In 2018, Australian comedian Hannah Gadsby stood on stage in a Netflix special called Nanette and did something comedians are not supposed to do: she stopped being funny on purpose. Midway through the show, she told the audience that she was quitting comedy. She had built her career, she explained, on self-deprecating humor—making jokes about being a queer, gender-nonconforming woman from rural Tasmania. And she had come to believe that this humor, however successful, was costing her something essential. “When it comes from somebody who already exists in the margins,” she said, “it’s not humility. It’s humiliation.”

Gadsby’s argument was more than a personal confession. It was a philosophical claim about who humor serves and who it damages—about whether the very structure of a joke can, under certain conditions, become an instrument of harm. The special became one of the most discussed works of comedy in recent memory, not because everyone agreed with Gadsby, but because she had forced an uncomfortable question into the open: Can something that makes people laugh still be wrong?

This is the central question of humor ethics, and it has never been more urgent. In an era of viral memes, social media pile-ons, and comedians testing the boundaries of acceptable speech in sold-out arenas, the line between funny and harmful has become one of the most contested boundaries in public life. For those of us interested in humor’s role in mental health, the stakes are even higher. If humor can heal—and the evidence throughout this book suggests it powerfully can—then we need to understand, with equal clarity, the conditions under which humor harms. Because the same mechanism that makes laughter therapeutic can, when aimed carelessly or cruelly, deepen wounds instead of closing them.

The Power Humor Has That Other Speech Does Not

To understand why humor ethics matter, you first need to understand what makes humor different from other forms of communication. When someone makes a serious statement that disparages a group of people—a racist remark, a sexist claim, a cruel observation about someone’s disability—the social rules are relatively clear. Most people recognize such statements as offensive, and social norms kick in to condemn them. But wrap the same sentiment in a joke, and something strange happens. The social rules become ambiguous. The speaker gains a kind of diplomatic immunity. And the listener faces a dilemma: do I take this seriously, or am I just being humorless?

This is what Thomas Ford and Mark Ferguson identified in their influential 2004 “prejudiced norm theory.” Their research demonstrated that disparagement humor—humor that belittles or denigrates a particular group—does something that serious disparagement does not: it creates a perceived social norm of tolerance for discrimination. In their experiments, men who scored high on measures of hostile sexism were more likely to discriminate against women—by allocating larger budget cuts to women’s organizations—after being exposed to sexist jokes than after being exposed to equivalently sexist but non-humorous statements. The jokes didn’t change what these men believed. The jokes changed what they believed was socially acceptable.

Ford called this humor’s “prejudice-releasing function.” The mechanism works like this: disparaging humor communicates an implicit message that it is acceptable, in this social context, to be casual about prejudice against the targeted group. For people who already harbor hostile attitudes, this message acts as a green light—a signal that the usual social restraints against expressing prejudice have been temporarily lifted. The humor doesn’t plant prejudice where none existed. But it loosens the norms that keep existing prejudice in check. And it does this precisely because it is humor—because the comedian or joke-teller can always retreat to the defense that they were “just joking.”

This is the unique ethical problem that humor poses. Serious bigotry is easy to identify and condemn. Humorous bigotry hides behind ambiguity. Research has shown that approximately one in four online comedy videos contains some form of anti-gay, sexist, or racist humor. Each one arrives with a built-in shield: it was just a joke. Where’s your sense of humor? And research by social psychologists studying bystander behavior has found that this shield works. Even people who are genuinely offended by disparaging humor are less likely to confront it than they would be to confront an equivalent non-humorous remark, because the social context of humor makes confrontation feel inappropriate.

Punching Up and Punching Down: A Useful but Incomplete Framework

In recent years, the most popular way of navigating humor ethics has been the framework of “punching up” and “punching down.” The idea is intuitive: humor aimed at those with more social power than the joke-teller (punching up) is ethically acceptable—even admirable—because it challenges hierarchy and gives voice to the marginalized. Humor aimed at those with less social power (punching down) is ethically problematic because it reinforces existing inequalities and inflicts additional harm on people who are already vulnerable.

