Individual Differences in Learning with Humor: Sense of Humor and Learning Styles
Asil Ali Özdoğru
The use of humor in classroom education is widely regarded as a helpful teaching strategy. Several studies with different age groups report positive influences of humor on student perceptions and behaviors. The use of verbal and visual humor in educational materials, instruction, and assessment is found to improve students’ attitudes, affect, and sometimes learning. There is a mixed set of findings on the effectiveness of humor in instruction and testing on students’ learning performance. Operational and methodological considerations were discussed as potential sources of variability in findings across studies. In order to better understand the role and mechanisms of humor in learning, we may need to consider individual difference variables in humor and learning. To explore the potential relations between adult learners’ sense of humor and learning styles, 191 Turkish university students were surveyed in this study. Participants responded to self-report questionnaires including sociodemographic items, Thorson and Powell’s (1993) Multidimensional Sense of Humor Scale, and Kolb’s (1985) Learning Styles Inventory. This paper will present preliminary findings from the study in order to provide a closer look at the role of individual differences in learning with humor.
Keywords: Sense of humor, learning styles, adult learners
Citation: Özdoğru, A. A. (2015, July). Individual differences in learning with humor: Sense of humor and learning styles. Paper presented at the 14th European Congress of Psychology, Milan, Italy.
