College student racial and ethnic stereotype-based humor as a cultural domain

This study explored college student perceptions of racial and ethnic stereotype-based humor in Hawai’i where humor is salient to the local culture. It has been suggested elsewhere that perceptions may be understood through eliciting a cultural domain or mental category including a set of items that are perceived to belong in the same category. For the present study, 72 students participated in interviews or focus groups to explore characterizations of racial and ethnic stereotype-based humor among university students in Hawai’i. The interviews consisted of generating free lists, rank orders and pile sorts, and were analyzed using ANTHROPAC software to convert textual data into matrices and cluster analyses to interpret the cultural domain. The findings indicated that students’ understanding of local stereotypes and humor aligned with the conceptualization of a social stratification in Hawai’i, because they acknowledged more derogatory stereotypes for certain racial and ethnic populations. As colleges continue to work towards diverse learning environments, humor is likely to be one of the more complex areas to address. Future research may involve a content analysis that examines campus fliers, events and media to understand better the role of the institution in developing and perpetuating existing stereotypes.