Abstract
Although much previous research has been conducted on remembering humorous materials, only a few studies have examined how visual humorous examples relevant to lecture content enhance the recall and/or recognition of the lecture details. In addition, previous studies have produced conflicting results and have methodological limitations. The present study investigated the interactions between humor and relevance in recall and recognition performance. One hundred sixty five subjects were given humorous or serious video examples which were relevant or irrelevant to lecture materials. Recognition performance, but not recall performance, was better when examples were humorous and relevant to the lecture materials. These results indicate that use of humorous relevant video examples is helpful for recognizing details supplemented by the examples.
About the authors
Hideo Suzuki received a Ph.D. degree in Social Psychology at Loyola University Chicago in 2009. He joined the Early Emotional Development Program at Washington University School of Medicine as a Postdoctoral Research Associate between 2010 and 2013. Currently, he is a Post Doctoral Associate at Laureate Institute for Brain Research. His work has focused on the interplay between stress and brain structure and function underlying emotional behavior (positive and negative affect).
Linda Heath received her Ph.D. in Social Psychology from Northwestern University in 1980, and she has been a member of the faculty in Psychology at Loyola University Chicago since 1984. She currently also directs the Peace Studies Program at Loyola. Her research focuses on the impact of media on fear of crime, criminal behavior, attitudes toward peace, and attitudes toward immigration.
©2014 by Walter de Gruyter Berlin/Boston
