IMPACTS OF TELEVISION HUMOR ON VIEWERS’ ENGAGEMENT, ATTITUDES, AND MEMORY: THE MODERATING EFFECTS OF MOTIVATION AND ABILITY

Abstract

This study explores the impact of late-night television humor on viewers’ engagement, attitudes, and memory. Existing literature has pointed to the effects of late-night comedy viewing on attitudes (Young, 2004), candidate evaluation (Baumgartner & Morris, 2006; Baumgartner, Morris & Walth, 2012; Young, 2010), scant attention has been paid on engagement with the humor show and memory. This study suggest that late-night television humor had negative effects on audiences engagement with the video and memory of the premise of a given experimental condition but positive effect on forming attitudes toward the satirized character. Impact of humor is tested with a two condition (high satire and low satire) between-subject design in which participants answered survey questions on engagement with the video, attitudes toward the presidential candidates, and memory after exposure to either high satire humor or low satire humor on the topic of 2016 Presidential debates. The results of satire x motivation (represented by strength of party identification – SPID, attention to government and politics, and intensity of political ideology – IPI) and satire x ability (represented by prior political knowledge) indicate that humor impacts mostly to the participants who had high motivation and ability. Future lines of research are discussed.