When harm becomes humour: Rape myth acceptance and engagement with misogynistic memes

Abstract

Abstract Objectives To examine how adults evaluate different forms of misogynistic meme content and whether rape myth acceptance, social dominance and personal cultural orientations predict these evaluations. Methods Five hundred and eighty adults were randomly assigned to view memes depicting sexual violence, domestic violence, or sexist/objectifying content. Participants rated humour, offensiveness, acceptability, resharing likelihood, and perceived commonness. Measures of rape myth acceptance (RMA), social dominance orientation, and personal cultural orientation were also assessed. Results Sexist/objectifying memes were rated as more humorous, acceptable, likely to be reshared and common than both violence categories, whereas offensiveness followed the ordering sexual violence, domestic violence and sexualised content. Rape myth acceptance moderated humour ratings across the exploratory interaction tests: the positive association between rape myth acceptance and humour was substantially steeper for sexualised content. Moderation of acceptability and resharing was less robust. Conclusions Rape-supportive beliefs play a central role in how misogynistic content is interpreted, evaluated, and potentially disseminated online. Participants distinguished clearly between forms of misogynistic content. The most reliable moderation finding indicated greater differentiation in humour ratings at higher rape myth acceptance.