Laughing with or laughing at? Investigating the use of affiliative versus aggressive humor in climate change communication

Climate change is a global threat that some groups continue to dispute or deny, particularly in the USA. Humor is a potential communication tool that could be used to persuade and inform skeptical audiences about controversial topics, although existing studies yield mixed findings regarding the types of humor that most strongly resonate with skeptics. Undergraduate college students (n = 96) were surveyed and viewed one of three videos on climate change with similar content that differed in their presentation (no humor, affiliative humor, aggressive humor) to determine which appeal would best promote climate change comprehension, belief, risk perception, and mitigation intention. We also investigated whether participants' political viewpoint correlated with humor preferences and how these metrics impacted their responses. Politically conservative participants were slightly more likely to prefer aggressive humor than liberals but gave similar funniness ratings for both humorous videos. Perceived funniness of the affiliative humor and control video increased as sense of humor increased, while the aggressive humor video was perceived as funny regardless of participant sense of humor. Comprehension of climate change was slightly higher in participants who viewed the aggressive humor video but was not correlated with political viewpoint. Conservative participants were less likely to be engaged by their respective video, regardless of whether humor was present. Increase in climate change belief was greater in conservative participants, while liberal participants had higher risk perceptions and intentions of activism. Implications of these findings are discussed in the context of climate change communication.