This framework has deep roots. Satire has functioned as a weapon of the powerless for as long as comedy has existed. Ancient Greek satirists mocked the gods. Court jesters spoke truths to kings that no one else dared voice. Dick Gregory and Richard Pryor used comedy to expose the absurdity of American racism. George Carlin aimed his fury at institutional hypocrisy. In every case, the comedian was punching up—using humor to challenge power structures rather than reinforce them.

The appeal of the punch-up/punch-down framework is its simplicity. It gives audiences and comedians a quick ethical heuristic: before you laugh, consider who the joke is about and whether the joke is afflicting the comfortable or comforting the afflicted. Comedy venues and open mic nights have increasingly adopted “don’t punch down” as a formal guideline. Social media discourse frequently invokes the framework to praise or condemn particular jokes and comedians.

But simplicity has costs. Philosophers and humor scholars have identified several problems with the framework that are worth taking seriously, because they have direct implications for how humor functions in mental health contexts.

The Problem of Intersectionality

Power is not one-dimensional. A white woman jokes about men. A wealthy Black comedian jokes about poor white communities. A cisgender gay man jokes about heterosexual women. In each case, the joke-teller occupies a position of relative privilege along one social axis and relative marginalization along another. The punch-up/punch-down framework, in its simplest form, cannot easily account for these intersections. Who is “up” and who is “down” depends on which dimension of identity you’re measuring—and real people exist at the intersection of multiple dimensions simultaneously.

The Problem of In-Group Humor

Some of the most valued humor in marginalized communities is humor that members tell about their own group. Jewish humor about Jewish neuroses. Black humor about Black cultural norms. Disability humor by people with disabilities. Queer humor about queer life. This humor serves powerful psychological and social functions: it builds solidarity, normalizes shared experiences, and reclaims narratives that have been weaponized by outsiders. But under a strict punch-up/punch-down reading, in-group humor about a marginalized community could be classified as “punching down”—which contradicts the lived experience of the communities that use this humor as a tool for resilience and connection. As philosopher Luvell Anderson has noted, the easy acceptability of in-group jokes is one of the most significant complications for any simple directional ethic of humor.

The Problem of What a Joke Does

Philosopher Emily McTernan, in a 2024 paper for the Royal Institute of Philosophy, argued that the punch-up/punch-down framework overemphasizes the relative position of the comedian compared to the target and underemphasizes what a joke actually does in the social world. McTernan proposed that instead of asking “Who is the comedian relative to the target?” we should ask: “Does this joke, in the context in which it is told, contribute to undermining anti-discriminatory norms, or to reinforcing unjust hierarchies and damaging stereotypes?” A joke told by a marginalized comedian can still reinforce harmful stereotypes. A joke told by a privileged comedian can still illuminate injustice. The ethical weight lies not only in the identity of the teller but in the social consequences of the joke itself.

Joke Capital: A More Nuanced Framework

In 2024, philosophers Thomas Wilk and Steven Gimbel proposed an alternative to the punch-up/punch-down model that they called “joke capital.” Their approach, developed over years of studying both philosophy and the comedy world, treats humor ethics the way an economist might treat a transaction: every joke has a cost, and the joke-teller needs to have accumulated enough “capital” to afford it.

Joke capital, in Wilk and Gimbel’s framework, is the standing that a joke-teller needs in order for their audience to interpret the speech as “just joking” rather than as a genuine expression of prejudice. This capital is built through multiple factors: the joke-teller’s relationship to the subject matter, their history and reputation, the context of the performance, and the specific audience present. The price of a joke—how much capital it costs—is determined by how harmful the joke would be if interpreted as serious speech, the expectations set by the context, and the particularities of the audience.

This framework has several advantages over the simple directional model. It explains why the same joke can be acceptable when told by one person and unacceptable when told by another—not simply because of their social position, but because of the specific relationship and trust they have built with their audience. It explains why context matters so much: a joke in a late-night comedy club lands differently than the same joke at a workplace holiday party. And it captures the four elements that Wilk and Gimbel argue must be considered together in any ethical evaluation of humor: the joke itself, the teller, the audience, and the setting.

