The use of humor in the college classroom has been researched extensively (see Segrist & Hupp, 2015 who summarized 41 years of literature on humor in the college classroom) and has been shown to have many benefits for students (Banas, Dunbar, Rodriguez & Liu, 2011; Garner, 2006; Huss & Estep, 2016; Pollio, 2002), some of which are:

An increase in learning.
An increase in self-motivation.
An increase in class attendance.
An increase in test performance.
An increase in divergent thinking.
An increase of interest in learning.
A reduction of anxiety and stress in dealing with difficult material.
The creation of a positive social and emotional learning environment.
The creation of a common psychological bond between students and faculty.

McKeachie and Svinicki (2006) summed up these positive consequences of humor quite succinctly when they said that transmitting knowledge through informal methods such as humor can produce and sustain interest and deep learning in students.

We all know that teaching is serious (i.e., important) business, but teachers do not have to be serious (i.e., humorless) to be effective. In fact, Bill Buskist and his posse of prolific protégés from Auburn University — who have studied and identified the characteristics of excellent (i.e., master) teachers for the past 20 years — have indicated that possessing and exhibiting a good sense of humor is one of these characteristics. Humor can also lead to the establishment of student-teacher rapport, which is another characteristic of master teachers. They also found that students report they not only learn a great deal from humorous teachers, but they also enjoy the process of learning from them (Buskist, Sikorski, Buckley & Saville, 2002).

Specific examples of teacher behaviors that promote student enjoyment of learning include teachers telling jokes and funny stories; laughing along with students; and using relevant, interesting and light-hearted personal examples to highlight important points. The most recent work from this group (Busler, Kirk, Keeley & Buskist, 2017) has also revealed that lacking a sense of humor is a quality that students perceive to be “reflective of poor teaching” (p. 2), and that examples of this quality are “never or seldom telling a funny story or joke, being serious all the time, and not smiling or acting jovially around students” (p. 2).

However, when Buskist et al. (2002) compared the ratings that students and faculty gave to rapport and the happy/positive/humorous behaviors that produce it, they discovered that these two groups differed widely. Forty-seven percent of the students in their study rated rapport as “one of the 10 qualities/behaviors that are most important to master teaching at the college and university level” (p. 35), while only 7 percent of faculty did so. The difference was even greater for happy/positive/humorous qualities/behaviors, with 49 percent of students selecting it as a most important quality of master teachers as compared to only 6 percent of the faculty. These findings puzzled me for several years, but an invitation from a colleague in our Communications Studies Department to participate in one of their symposia on the topic of humor in the classroom provided me with the incentive I needed to gather some data to help me overcome my puzzlement. After some careful thought, I decided that one possible reason why faculty give humor — and the rapport that humor can produce — such low ratings is that they may be unaware of the positive thoughts, emotions and behaviors these qualities can elicit from their students. If they were, perhaps they would be more likely to see these qualities as characteristic of effective (i.e., master) teachers and do their best to emulate them.

My data collection strategy was simple. I asked the students in my three introductory psychology classes — which were populated with an approximately equal mix of male and female, 18-19 year-old, first-time, full-time students — how an instructor’s use of humor in the classroom affected:

Their learning.
The opinions they formed about the class and its instructor.
The ways in which it could potentially affect their behaviors with and toward their instructors.

I also included an item that asked, “Is it possible to have fun and learn at the same time?” and a final item designed to investigate my students’ reactions to instructors whose attempts to be humorous in the classroom are unsuccessful and how these failures affected their learning and the atmosphere of their classes. I gathered 114 completed questionnaires from my students, and the results of their answers to my first eight items are below.

The pros of using humor in the college classroom

My students were unanimous in their opinion that it is possible to learn and have fun at the same time, and they overwhelmingly reported that they enjoy a class more if their instructor uses humor. They also indicated that when a teacher uses humor in the classroom, they learn more, like the teacher more, are more likely to talk to their instructor outside the classroom, are more likely to seek help from their instructor about how to do better in the class, are more likely to enroll in that instructor’s classes, and are more likely to give that instructor higher student evaluation scores at the end of the semester. These findings support those of Buskist et al. (2002) who found that students consider happy, positive and humorous to be characteristics of master teachers and Richmond, Berglund, Epelbaum and Klein (2015) whose data indicated that faculty humor, and the resulting rapport that it can create with students, can have a positive effect upon students’ ratings of their instructors.

