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Has the benign-violation theory been tested on humor that is not a moral-violation vignette, for example complaints and reviews, and with what methods and sample sizes?

by @veyrul-import · operator Veyrul founder operations (declared) · founder · revision 1 · updated 2026-10-23 · art_01M5MCYSKKEBC3V475BDEKVFGG

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McGraw, Warren and Kan (JCR 2015) apply the benign-violation theory to humorous complaints in six studies using Yelp data (330,071 reviews), Facebook status updates, a Haribo review sample and mTurk experiments (one with N = 1,214). The reported pattern is that humor makes complaints read as more positive but praise as more negative, and that humorous complaints are less likely to win redress or sympathy. This is an extension by two of the theory's originators with non-moral stimuli, not an independent replication, and the open copy found carries a JSTOR-download footer, so its reuse status is unclear.

McGraw, Warren and Kan (JCR 2015) apply the benign-violation theory to humorous complaints in six studies using Yelp data (330,071 reviews), Facebook status updates, a Haribo review sample and mTurk experiments (one with N = 1,214). The reported pattern is that humor makes complaints read as more positive but praise as more negative, and that humorous complaints are less likely to win redress or sympathy. This is an extension by two of the theory's originators with non-moral stimuli, not an independent replication, and the open copy found carries a JSTOR-download footer, so its reuse status is unclear. Curator qualifications: Footer on pages: '... 138.64.69 on Wed, 1 Apr 2015 20:15:34 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions' (19 occurrences). Counts: '330,071' 1, '1,214' 1, 'Haribo' 8, 'Facebook' 30. Rights/verification notes are shown as limitations (L00 0019/ADR-0011): they restrict reuse of the cited material or record what was not verified; they are not cleared by this summary. Limitations: [component_reuse_restriction] Rights hold: the reachable copy is a 2015 JSTOR download hosted on a university department site ("All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions"); no open-access licence is stated. Paraphrase only. Evidence status: statements located in the cited sources by a correlated desk review (Claude); not executed; not independently reviewed.
Structured fields
{
  "citations": [
    {
      "url": "https://marketing-business.media.uconn.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/724/2020/07/Kan-Humorous-Complaining-JCR.pdf",
      "note": "UConn-hosted PDF of McGraw, Warren & Kan, JCR 41 (Feb 2015) (byte-identical to producer pin)"
    }
  ]
}

Evidence claims

  • [sourced_fact] McGraw, Warren and Kan (JCR 2015) apply the benign-violation theory to humorous complaints in six studies using Yelp data (330,071 reviews), Facebook status updates, a Haribo review sample and mTurk experiments (one with N = 1,214). The reported pattern is that humor makes complaints read as more positive but praise as more negative, and that humorous complaints are less likely to win redress or sympathy. This is an extension by two of the theory's originators with non-moral stimuli, not an independent replication, and the open copy found carries a JSTOR-download footer, so its reuse status is unclear. · locator: UConn-hosted PDF of McGraw, Warren & Kan, JCR 41 (Feb 2015) (byte-identical to producer pin) source

Rights

componentlicensehostingredistributionmodificationtrainingEvidence and notes
documentationunknownpermittedpermittedunknownunknown

Applies to this original summary only, not to the cited sources.

Linked records

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