Latino Audiences, Racial/Ethnic Identification, and Responses to Stereotypical Comedy

Given the popularity of comedy, humor is an important avenue for examining the racial/ethnic stereotyping effects. Grounded in social identity theory, this study explores the effects of stereotypical comedy on Latino audiences. A 2 × 2 × 2 factorial experiment was conducted to explore how Latino participants’ (N = 150) racial/ethnic identification level (high/low) and comedians’ race/ethnicity (Latino/White) influence evaluations of a target alleged offender (Latino/White) in subsequent scenarios. Findings revealed that participants rated the comedy more favorably when the comedian was Latino compared to when the comedian was White. Moreover, participants with high levels of racial/ethnic identification rated the comedy script as significantly more stereotypical and the White target alleged offender as significantly more culpable than the Latino alleged offender.