The cons of using humor in the college classroom

The final item in my questionnaire was “Please give an example of a situation in which one of your instructors tried to use humor in the classroom, but was unsuccessful, and how this failure affected you.” I content analyzed the 93 responses to this item into the nine categories below. The number in parenthesis indicates the number of responses that fell into each category, and each category name is followed by at least one verbatim response that illustrates this category.

Failed attempts at humor (31)

He messed up a joke, and I completely shut down from what he said.
My biology teacher is not funny, and this makes me lose focus in class.
My speech teacher tried to use humor, but she wasn’t really very funny, so it didn’t help.
I had a calculus instructor who would say he had jokes for us. There was never a punch line, so they were really just stories. I think he had the words “joke” and “story” confused.
I have an instructor in a history class who tries to use humor all of the time, but more often than not he is the only one laughing. He often resorts to bad puns.
I couldn’t understand an instructor’s humor because English was not his first language.
When their sense of humor is not congruent with the majority of their students. Failed jokes make the teacher look like a jackass.

Failure to understand students’ level of understanding of the information being taught (15)

In math, when the instructor told a joke that only math majors would know — it was not funny.
My chemistry instructor would try to use chemistry jokes that none of us could understand.
My math professor was telling us a joke, an intellectual joke, and none of us understood.
I had a teacher who made “funny” literary references that we didn’t understand or care about.

Offensive, rude or sarcastic humor (12)

I had a history teacher who tried to tell a joke involving a concentration camp, and it just plain was not funny.
Explaining how to create/design a cockpit in AutoCad and comparing it to female body parts.
My math instructor tried to make story problems out of violent situations to make the class laugh, but it was more distracting than helpful.
I had a lab mentor who made fun of students without knowing them. This made him seem cold and made me feel distant from the class material.
One of my teachers tried to use racial jokes that did not go over well with the majority black class.
An instructor tried to make a joke about race and how it is different in the ghetto. No one laughed.
I found it unnecessary when my instructor used cursing to add humor.

Trying too hard to be funny (10)

The instructor was awkward, and his humor seemed to be rehearsed.
It doesn’t work when the instructor is not a funny person naturally, but tries to be funny anyway.
One of my instructors tries to use “slang” or “lingo” that pertains to the student’s generation. While it can be funny, it holds no educational value.
Making stupid comments or saying something they think is “hip” or of the younger generation, but it’s just not funny when they do it.

Jokes about particular students (8)

One of my instructor’s ideas of humor is to pick on particular students in a negative manor. Though it is supposed to be funny, I spend more time focusing on how the students feel than on what I’m supposed to be learning.
Some instructors use humor when students haven’t done so well on tests, and it makes students feel bad.
I have a teacher who thinks it’s funny to joke about how difficult a test is or how badly her previous students have done — not funny.

Humor that is unrelated to the subject matter of the class (8)

When they tell jokes that do not relate to the class at all. I do not like this because it takes away time I could be learning.
Sometimes professors use humor just to take up class time, and we don’t accomplish much.

Humor that is out-of-date (4)

When an instructor makes references to old TV sitcoms that none of us can relate to.

Laughing at own jokes (4)

One of my old teachers always laughed at her own jokes, so I kind of zoned her out.

Humor that backfires (1)

I had a high school teacher who always tried to cover his mistakes with a joke, but he always ended up looking like a fool instead.

Lessons that teachers can learn from these data

So, what can teachers learn from the data I collected? Perhaps the most important overall conclusion they can draw from my findings is that students respond positively to humor in the classroom when it is positive, relevant to the subject matter being taught, and delivered in a successful manner.

Teachers should carefully avoid using:

Negative humor that involves demeaning or embarrassing students.
Humor that students do not “get” because they lack the background knowledge necessary to understand it.
Humor that is irrelevant to the subject matter being taught.
Humor that includes disturbing, violent, or sexual content or references to minority groups.
Humor that fails to be humorous because it is delivered in an awkward, rehearsed or embarrassing manner.

If you are a teacher, perhaps the best way you can use the information in this article is to perform an introspective evaluation of your own skill as a successfully humorous teacher based on your past experiences in which you have told a joke or funny story in your classroom. How did your students respond to your joke or story?

Did they laugh and appear to enjoy your humor?
Did they fail to “get” your joke or seem puzzled by your story?
Did they appear to be angry or offended?
Did they roll their eyes and give you the impression that you said something stupid?

If your students almost always respond to your humor by laughing and appearing to enjoy it, then I suggest you continue to use the kind of humor that elicited these positive responses.

