Humor Reduces Online Incivility

Abstract Online incivility is a persistent issue facing many news and social media platforms. To better understand it, we examined whether humorous content reduced online incivility and whether the (in)civility of another user might mitigate or amplify this effect in two experiments (Study 1, N = 122; Study 2, N = 208). Participants in both experiments read an online opinion article about an instance of negative stereotyping and provided a comment on a simulated online news forum. The first study manipulated article humor (humorous vs. not humorous). The second study manipulated humor and the (in)civility of a previous user’s comment (civil vs. uncivil). In both studies, humor-reduced incivility. Anger mediated this effect. Source liking mediated the positive effect of humor on reducing anger. The (in)civility of a previous comment did not affect these results. Overall, the findings point to the value of humor and anger reduction in managing online incivility. Lay Summary Online incivility is a common occurrence in online public forums. This article investigated factors that may reduce incivility in two online experiments. The first experiment tested whether humor reduced anger and subsequently the incivility of participants’ comments towards a negative stereotype-challenging op-ed article. The second experiment tested whether exposure to civil and uncivil previous user comments influenced the civility of participants’ comments. Humor was found to reduce online incivility by reducing feelings of anger and increasing liking towards the author in both experiments. Exposure to another user’s comment, whether civil or uncivil, did not appear to influence the civility of participants’ comments, suggesting that article content is a more likely trigger for online incivility.