The joke capital model also illuminates something important about therapeutic humor. A therapist who uses humor with a client is drawing on relational capital that has been built through sessions of careful listening, empathic attunement, and trust. The humor “works”—both as comedy and as therapy—because the client trusts the therapist’s intentions. Without that capital, the same joke could feel dismissive, minimizing, or cruel.

The “Just Joking” Defense and Its Costs

Among the most destructive intersections of humor and harm is the weaponization of the phrase “I was just joking.” Research on disparagement humor consistently identifies this defense as the mechanism by which humor’s ambiguity becomes a tool for evasion. When someone makes a cruel remark disguised as a joke and then deflects criticism by claiming it was humorous, they are exploiting the social uncertainty that humor creates. The target of the remark is left with an impossible choice: accept the hurt silently, or challenge it and risk being labeled humorless, oversensitive, or unable to take a joke.

This dynamic has profound mental health implications. In therapeutic settings and in everyday life, the “just joking” defense can function as a form of emotional invalidation. A person who repeatedly receives hostile comments framed as humor may begin to doubt their own perceptions: Was that really hurtful, or am I being too sensitive? This pattern—in which humor is used to deliver hostility while simultaneously denying that hostility occurred—shares structural features with gaslighting, the systematic undermining of someone’s confidence in their own reality.

Martin’s Humor Styles Questionnaire captures this distinction through the concept of aggressive humor: humor that is used to ridicule, manipulate, or threaten others, including under the guise of “just teasing.” Research consistently links aggressive humor to poorer psychological well-being for both the person wielding it and the person on its receiving end. In the workplace, aggressive humor has been associated with reduced psychological safety, decreased trust, and increased emotional exhaustion—precisely the opposite of the effects produced by affiliative and self-enhancing humor. The style matters at least as much as the subject matter.

When Self-Deprecation Becomes Self-Harm

Hannah Gadsby’s critique in Nanette centered not on jokes aimed at others but on jokes aimed at herself. And this raises one of the most nuanced questions in humor ethics: When does self-deprecating humor cross the line from healthy coping to psychological self-harm?

The research on this question is more complex than it might appear. Self-deprecating humor is not the same as self-defeating humor in Martin’s taxonomy. Self-deprecating humor—making fun of yourself in a way that signals confidence, humility, and willingness to be imperfect—is generally associated with positive social outcomes. Leaders who use it are rated as more approachable. Friends who use it are perceived as warmer. In many contexts, the ability to laugh at oneself is a genuine marker of psychological resilience.

But self-defeating humor—using humor at your own expense in an attempt to gain acceptance, avoid rejection, or mask genuine pain—is consistently associated with poorer mental health outcomes, including higher rates of depression, anxiety, and loneliness. And as philosopher Sheila Lintott noted in her analysis of Nanette, the distinction between the two can be difficult to draw, especially for people from marginalized groups. When a queer comedian makes self-deprecating jokes about being queer, are they demonstrating healthy perspective-taking and reclaiming their narrative? Or are they performing their own humiliation for the comfort of a dominant-group audience? The answer may depend on the comedian’s internal experience—but it also depends on what the humor does in the social world.

Gadsby’s central insight was that for her, specifically, self-deprecating humor had become a way of truncating the truth of her own experience. She would tell the audience the setup of a story about being assaulted for being gay, deliver a punchline that defused the tension, and leave out the part where the violence escalated. The jokes were funny. The audiences laughed. And Gadsby was left holding the unfinished story of her own trauma, having given her audience the relief of laughter without requiring them to sit with the full weight of what had happened to her. This is what she meant when she described jokes as “half-told stories.”

Lintott argued, persuasively, that Gadsby’s critique was not universally true of all self-deprecating humor. Comedians from the margins can and do use self-deprecation strategically, without humiliation—using the apparent surrender of power as a ruse to expose the ignorance of the audience or the absurdity of the social order. But Gadsby’s point remains vital: for some people, in some circumstances, the humor that looks like resilience from the outside is actually a form of self-erasure from the inside. And any serious engagement with the ethics of humor must reckon with this possibility.

