the study using a different celebrity but this time had participants rate both the target’s reputation and humanity. The participants who watched a satirical video and then imagined having a positive experience with the celebrity not only rated their reputation as higher—they also viewed them as more human.

“When we started these studies, we did not know whether satire would soften the blow or sharpen the blade,” Rucker says, “which made the work exciting. But across multiple studies, with different targets and different criticisms, we consistently found that satire dehumanized its targets.”

That’s not to say that satire is never productive or useful, according to Rucker. It can be an effective tool to bring issues to light. “But when people are thinking about engaging with satire,” he says, “I want them to realize what it could be doing to the target, the power that those words can carry.”