{"id":6675246,"date":"2026-05-31T08:08:00","date_gmt":"2026-05-31T13:08:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/?p=6675246"},"modified":"2026-05-12T10:04:40","modified_gmt":"2026-05-12T15:04:40","slug":"do-classroom-jokes-help-students-learn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/do-classroom-jokes-help-students-learn\/","title":{"rendered":"Do Classroom Jokes Help Students Learn?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Back in January, I <a href=\"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/not-all-jokes-are-created-equal-teacher-humor-that-works\/\" data-type=\"post\" data-id=\"6670169\">wrote about a study<\/a> on classroom uses of humor. The headlines:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><strong>On-topic humor<\/strong> increased student ratings of the teacher&#8217;s likeabililty and of their own motivation (and did a few other good things)<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Making fun of students<\/strong> harmed relationships with students, and lowered motivation (and did a few other bad things)<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Off-topic humor<\/strong> &#8212; jokes about something other than the class topic &#8212; didn&#8217;t have much of an effect on the measured variables<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>All this helpful information, however, came with a drawback: the study relied entirely on students&#8217; ratings of how they felt. Such &#8220;self-report&#8221; data isn&#8217;t nothing, but it&#8217;s not the most persuasive kind of data. What would we find if we measured something more objective, like <em>learning<\/em>?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I find this question especially important because of a claim I occasionally hear at conferences: &#8220;research shows that laughter increases learning 44%.&#8221; Just imagine if that were true! <\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"626\" src=\"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/AdobeStock_219751929-1024x626.jpeg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-6675295\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/AdobeStock_219751929-1024x626.jpeg 1024w, https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/AdobeStock_219751929-300x183.jpeg 300w, https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/AdobeStock_219751929-768x469.jpeg 768w, https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/AdobeStock_219751929-1536x939.jpeg 1536w, https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/AdobeStock_219751929-2048x1252.jpeg 2048w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>If we&#8217;ve got data about humor and laughter and learning one way or another, I&#8217;d love to see it. (By the way: I have looked at the source behind that specific 44% claim &#8212; it doesn&#8217;t hold up to even casual scrutiny.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>For all these reasons, I was happy to find a study that does look specifically at humor and learning. Sure enough, it&#8217;s a helpful addition to the discussion. As you&#8217;ll see, humor can be beneficial&#8230;but not 44% beneficial.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Eclipses, Lightning, and Pessimists<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/bpspsychub.onlinelibrary.wiley.com\/doi\/full\/10.1111\/bjep.70080\">This two-part study<\/a>, led by Dr. Lisa Bender, worked with both college students and middle school students in Germany. Participants watched narrated slide shows about science topics: &#8220;how lightning forms,&#8221; and &#8220;solar and and lunar eclipses.&#8221; All of those slideshows covered the same scientific information, but included important differences:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>The control slideshows simply covered the information.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Version B included (non-humorous) examples: &#8220;Negative particles are like snowflakes falling to the ground.&#8221;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Version C included humorous examples: \u201cNegative particles in a cloud are like pessimists \u2014 they are always down.\u201d<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Version D included humor that related to the topic, but didn&#8217;t illustrate the ideas: &#8220;If an electric car is struck by lightning, is it charged?&#8221;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>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 <em>how much they <strong>recalled<\/strong><\/em>, and <em>how well they could <strong>transfer <\/strong>information<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">44%?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Here&#8217;s what Bender&#8217;s team found:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>First: <\/strong>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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The authors suspected that irrelevant humor might function like a \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/seductive-details-when-do-cool-stories-and-videos-interfere-with-learning\/\" data-type=\"post\" data-id=\"5615\">seductive detail<\/a>\u201d \u2014 interesting information that distracts from the main learning goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Second: <\/strong> the on-topic humor didn&#8217;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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Notice that both of these findings flatly contradict the &#8220;laughter increases learning 44%&#8221; claim. If students are laughing about off-topic jokes, they&#8217;ll probably learn less. If they&#8217;re laughing about on-topic jokes, they probably won&#8217;t learn dramatically more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Third: <\/strong>both off-topic humor and on-topic humor increased the students&#8217; ratings  of teacher likeability. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We don&#8217;t really know <em>why<\/em> humor had the effects it did; but we have these additional data points about the effects themselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">You Be You<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>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 &#8212; unlike most classroom humor &#8212; the &#8220;jokes&#8221; 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 &#8220;the rodents&#8221; &#8212; it would take too long to explain why.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>For all these reasons, I think we can mark out &#8220;humor in the classroom&#8221; as a topic where research will struggle to provide authoritative classroom advice. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Yes, I think it&#8217;s straightforwardly wrong to claim that &#8220;laughter increases learning 44%&#8221;; <em>nothing <\/em>does. (If any one thing increased learning that much, teachers would have figured it out already.)<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>I likewise think that off-topic humor is probably a bad idea <em>during the middle of a cognitively challenging part of a lesson<\/em>. However, if we&#8217;re welcoming students to class, or transitioning from one part of a lesson plan to another, or &#8212; heck &#8212; just need a break, throwing in a random humorous observation sounds just fine.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>The best teaching advice isn&#8217;t &#8220;try to be funny,&#8221; or really &#8220;try to be <em>anything<\/em>.&#8221; We should be a professional version of our<em>selves<\/em>. That genuine self-presentation will be the best starting place from which to help students learn.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide\"\/>\n\n\n\n<p>Bender, L., Renkl, A., &amp; Endres, T. (2026). Punchline with (out) purpose: Integrating research on instructional humour and seductive details.&nbsp;<em>British Journal of Educational Psychology<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Back in January, I wrote about a study on classroom uses of humor. The headlines: All this helpful information, however, came with a drawback: the study relied entirely on students&#8217; ratings of how they felt. Such &#8220;self-report&#8221; data isn&#8217;t nothing, but it&#8217;s not the most persuasive kind of data. What would we find if we [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":6675295,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[15,267],"class_list":["post-6675246","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lb-blog","tag-classroom-advice","tag-humor"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6675246","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6675246"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6675246\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6675298,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6675246\/revisions\/6675298"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6675295"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6675246"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6675246"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6675246"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}