Charged Humor: Comedy as Social Justice

If punching down represents humor’s capacity for harm, there is an equally powerful tradition of humor that aims specifically at social justice. Scholar and comedian Rebecca Krefting coined the term “charged humor” to describe comedy that uses shared experiences of marginalization—stigmatization, misrepresentation, oppression—as the basis for building community and compelling political critique. Charged humor, in Krefting’s formulation, is not merely entertainment. It is a form of cultural citizenship: the act of claiming a place in public discourse through the power of comedic truth-telling.

Krefting traces this tradition through decades of American comedy, from Dick Gregory and Moms Mabley to George Carlin, Richard Pryor, Robin Tyler, Margaret Cho, Wanda Sykes, and Hari Kondabolu. In each case, the comedian leveraged their outsider status to make the audience see what the dominant culture rendered invisible. Gregory made white audiences laugh at the absurdity of segregation. Pryor made them laugh at the violence of racism—and then stopped them laughing by showing them its human cost. Tyler used comedy as a platform for LGBTQ visibility decades before marriage equality was conceivable.

The mental health implications of charged humor are significant. For audiences from marginalized communities, seeing their experiences reflected in skilled comedy can be deeply validating—a form of what psychologists call “enjoyed incongruity” that simultaneously acknowledges pain and transcends it. Krefting argues that charged humor builds cultural citizenship precisely because it refuses to let the audience be comfortable, while simultaneously building solidarity among those who share the comedian’s experience of being on the margins. It is humor that takes the mechanisms of comedy—violation, incongruity, surprise—and uses them in the service of justice rather than hierarchy.

The Normative Ambiguity Problem

One of the most important findings in Ford’s research is that disparagement humor does not increase prejudice uniformly against all groups. In a series of experiments, Ford and colleagues found that disparaging humor had its strongest prejudice-releasing effects against groups for whom society’s attitudes are ambivalent—groups about which the culture is in the process of shifting from tolerance of prejudice to condemnation of it. Humor that disparaged groups for which prejudice is already widely condemned (such as racial minorities in explicitly progressive contexts) or groups for which prejudice is still openly accepted (such as convicted criminals) had less impact on behavioral discrimination.

This finding has critical implications. It means that humor’s capacity for social harm is greatest precisely during moments of cultural transition—when norms about a particular group are contested and unsettled. For LGBTQ communities, for people with disabilities, for immigrants, for anyone whose social acceptance is still being negotiated, disparaging humor carries outsized risk. It does not merely reflect existing attitudes; it actively tilts the normative landscape in the direction of tolerance for discrimination.

This is why “it’s just a joke” is never just a joke. The research demonstrates that humor operates as a norm-setting mechanism. The jokes a society tells—and the jokes it laughs at—both reflect and shape what that society considers acceptable. When we laugh at humor that disparages a vulnerable group, we are not passively consuming entertainment. We are participating, however unwittingly, in a social process that defines who deserves respect and who can be treated as the butt of the joke.

Ethics in the Therapy Room

For mental health professionals, the ethics of humor take on additional weight. A therapist who uses humor is not performing for an anonymous crowd in a comedy club. They are communicating within a relationship characterized by trust, vulnerability, and a power differential that makes the client particularly susceptible to the emotional impact of the therapist’s words.

The research on humor in therapy consistently identifies the therapeutic alliance as the critical variable. When humor emerges from a strong alliance—when it is mutual, well-timed, and clearly in service of the client’s well-being—it can be among the most powerful tools in the therapeutic repertoire. When humor is used prematurely, when it reflects the therapist’s discomfort rather than the client’s needs, or when it minimizes the client’s experience, it can damage the alliance and set treatment back.

The ethical principles are not complicated in theory, though they require skill and sensitivity in practice. Humor in therapy should serve the client, not the therapist’s need to be funny or to relieve their own discomfort with difficult material. It should amplify the client’s coping rather than impose the therapist’s preferred coping style. It should never target the client’s identity, background, or vulnerability. And it should always be offered with the implicit understanding that the client is free to not find it funny—that the therapeutic relationship can absorb a joke that doesn’t land without the client feeling judged for their reaction.

