A new study by a School of Communication professor examines different approaches to humor and their impact on people.

By Barbara Gutierrez
2-18-2026
This story originally appeared in News@TheU

Can humor be used to entice or persuade an audience to change their behavior?

It depends on the audience.

That is the conclusion of Nicholas “Nick” Carcioppolo’s new study called “When Humor Appeals Fail and When They Succeed: Using Latent Profile Analysis to Identify Audience Receptivity to Humorous Messages.”

Carcioppolo is an associate professor at the University of Miami School of Communication whose research has focused on the development and assessment of persuasive communication interventions to influence health decision-making and outcomes.

The study was published in the peer-reviewed journal Communication Research.

The two-study design used survey and experimental methods featuring different types of humorous messages and applied a statistical technique to identify distinct audience segments that are more or less amenable to persuasion through humorous appeals. Carcioppolo worked on this research with four School of Communication graduate students.

Assoc. professor Nicholas “Nick” Carcioppolo

“Due to the heterogeneous nature of humor, we do not have a unified theory of how humor influences persuasive outcomes,” said Carcioppolo. “But this research gives us the opportunity to understand how different audience types can interpret any type of humor appeal.”

The research identified four audience receptivity profiles—groups of people whose attitudes and values on particular issues lead them to interpret humor appeals, and perhaps persuasive appeals more generally, in different ways.

These profiles are referred to as:

Differentiators—those who hold unfavorable attitudes informed by their underlying value system. They tend to feel stigmatized by humor appeals that disparage their behavior and are least likely to be persuaded, as their opposition is entrenched in their values. A humor appeal can be perceived as a personal attack.

Compliers—those who hold unfavorable attitudes unrelated to their underlying value system. This group does not agree with the recommended behavior but may comply in the face of perceived social pressure, as their opposition is not ingrained in their values.

Reasoners—those who hold favorable attitudes unrelated to their underlying value system. This group believes the recommended behavior is a good idea but not an issue that is highly important to them. They may need a nudge, or a reason, to change their behavior.

Identifiers—those who hold favorable attitudes informed by their underlying value system. They tend to highly identify with the recommended behavior and are most likely to perceive humor in response to a humor appeal. They may adopt the behavior without intervention.

As part of the study, and to determine what type of humor can appeal to different audience profiles, study participants were assigned to view different social media advertising posts across three different contexts. The different message types included a deprecating humor appeal that uses sarcasm to mock audience members who do not adopt message recommendations; an affiliative humor appeal that uses humor in a positive manner that avoids disparagement; and a control message that did not use humor.

In one context featuring a fictitious coffee brand, the headline in the deprecating ad reads “There is no such thing as strong coffee. Just Weak People.” The affiliative humor ad states: “Before coffee: I hate everyone. After coffee: I feel good about hating everyone.” Whereas the headline in the non-humorous control ad reads “Rise and Grind.”

The researchers also tested these appeals in other contexts, such as health interventions involving influenza vaccination, where the deprecating humor headline stated, “Nobody’s giving out free microchips in this economy” (some anti-vaxxers believe microchips can be injected along with the vaccine), while the non-humor control headline stated, “Flu vaccines for this season are now available.”

Across all study contexts, differentiators perceived the least humor, whereas identifiers perceived the most. Perceiving humor in the ad was associated with increased attitudes and behavioral intentions and decreased negative reactions toward the message.

These findings suggest that the way people respond to humorous messages, and perhaps persuasive messages more generally, can be inferred by understanding how attitudes interact with one’s values.

The researchers also found that humor, and deprecating humor in particular, is a poor strategy to change the behavior of differentiators, who may feel stigmatized by the message. “Of course, there are many cases where we want to change the behavior of differentiators, but humor appeals, and certainly deprecating humor appeals, may not be the most appropriate strategy,” Carcioppolo concluded.

The researchers stress the biggest takeaway from this research is that although identifiers would likely adopt the recommended behavior regardless of intervention, and differentiators are unlikely to adopt a recommended behavior, the two groups in the middle—reasoners and compliers—are the most important to consider when developing persuasive interventions.

“These are the audiences who are most open to persuasion; they do not have strong attitudes, and their attitudes are not informed by their underlying value system,” Carcioppolo stated. He believes these are the audiences that advertisers, health intervention researchers, and others should be trying to reach when considering strategies to develop their messages.