Dr. Shawn R. Tucker
Art Department
Elon University

My Inspiration

At Elon, we have a class that all first year students take called “The Global Experience.” The course trains students to be good global citizens by encouraging them to understand, among other things, the plight of disempowered people, the nature of culture, the relationship of humans and the natural world, and the importance of personal responsibility. Students are challenged to view everything “quite differently from the ordinary method,” to use Kant’s phrase. Students read and watch and examine items that present new ideas and data, often throwing off their currently held ideas and views.

I saw a connection between this class and Kant’s ideas about humour as a talent for being able to voluntarily put oneself into this mental disposition. The common term for the pedagogical experience is cognitive conflict. This led me to these central research questions: can laughter help students cope with cognitive conflict? Can the delightful incongruence of laughter help students appreciate the not-so-delightful experience of cognitive conflict? Could students transfer humour’s ability to see opposites to the experience of finding new ideas and data?

Literature Review 

To start to answer these questions, I explored scholarship about teaching, laughter, and cognitive conflict. The last twenty years has seen a growing scholarly interest in teaching and laughter. Some of this research is more anecdotal and directed toward teaching practices. A good example of this is Maureen McMahon’s article “Are We Having Fun Yet? Humor in the English Class.” In this article, McMahon describes how she has effectively taught English Literature courses with various humorous approaches. Even more pertinent to my research is work that seeks an empirical basis for anecdotal evidence about the effectiveness of humor in the classroom. The groundwork for this research was laid by people like Bryant, Comisky, and Zillmann, whose 1979 article “Teachers’ Humor in the College Classroom” analyzed the type, the quanity, and the student response to pedagogical humor. These findings were followed up on in 1980 with Bryant, Crane, Comisky, and Zillmann’s examination of the correlation between humor and student evaluations of their teachers. Both articles empirically measured benefits of different humor, like jokes, puns, and funny stories in teaching. R.L. Garner built on this research in his 2006 empirical exploration. Garner tested the impact of curriculum-specific humor on retention and recall as well as student evaluations of the course and instructor. The researcher concluded that “humor can have a positive effect on student enjoyment and content retention,” and further noted that appropriate humor may create a more relaxed environment while also providing the sort of mental break that allows students to take in what they are learning (179).

In addition to this work on humour, research by people like Jane M. Watson examines the role of cognitive conflict. Watson’s article dealing with “Inferential Reasoning and The Influence Of Cognitive Conflict” draws from the sciences, where the issue of cognitive conflict seems especially vital. This conflict can come from many sources. New or previously unrecognized evidence can cause groups of scientists to have to rethink their theories and approaches. Science educators have focused on how cognitive conflict is both an important part of the scientific community and should be a part of student learning. Watson discussed how that conflict can be used to teach important math skills. Besides this research on cognitive conflict itself, there is also research like that of Millicent H. Abel addressing “Humor, stress, and coping strategies.” This research specifically looked at my target group, 1st year college students. Abel concluded that the outcomes supported “the role of humor in restructuring a situation so it is less stressful” as well has how humor aided in “both emotion-focused and problem-focused coping strategies.”  
In addition to research on humor and coping skills, stress, and cognitive conflict, I have also found the ideas and insights of Francis Hutcheson to be quite useful. Writing in the 1750s, Hutcheson claimed that part of the value of laughter was how it can put in its proper place something that may otherwise be overwhelming. In his own words, Hutcheson noted that “When any object either good or evil is aggravated and increased by the violence of our passions, or an enthusiastic admiration, or fear, the application of ridicule is the readiest way to bring down our high imaginations to a conformity to the real moment or importance of the affair” (36). Ridicule or laughter can burst the bubble, so to speak, on something that might seem otherwise overwhelming and frightful. This may help account for how laughter could perhaps help students lessen the anxiety caused by cognitive conflict.

 In order to examine if laughter can indeed draw some of the stress away that students may feel with cognitive conflict and to see if laughter’s incongruity can gave them transferable coping skills, I conducted an activity and collected data. With pre-approval of students and the instructor, I had the instructor indentify two class periods during the semester when students often experience cognitive conflict. At the end of each class, students completed a survey to see how much cognitive conflict they experienced. For the next class, each student was asked to bring to class something related to the topic that made them laugh. Students then presented the thing that made them laugh to the entire class.