Perhaps most importantly, therapists must be attuned to the difference between humor that helps a client process their experience and humor that helps a client avoid processing their experience. A client who uses humor to distance themselves from pain may need a therapist who is willing to gently name what is happening: “I notice that when we get close to talking about your father, you make a joke. I wonder what would happen if we stayed with the feeling for a moment.” This is not anti-humor. It is pro-feeling. And knowing when to encourage each is part of the ethical art of therapeutic work.

A Framework for Ethical Humor

Drawing together the research on disparagement humor, joke capital, charged humor, and the therapeutic use of comedy, several principles emerge for anyone who wants to use humor ethically—whether on a stage, in a therapy room, in a workplace, or in everyday life.

Ask What the Joke Does, Not Just What It Says

McTernan’s insight is the essential starting point. The ethical evaluation of a joke cannot rest solely on its content or on the identity of the teller. It must consider the joke’s effects in context. Does this joke reinforce stereotypes or challenge them? Does it normalize prejudice or expose it? Does it build connection or create exclusion? These questions require situational awareness, not a checklist.

Recognize That Humor Sets Norms

Ford’s research makes clear that humor is never socially neutral. Every joke communicates something about what the joke-teller and the audience consider acceptable. Being aware of this norm-setting function does not mean never telling edgy jokes. It means understanding that the jokes we choose to tell and laugh at are acts of social communication, not merely acts of entertainment.

Build and Spend Joke Capital Responsibly

Wilk and Gimbel’s framework reminds us that the right to joke about sensitive subjects is earned, not assumed. The comedian who has demonstrated genuine understanding of and solidarity with a community has more capital to joke about that community’s experiences than the comedian who hasn’t. The friend who has been there through hard times has more capital to joke about those times than the acquaintance who hasn’t. Capital is built through relationship, and spending it recklessly depletes the trust on which humor depends.

Be Honest About Whom the Humor Serves

Gadsby’s critique forces us to ask: Is this humor serving the person telling the joke, the person hearing it, or both? Self-deprecating humor that masks genuine pain serves no one in the long run. Therapeutic humor that makes the therapist comfortable but leaves the client feeling minimized serves only the therapist. Humor at work that entertains the majority while alienating the minority serves only those who were already included. The most ethical humor is humor that expands the circle of belonging rather than contracting it.

Preserve the Right to Not Laugh

One of the most underappreciated ethical dimensions of humor is the freedom of the audience—or the individual—to not find something funny. Research on bystander responses to disparaging humor shows that people who are offended often remain silent because the social context makes confrontation feel inappropriate. Creating environments where people can say “That wasn’t funny to me” without being accused of lacking a sense of humor is itself an ethical act. The person who doesn’t laugh at a harmful joke is not humorless. They may be the most ethically attuned person in the room.

The Comedian’s Paradox

Here is the paradox at the heart of humor ethics: comedy is most powerful when it pushes against boundaries, and the boundaries it pushes against are often the same norms that protect vulnerable people from harm. The funniest comedy frequently involves transgression—saying the unsayable, naming the unnameable, violating expectations about what polite society permits. Strip away all transgression and you are left with wordplay and observational humor about airline food—pleasant, perhaps, but unlikely to produce the deep, cathartic laughter that makes comedy feel essential.

The resolution to this paradox is not to eliminate transgression from comedy but to be intentional about whose norms are being transgressed and to whose benefit. The most powerful comedy in history has transgressed the norms that protect the powerful from scrutiny, not the norms that protect the vulnerable from harm. Dick Gregory transgressed the norm of Black deference. Carlin transgressed the norm of obedient consumerism. Gadsby transgressed the norm of the comedian’s emotional self-sacrifice. In each case, the transgression served justice.

For those of us who believe in humor’s power to heal, the ethical challenge is not to make humor safe—safety, taken to its extreme, kills comedy as surely as cruelty does. The challenge is to make humor honest: honest about who is laughing, who is being laughed at, what norms are being challenged, and what consequences follow. A joke that makes everyone in the room laugh while making one person feel like they don’t belong has not succeeded. A joke that makes some people uncomfortable because it forces them to see a truth they’d rather ignore has done something valuable.

