Buckling Down By Lightening Up: How Humor Can Boost Students’ Persistence

Several distractingly adorable YouTube videos show a series of four- to six-year-olds visibly struggling to resist temptation. In these “marshmallow experiments,” made famous by renowned psychologist Walter Mischel, a researcher puts children in a room with a marshmallow and offers to give them another—but only if they can wait about fifteen minutes alone in the room without eating the marshmallow sitting right in front of them.

The children in these experiments who succumbed to temptation, eating the first marshmallow and forfeiting the second, went on to earn lower SAT scores, display poorer coping mechanisms, attain lower levels of education, and become more likely to have an addiction to crack/cocaine in adulthood. A similar study found that such “delay ability” predicted wealth, health, substance dependence, and criminal offenses in adulthood even after controlling for IQ and childhood socioeconomic status.

These dramatic results have inspired some policymakers and educators to explore ways of improving self-control and persistence behaviors in youth. Some have attempted to motivate students by emphasizing the importance of resisting temptations and working hard. Others have recommended frequent praise to promote positive feelings. Yet a recent study, “Examining the Energizing Effects of Humor: The Influence of Humor on Persistence Behavior,” suggests that a more playful approach may be especially effective at helping students persist through difficult tasks.

In the study’s first experiment, undergraduates performed a mentally exhausting text-editing task and then randomly viewed one of three videos–a “neutral” video on the management profession, a “contentment” video displaying dolphins swimming near a beach, or a “humor” video consisting of a clip from the British comedy “Mr. Bean.”

After the video, all participants were given a computerized evaluation task, which they could choose to quit at any time. Successful completion of the task would involve ten consecutive correct responses. What participants did not know was that the computer was programmed to make the task impossible to complete. The outcomes of interest were the number of attempts and the time spent on the task before quitting, a method commonly used to study self-control and self-regulation.

Students who viewed the humor video with Mr. Bean persisted about twice as long and attempted more than twice as many evaluations as students who saw the neutral video. Interestingly, participants who viewed the contentment video with dolphins reported being more content but did not persist any longer than the participants who saw the neutral video. A self-reported feeling of amusement almost entirely mediated the effect of the humor video on persistence.

A follow-up experiment replicated these results but used a long list of solvable fourth-grade math problems as the persistence task. Even when every participant could in principle complete the persistence task successfully, those who saw the humor video completed about twice as many problems.

The results are consistent with other literature showing that self-regulation is sometimes best achieved not by exerting sheer willpower but by providing some relief. Many of the preschoolers who successfully resisted eating the first marshmallow tapped their fingers, sang songs, hid under the table, and otherwise distracted themselves to minimize their need to exert effort. Consistent with the view that the part of your brain responsible for concentration and self-control is like a muscle that can be depleted, humor — what the study’s authors call a momentary “vacation of the mind” — can help students facing a variety of struggles recover some energy and persist through difficult tasks.

One limitation of the experiment was that participants watched only one short video. The effect of humor on persistence may depend on the frequency of the humor. Perhaps to the dismay of students everywhere, watching funny videos as long as one desires is probably not the best way to optimize effort on a difficult task.

Also, the study was conducted on undergraduates, a population whose psyches are perhaps the most thoroughly studied on earth. A follow-up experiment in primary or secondary schools, especially in disadvantaged areas, could reveal the potential of humor where even small changes in students’ learning outcomes can be consequential.

Attending school, studying for exams, applying for college and financial aid, and numerous other steps to academic success can be mentally taxing. Disadvantaged students with limited resources and a variety of life stressors, such as unpredictable access to reliable transportation and meals, may be mentally exhausted even before facing the demands of public schools. With the gravity of many aspects of life weighing students down, a little levity and playfulness in school and support programs may go a long way.

Article Source: David Cheng and Lu Wang, Examining the Energizing Effects of Humor: The Influence of Humor on Persistence Behavior, Journal of Business and Psychology, 2014.

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