During that class, students completed an in-class survey that asked them to rate how funny they found each item and why. At the end of the class, students completed another survey. The purpose of this survey was to examine if their level of cognitive conflict had changed after the activity. Over the semester, students did this activity twice. I ran this activity with a professor and his class in the fall of last year. I’m currently running it again. One professor has one section, and another professor has two sections.

When I set out to see the impact of laughter on cognitive conflict, I imagined that it would significantly help about 2/3rds of students, and that about 1/3rd would not really see any change from the activity. What I found with the data from one class is that about half of the students did find that the activity lowered their discomfort with the topic. Here are some sample responses:

“The topic did seem slightly less controversial. Laughing at things has a way of making people more relaxed and less defensive…It just helps people listen more and argue less”

“The topic doesn’t seem as heavy as before.”

“The topic does seem less controversial because we made it seem like it was something to laugh about rather than taking it seriously. It gave the topic a comedic edge.”

I give this last comment to show a real tension that emerged from this research. For some of the students, laughter had the impact that Hutchison described; it “brought down our high imaginations” or the exaggerated “passions…enthusiastic admiration, or fear” related to the topic.

But, as you heard, some commented that it helped them take it less seriously. Hutchison idealistically put forward the idea, which I initially believed, that laughter would restore one to “a conformity to the real moment or importance of the affair.” Yet from the comments, it sounds like laughter seemed to provide a get-out-of-seriousness free card for some students. This was an unanticipated side of the research, and when I spoke with a professor about doing it this semester, he expressed reservations about the laughter activity precisely because he wanted to generate as much cognitive conflict as possible and did not want to provide students with an “out,” a way to take it less seriously and to remain complacent and disengaged.

In addition to this tension, this dark side of laughter as potentially reinforcing complacency and disengagement, another surprise emerged from the data. A few students expressed how the activity actually increased their level of cognitive conflict. Here are some of their comments:

"Actually it seems more controversial because laughing at it revealed more the true controversy of it and made it more clear to me. I realized how conflicting it truly is. By laughing at it and thinking why I laughed at it I have realized that the conflict is greater because the ideas are so different. "

"It only reinforces the gravity of the conflict."

When I looked at the in-class responses of these students, I found that they described many of the items as ironic, hypocritical, and satirical. Some of the items “brought to light sad truths.” Irony and satire are the dark and darkly critical side of laughter. Satirical laughter has a very different dynamic than responding to an incongruity’s pleasant shift. These response went against my earlier assumptions and against ideas about how laughter inherently helps feel more at ease.

  I’m very excited about this research, but, instead of a conclusion, I will offer what I call the “view from a morass.” My first view is that checking for the transference of delightful incongruity to cognitive conflict has proven to be a dead end. I wanted to see if students were making such a transference. Not only do I see no clear signs of such a transference from the data, but I don’t know how to test for it in any way that maintains any objectivity. My current research method cannot tell me about such a transference of humor’s delight in incongruity to a mature appreciation for cognitive conflict.

 My next view is that this research does show is how differently students respond to laughter. Some come away mostly indifferent. A large percent of them report that the action of searching out, presenting, and seeing items related to a controversial topic that make them laugh lowers their level of discomfort and cognitive conflict. Of those students, some express how this lowered anxiety helps them effectively cope with the conflict and creates a better learning environment. Yet, as noted, some of the comments seem to open the possibility that laughing could encourage students to be less engaged and less positively motivated to think, learn, and grow. Finally, some actually felt the level of cognitive conflict increase. These students seemed much more attuned to the satirical and even sardonic elements of laughter. Others noted that the attention given to the topic clarified the conflict and thereby made it more serious and “grave.”

 My plan in looking at the data I’ll collect in the next 2 months is to see how these trends continue to develop. Can I distinguish those who laugh, feel less conflict and are still engaged from those whose laughter invites them to disengage? Can I see more clearly how the type of laughter may account for their different responses? Clearly, the laughter of those who feel more conflict is that of irony and satire, often pointed at hypocrisy. Are there other qualities that are common to the laughter of those who find the conflict increased? And what typifies the laughter for those who find the conflict minimized?