Running head HUMOR AND MORALITY 1 Why So Serious Experimental and Field Evidence that Morality and a Sense of Humor are Psychologically Incompatible
Many of the jokes people enjoy carry a certain degree of moral violation. Since displaying humor often requires committing benign moral violations, we hypothesize that 1) a moral mindset stifles humor and 2) morally focused people are less humorous, and are therefore less liked by their workplace peers. Participants primed with a moral mindset were less likely to appreciate humor that involved benign moral violations (Study 1) and less likely to generate jokes others found funny (Study 2) compared to participants in the control condition. Additional field studies demonstrated that morally focused employees are seen as lacking a sense of humor by their coworkers and are therefore less liked and less socially popular (Studies 3 and 4) We further demonstrate that this mediational effect is stronger for targets who strongly endorse the purity/sanctity moral foundation (Study 4) These results suggest that morality and humor are to some degree psychologically incompatible, helping to explain why morally focused individuals are often socially marginalized in organizations.