EFFECTS OF HUMOR
ON
THE
TEST
PERFORMANCE
OF ELEMENTARY SCHOOL CHILDREN
ROGER
L.
TERRY
AND
MARGARET E.
WOODS
Hanover
College
One might argue that it is a waste of time to conduct research on the “obvious”
effects of humor in the classroom, and, indeed,
it
may be heretical to question the
value of humor for instruction and school Performance. Nevertheless, the present
report argues that the effects of humor are not obvious and cautions against the
indiscriminate, uncritical use
of
humor in elementary school classrooms.
In the first place, Goldstein and McGhee’s
(1971)
recent and apparently
exhaustive survey
of
the published literature in the area of humor indicates that,
while the last quarter
of
a century has witnessed a rapid growth of interest in this
topic, only a few hundred studies have been conducted, many too few to afford
unequivocal conclusions of a general nature. Futhermore, most investigations
have concentrated on the stimulus
or
perceiver factors which affect humor appre-
ciation
(e.g.,
Terry and Ertel,
1974).
Thus, the humor response has been studied
in some detail, but, to date, research is scarce concerning the effect of humor on
other responses, such
as
school performance.
That the behavioral effects of humor are not unequivocal is reflected in two
conflicting points of view. On the one hand, implied by the statement, “learning
can be fun,” humorous pedagogical techniques may generate positive affect and
serve to attract and maintain attention. This thesis argues that humor serves
positive functions for school performance. On the other hand, as in “learning
is
serious business,” the introduction of humor into the classroom may distract the
student from the main point of the lesson and thereby negatively affect school
performance.
Yet in educational settings humor is typically viewed as
a
positive factor in
both the areas of instruction (Ball and Bogate,
1971;
Earls,
1972)
and evaluation
(Adams,
1972;
Monson,
1968).
For example, Adam has reported anecdotal evidence
of an improvement in test performance
of
high school physics students when the
test items contained humorous materials.
A
more systematic investigation of the
effect of humor on test performance by Smith, Ascough, Ettinger, and Nelson
(1971)
led
to the conclusion that the introduction of humor into
a
testing situation
can facilitate performance by relaxing highly anxious students.
This study is important, because
it
demonstrates that the incorporation of
humor into techniques of academic evaluation may have disparate effects on
performance depending upon the momentary state of the students’ anxiety
or
tension.
It
has long been recognized that there is an optimal level
of
tension for
effective performance (Terry and Isaacson,
1971)
;
ie.,
extremely high
or
low tension
inhibits performance. Smith,
et
al.
(1971)
showed that highly anxious students
scored significantly higher on
a
humorous test than on
a
nonhumorous test, pre-
sumably because the humor reduced the high anxiety down to
the
optimal level.
But they also report that students with lower anxiety tended to do more poorly
on
the humorous
test
than on the nonhumorous test, presumably because their
anxiety was reduced to below the optimal level.