Student evaluation of a teacher's use of student -disparaging versus self -disparaging humor.

摘要

The results of this study support those from previous research which found that females respond more favorably to a teacher's use of self-disparaging humor than to humor that disparages another, regardless of the gender of the teacher. In contrast to the findings of previous research, however, a female teacher's appeal was increased by the use of self-disparaging humor and decreased by the use of student-disparaging humor. And, also in contrast to previous findings, male students failed to demonstrate a significant preference for a teacher's use of student-disparaging humor as compared to self-disparaging humor. Male students showed no significant preference for a teacher's humor use on any evaluation measure except Friendly, where a teacher's use of self-disparaging humor was evaluated more favorably than the use of student-disparaging humor.;Without exception, a teacher's use of student-disparaging humor resulted in significantly lower ratings on the component Friendly, and female teachers' evaluations suffered the most when using student-disparaging humor. For affective judgments by students, self-disparaging humor was superior at producing a positive influence on a teacher's evaluation as compared to student-disparaging humor.;Student ratings of enjoyment of a teacher's lecture were positively associated with more favorable teacher evaluations on Friendly, Intelligent, and Entertaining. In addition, with one evaluation item, The teacher did a good job, higher ratings of enjoyment of the lecture were associated with increases in learning as measured by recall of information presented during the lecture. No significant differences were found in students' motivation to take a future class from any of the teachers used in our study. Males recalled information more accurately than the females.