Are they funny? Associations between instructors’ humor and student emotions in undergraduate lab courses

ABSTRACT Instructor use of humor can positively affect students’ educational experiences by increasing students’ comfort in the classroom and making the instructor seem more approachable. Humor can also elicit emotional responses, which in turn may influence students’ engagement in the course and their relationship with the instructor. However, students may interpret instructor humor differently, resulting in varied effects. The present study examined how instructors’ use of humor relates to students’ emotions about their lab course. In addition, we examined whether researcher-identified humor aligned with student reports to support valid inferences about instructor humor. To accomplish this, trained researchers analyzed classroom audio recordings of instructor talk in 48 lab courses to identify instances of instructor humor. We also surveyed their undergraduate students ( n = 462) about their instructor’s humor and pleasant and unpleasant emotions about their lab course. Our results revealed that trained researchers’ coding of instructor humor was poorly predictive of students’ emotions about their laboratory courses. In contrast, students who perceived their instructor to be humorous reported greater pleasant emotions and fewer unpleasant emotions. Our results suggest that instructor humor from students’ perspective may be influential in how they experience instruction. In addition, student perceptions of instructor humor may be a more useful indicator than researcher observations for studying instructor humor.