The ethics of humor, in the end, are not a set of rules about what you cannot say. They are a set of questions you are obligated to ask. Who benefits from this laughter? Who pays for it? And is the price being borne by those who can least afford it?

Sources and Suggested Reading

Key Research

Ford, T. E., & Ferguson, M. A. (2004). “Social consequences of disparagement humor: A prejudiced norm theory.” Personality and Social Psychology Review, 8(1), 79–94.

Ford, T. E., Boxer, C., Armstrong, J., & Edel, J. (2008). “More than ‘just a joke’: The prejudice-releasing function of sexist humor.” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 34(2), 159–170.

Ford, T. E., Woodzicka, J. A., Triplett, S. R., & Kochersberger, A. O. (2014). “Not all groups are equal: Differential vulnerability of social groups to the prejudice-releasing effects of disparagement humor.” Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 17(2), 178–199.

McTernan, E. (2024). “The Ethics of Offensive Comedy: Punching Down and the Duties of Comedians.” Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement, 96, 81–100.

Gimbel, S., & Wilk, T. (2024). “Joke Capital vs. Punching Up/Punching Down: Accounting for the Ethical Relation between Joker and Target.” The Philosophy of Humor Yearbook, 5(1), 71–90.

Hietalahti, J. (2024). “Humanistic Ethics of Humor: The Problematics of Punching Up and Kicking Down.” The Philosophy of Humor Yearbook, 5(1), 91–119.

Anderson, L. (2015). “Racist Humor.” Philosophy Compass, 10(8), 501–509.

Lintott, S. (2020). “Hannah Gadsby’s Nanette: Connection Through Comedy.” The Southern Journal of Philosophy, 58(4), 610–631.

Krefting, R. (2019). “Hannah Gadsby: On the Limits of Satire.” Studies in American Humor, 5(1), 93–102.

Thomas, E. F., et al. (2019). “‘That’s not funny!’ Standing up against disparaging humor.” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 86, 103901.

Thomae, M., & Pina, A. (2015). “Sexist humor and social identity: The role of sexist humor in men’s in-group cohesion, sexual harassment, rape proclivity, and victim blame.” Humor, 28(2), 187–204.

Martin, R. A., Puhlik-Doris, P., Larsen, G., Gray, J., & Weir, K. (2003). “Individual differences in uses of humor and their relation to psychological well-being.” Journal of Research in Personality, 37, 48–75.

Morreall, J. (2020). “The Good, the Bad, and the Funny: An Ethics of Humor.” The Southern Journal of Philosophy, 58, 632–647.

Simon, J. C. (2024). “When Humor Hurts: The Ethics of Joking and Comedy.” Psychology Today.

Books

Wilk, T., & Gimbel, S. (2024). In on the Joke: The Ethics of Humor and Comedy. De Gruyter.

Krefting, R. (2014). All Joking Aside: American Humor and Its Discontents. Johns Hopkins University Press.

Gimbel, S. (2017). Isn’t That Clever: A Philosophical Account of Humor and Comedy. Routledge.

Martin, R. A., & Ford, T. E. (2018). The Psychology of Humor: An Integrative Approach (2nd ed.). Academic Press.

Bhargava, R., & Chilana, R. (Eds.). (2022). Punching Up in Stand-Up Comedy: Speaking Truth to Power. Routledge.

Cohen, T. (1999). Jokes: Philosophical Thoughts on Joking Matters. University of Chicago Press.

Morreall, J. (Ed.). (1987). The Philosophy of Laughter and Humor. State University of New York Press.

Viewing

Hannah Gadsby: Nanette (2018). Netflix.

Hannah Gadsby: Douglas (2020). Netflix.

Organizations and Resources

International Society for Humor Studies (ISHS) — humorstudies.org

Association for Applied and Therapeutic Humor (AATH) — aath.org

Critical Humor Studies Association — criticalhumorstudies.com

Humor Research Lab (HuRL), University of Colorado Boulder — humorresearchlab.com