When students think their teacher is funny, they learn better

A biology lab feels different when your instructor makes you laugh. Researchers at the University of Georgia wanted to understand why, so they recorded audio from more than 45 classes across the country and asked students a simple question: do you think your teacher is funny.

The answer changed how researchers think about humor in education.

The Joke That Matters

You might expect that objectively funny jokes—the ones researchers identified as humorous—would predict how students felt about a course. They didn't. What actually mattered was whether students thought their instructor was funny. When they did, something shifted. "If a student thought their instructor was funnier, they had more positive emotions about the course and fewer negative emotions about the course as well," says Trevor Tuma, a postdoctoral researcher who led the study.

This distinction matters because emotions aren't decoration in learning—they're load-bearing. Positive feelings during a class correlate with better retention during that course, and more importantly, they shape whether students want to keep studying the subject later. "People might look at emotions and say, 'Oh, you know, that doesn't really matter. What matters is they're learning,'" says Erin Dolan, a biochemistry professor on the research team. "But emotions influence our learning and our motivation to continue with a subject."

The instructors in the study used different comedic approaches. Some made fun of themselves. Others joked about the course content or the lab equipment—the stuff students were actually working with. These quips seemed to work because they created a small pocket of ease in a class where people are usually nervous about getting things wrong.

Where Humor Loses Its Way

But humor is fragile. In some classes, students disagreed sharply on whether the instructor was funny. A joke that lands with half the room can fall flat with the other half, and sometimes worse than flat—it can feel alienating or off-key.

"Humor is subjective," Tuma says. "It's going to depend on the type of humor. It's going to depend on the context. It's going to depend on your relationship with that instructor."

This is where thoughtfulness matters. An instructor cracking a self-deprecating joke in a small lab course where they see the same 20 students every week operates in a different world than someone lecturing 300 people in an auditorium. The smaller setting makes it possible for students and instructors to actually know each other—which is exactly where humor tends to work best. It's not about being the funniest person in the room. It's about being genuine enough that students feel the permission to relax.

The research, published in the Journal of Microbiology & Biology Education, suggests that instructors who want to use humor should think carefully about what kind fits their subject, their students, and the moment. Humor that doesn't land doesn't just fail—it can actively undermine the classroom dynamic.

For students, the takeaway is quieter: the classes where you laugh a little are probably the ones where you'll actually remember what you learned.