Back in January, I wrote about a study on classroom uses of humor. The headlines:
- On-topic humor increased student ratings of the teacher’s likeabililty and of their own motivation (and did a few other good things)
- Making fun of students harmed relationships with students, and lowered motivation (and did a few other bad things)
- Off-topic humor — jokes about something other than the class topic — didn’t have much of an effect on the measured variables
All this helpful information, however, came with a drawback: the study relied entirely on students’ ratings of how they felt. Such “self-report” data isn’t nothing, but it’s not the most persuasive kind of data. What would we find if we measured something more objective, like learning?
I find this question especially important because of a claim I occasionally hear at conferences: “research shows that laughter increases learning 44%.” Just imagine if that were true!
If we’ve got data about humor and laughter and learning one way or another, I’d love to see it. (By the way: I have looked at the source behind that specific 44% claim — it doesn’t hold up to even casual scrutiny.)
For all these reasons, I was happy to find a study that does look specifically at humor and learning. Sure enough, it’s a helpful addition to the discussion. As you’ll see, humor can be beneficial…but not 44% beneficial.
Eclipses, Lightning, and Pessimists
This two-part study, led by Dr. Lisa Bender, worked with both college students and middle school students in Germany. Participants watched narrated slide shows about science topics: “how lightning forms,” and “solar and and lunar eclipses.” All of those slideshows covered the same scientific information, but included important differences:
- The control slideshows simply covered the information.
- Version B included (non-humorous) examples: “Negative particles are like snowflakes falling to the ground.”
- Version C included humorous examples: “Negative particles in a cloud are like pessimists — they are always down.”
- Version D included humor that related to the topic, but didn’t illustrate the ideas: “If an electric car is struck by lightning, is it charged?”
The researchers did collect some of that self-report data I described above: the cognitive load of the slideshows, or the likeability of the instructor. Crucially, for my purpose, they gathered more objective data as well. Specifically, they tested the students to see how much they recalled, and how well they could transfer information.
44%?
Here’s what Bender’s team found:
First: for both the college students and the middle-school students, off-topic humor interfered (a bit) with recall and transfer. Specifically, the college students in the irrelevant humor group scored 9% lower than the control group on transfer questions; middle-school students in the irrelevant humor group scored 7% lower than the on-topic group on recall questions.
The authors suspected that irrelevant humor might function like a “seductive detail” — interesting information that distracts from the main learning goal.
Second: the on-topic humor didn’t make much of a difference either way. On average, students learned roughly the same amount in the control group and the relevant-humor group.
Notice that both of these findings flatly contradict the “laughter increases learning 44%” claim. If students are laughing about off-topic jokes, they’ll probably learn less. If they’re laughing about on-topic jokes, they probably won’t learn dramatically more.
Third: both off-topic humor and on-topic humor increased the students’ ratings of teacher likeability.
We don’t really know why humor had the effects it did; but we have these additional data points about the effects themselves.
You Be You
Before we read too much into these results, we should notice the limitations on this study. (All studies have limitations.) These studies lasted only a short time: four minutes for the college study, twelve for the middle-school study. And — unlike most classroom humor — the “jokes” were scripted and scored. In real classrooms, I suspect, humor typically arises spontaneously in the moment. It builds team spirit, and relies on in-group knowledge. (I had one group of students who wanted me to call them “the rodents” — it would take too long to explain why.)
For all these reasons, I think we can mark out “humor in the classroom” as a topic where research will struggle to provide authoritative classroom advice.
- Yes, I think it’s straightforwardly wrong to claim that “laughter increases learning 44%”; nothing does. (If any one thing increased learning that much, teachers would have figured it out already.)
- I likewise think that off-topic humor is probably a bad idea during the middle of a cognitively challenging part of a lesson. However, if we’re welcoming students to class, or transitioning from one part of a lesson plan to another, or — heck — just need a break, throwing in a random humorous observation sounds just fine.
The best teaching advice isn’t “try to be funny,” or really “try to be anything.” We should be a professional version of ourselves. That genuine self-presentation will be the best starting place from which to help students learn.
Bender, L., Renkl, A., & Endres, T. (2026). Punchline with (out) purpose: Integrating research on instructional humour and seductive details. British Journal of Educational Psychology.
