Don't Joke About Me: Student Identities and Perceptions of Instructor Humor in College Science Courses

Humor is a popular tool used by instructors to engage students. However, some instructor jokes may be perceived as less funny and more offensive by particular groups of students. Previous studies have shown that student gender impacts student perception of instructor humor; however, to our knowledge no studies have explored whether there are differences in how other identity groups interpret instructor humor. In this study, we surveyed 1,637 students across 25 different college science courses at a research-intensive institution in the Southwest United States. Students evaluated a set of topics that science instructors might joke about in class as to whether they were funny and offensive. Using binary logistic regression, we analyzed whether students of different identities, including race/ethnicity, political affiliation, LGBTQ+ status, religious affiliation, and native language, differentially perceived joke topics to be funny and offensive if told by an instructor in class. We identified that topics which tended to be perceived by students as funny rather than offensive were generally less likely to be perceived as funny to non-native English language speakers compared with native English speakers. We also found that students were more likely to be offended by jokes about their own identity group. This work identifies potentially humorous topics that instructors should avoid because they could be offensive to groups of students. This study also highlights topics that tend to be perceived as funny to most students, which indicates that instructors who joke about such topics may be universally benefitting college science students.

Locus of Control as a Factor in the Appreciation of Election Year Political Cartoons

Reference group membership has been viewed as the major factor influencing appreciation of political cartoons in an election year. This study examined the variable of locus of control in relation to appreciation of political cartoons among 80 men and 80 women undergraduates who were undecided potential voters during the 1992 presidential campaign. Internal scorers showed greater appreciation; men and women showed different patterns of response.

Candidate Preference and Hostile Humor in the 1968 Elections

Hostile jokes about Wallace, Nixon, Humphrey, and Senator McCarthy's “disaffected liberal” were rated by college students on the day before the 1968 election. The difference in their response to jokes about Humphrey and Nixon correlated .42 with candidate preference for psychology students ( n = 120), .58 for political science student volunteers ( n = 35). The difference in response to jokes about “disaffected liberals” vs jokes about other groups correlated significantly with attitude toward the Democratic party but not with candidate preference. The results support reference group theory, replicate two other studies of election humor and suggest that the enjoyment of hostile humor depends upon who is being aggressed against.

Bibliography of Empirical Studies of Wit and Humor

References to empirical studies of wit and humor conducted during the period of 1897 through 1966 are listed alphabetically.

Children'S Appreciation of Humor Victimizing Different Racial-Ethnic Groups

This study examined the early development of humor depicting victims of other racial-ethnic groups among low-income black, Mexican American, and white children and middle-income white children. Boys and girls between 3 and 6 years of age were presented with pairs of drawings differing only in the identification of the victim of a minor mishap and were asked to choose the funnier of the two. The pairs included the following comparisons: black versus white victim, black versus Mexican American victim, and white versus Mexican American victim. As hypothesized, only white children found it funnier to see a child of another racial-ethnic group victimized in humor than a child of their own group. This occurred for both low- and middle-income children. The lack of significant humor preferences among black and Mexican American children are explained in terms of their greater ambivalence regarding early positive identification with their own racial-ethnic group.

The effect of mortality salience on the evaluation of humorous material

The motivational aspects of humor are considered from the perspective of terror management theory, testing the hypothesis that exposure to the mortality salience manipulation will result in an alteration in participants' appreciation of humorous material. Participants rated several comic strips, indicating how funny they found the jokes. The differential relevance of various forms of jokes to the process of terror management was also examined by having participants rate their appreciation of jokes that address issues of varying applicability to existential concerns. Results indicate that mortality salience results in an exacerbation of the evaluation of humorous material, and that jokes' relative centrality to terror management processes produces differing evaluative responses. Theoretical and practical implications are examined.

Comment on Priest's article: "election jokes: the effects of reference group membership"

Priest maintains that all relevant studies prior to his own support a reference group theory of humor. However, only La Fave's experiment does unequivocally. Both the Wolff, Smith, and Murray and the Middleton experiments make methodological errors, acknowledged by the authors themselves, which render a reference group interpretation of their data debatable. However, these authors also furnish perceptive, post mortem analyses which suggest that, were their methodologies less inadequate, the reference group construct would have won support