Abstract

Over the last two decades, news-oriented comedy programs have risen to compete with traditional hard news media as sources of information about politics. To the extent that a politically knowledgeable electorate is necessary for a thriving democracy, understanding the mechanisms underlying the extent to which political comedy facilitates or inhibits a well-informed citizenry is critical. Across two studies, we use behavioral experiments and neuroimaging to examine the causal effects of humor on the desire to share and the capacity to remember political information. We find that humor increases the likelihood to share political information with others and enhances people’s memory for information. Humor also increases brain response in regions associated with understanding other people’s mental states (i.e., mentalizing), which advances a theoretical framework that humor may facilitate considerations of others’ views (e.g., how other people will respond to shared political information).

中文翻译：

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政治幽默，分享和记忆：神经影像学的见解

摘要

在过去的二十年中，以新闻为导向的喜剧节目已经崛起，可以与传统的硬新闻媒体竞争，成为有关政治的信息来源。就蓬勃发展的民主制度而言，必须具备具有政治知识的选民，因此了解政治喜剧在多大程度上促进或抑制知识渊博的公民的机制至关重要。在两项研究中，我们使用行为实验和神经影像学来研究幽默对共享欲望和记住政治信息能力的因果关系。我们发现幽默增加了与他人共享政治信息的可能性，并增强了人们对信息的记忆。幽默还会增加与理解他人心理状态（即心理状态）相关的区域的大脑反应，