The effect of sexist humor and perceived physical attractiveness on retaliatory aggression

Nowadays, social media continues to exist in every aspect of our lives. Users can produce and consume content shared by other users on social media. Social media is a platform where humor-related content is frequently shared, some of which lead to the exposure of sexist humor. A limited number of studies in the literature deal with sexist humor in the context of social media. This thesis investigated how perceived physical attractiveness and sexist humor would influence the level of retaliatory aggression. The recruiting task measured retaliatory aggression. The study included two hundred sixty-four female university students aged between 18 and 34. In order to manipulate the humor, tweets with sexist humor, neutral humor, and no humor were presented; to manipulate the perceived physical attractiveness, photographs with low and high perceived physical attractiveness were used. The analyses carried out within the scope of this thesis study revealed a significant difference between the conditions of the attractiveness level. When this significant difference was examined, the high perceived physical attractiveness increased the recruitment of the person. In addition, it was found that the condition with sexist humor content was less recruited compared to the conditions with neutral humor content and non-humor content. However, no statistically significant difference was found between the profile with high perceived physical attractiveness and the profile with low perceived physical attractiveness in the sexist humor condition. Therefore, it is possible that sexist humor is more dominant in the interaction effect of sexist humor and physical attractiveness. In conclusion, recruitment is higher when perceived physical attractiveness is high compared to lower perceived physical attractiveness. When the types of humor are evaluated, the condition in which sexist humor content is shared was recruited more than the other two conditions. However, it is possible to say that in the interaction effect of sexist humor and physical attractiveness, sexist humor is more dominant than perceived physical attractiveness.