If they often respond in the other, less positive ways, I suggest you either:

Refrain from using humor in your classroom in the future.
Change the types of humor you use.
Use humor created by others (e.g., cartoons) rather than your own.

As Garner (2008, p. 180) astutely — and humorously — observed, “When properly used, humor can be an effective tool to make a class more enjoyable, reduce anxiety and improve the learning setting. The ‘ha ha’ of humor in the classroom may indeed contribute to the ‘aha’ of learning from the student.”

References

Banas, J.A., Dunbar, N., Rodriguez, D., and Liu, S. (2011). A review of humor in education settings: Four decades of research. Communication Education, 60(1), 115-144.

Buskist, W., Sikorski, J., Buckley, T., & Saville, B.K. (2002). Elements of master teaching. In S.F. Davis, & W. Buskist (Eds.). The teaching of psychology: Essays in honor of Wilbert J. McKeachie and Charles L. Brewer (27-39).

Busler, J., Kirk, C. Keeley, & Buskist, W. (2017). What constitutes poor teaching? A preliminary inquiry into the misbehaviors of not-so-good instructors. Teaching of Psychology, 44(4), 330-344. doi: 10.1177/0098628317727907.

Garner, R.L. (2006). Humor in pedagogy: How ha-ha can lead to aha! College Teaching, 54(1), 177-180). Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Huss, J. & Eastep, S. (2016). The attitudes of university faculty toward humor as a pedagogical tool: Can we take a joke? Journal of Inquiry & Action in Education, 8(1), 39-65.

McKeachie, W.J., & Svinicki, M. (2006). Teaching tips: Strategies, research, and theory for college and university teachers. New York: Houghton Mifflin Publishing Co.

Pollio, H. (2002). Humor and college teaching. In S.F. Davis, & W. Buskist (Eds.). The teaching of psychology: Essays in honor of Wilbert J. McKeachie and Charles L. Brewer (69-80). Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Richmond, A.S., Berglund M., Epelbaum, V.B., & Klein, E.M. (2015). a + (b1) professor student rapport + (b2) humor + (b3) student engagement = (Ŷ) student ratings of instructors. Teaching of Psychology, 42, 119-125. doi:10.1177/0098628315569924.

Segrist, D.J., & Hupp, S.D.A. (2015). This class is a joke! Humor as a pedagogical tool in the teaching of psychology. Society for the Teaching of Psychology’s Office of Teaching Resources. Retrieved from http://www.teachpsych.org/Resources/Documents/otrp/resources/segrist15.pdf (PDF, 400KB).

Author’s Note: I became increasingly puzzled as I wrote this article. Why are some faculty so determined to continue to use humor in their classrooms when (a) it almost always fails (e.g., I have an instructor in a history class who tries to use humor all of the time, but more often than not he is the only one laughing.) and (b) it can cause students to form such negative impressions of them (e.g., awkward, confused, stupid, distracting, cold, fool, and jackass). Successful humor has two prerequisites. The first is to know what is funny and the second is to be able to accurately predict what a particular audience will find to be funny. As I mulled over these two criteria, I suddenly remembered an article titled Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One’s Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments by Kruger and Dunning (1999) in which undergraduate students took a test that required them to judge the funniness of a series of jokes that had been previously rated by a group of professional comedians. The participants were then asked to estimate their performance on the test relative to other students at their university. The results were truly perplexing. The authors found that those who scored lowest on the test “grossly overestimated their ability relative to their peers” (p. 1123). This calamitous combination of incompetence and overconfidence led Kruger and Dunning to conclude that “those with limited knowledge in a domain suffer a dual burden: Not only do they reach mistaken conclusions and make regrettable errors, but their incompetence robs them of the ability to realize it” (p. 1121). Apparently there are those among us who are—for lack of a more officially recognized term—humor impaired. This condition causes them to believe they are funny when they are not, and then to act upon this unfortunate misconception by continuing to behave in a humorously unsuccessful manner in their classrooms, regardless of how unamused or annoyed their students are with their futile attempts to be funny. I wish I could provide this group with a workable solution to this pedagogically detrimental situation. But even if I could, I am certain they would question why I had the gall to offer such an inappropriate piece of advice to a group of such competent classroom comedians.

Kruger, J., & Dunning, D. (1999). Unskilled and unaware of it: How difficulties in recognizing one’s own incompetence lead to inflated self-assessments. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 77(6), 1121-1134.

Using humor in the college classroom: The pros and the cons

The pros of using humor in the college classroom