Humor in the classroom: the effects of integrated humor on student learning

ABSTRACT

This study was conducted to examine the impact of integrated humor on direct measures of students’ ability to retain and transfer information from educational lessons. In two experiments, participants were randomly exposed to either a lesson with humorous examples or standard examples and were subsequently asked to take tests on the material. Data were analyzed to examine differences in students’ test scores while controlling for the impact of perceived concreteness, interestingness, cognitive overload, and coherence within each lesson. In Study 1, results revealed that, compared with students exposed to standard examples, students exposed to lessons with humorous examples performed worse on a multiple-choice test of the material. Study 2 replicated these findings with a new manipulation and also included an open-ended question test; results revealed that students exposed to the humorous condition again performed worse on their tests compared with students exposed to the standard examples. Findings are discussed as they relate to the potential distracting consequences of humor in the classroom.

KEYWORDS:

• Instructor
• humor
• cognitive learning

Notes on contributors

San Bolkan (Ph.D., University of Texas at Austin, 2007) is an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication Studies at California State University, Long Beach.

Darrin J. Griffin (Ph.D., University at Buffalo, State University of New York, 2014) is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa.

Alan K. Goodboy (Ph.D., West Virginia University, 2007) is an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication Studies at West Virginia University.