Doctoral Dissertations
Date of Award
8-1982
Degree Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy
Major
Psychology
Major Professor
Howard R. Pollio
Committee Members
Raymond Lorion, Donald Dickinson, William Calhoun
Abstract
The present study represents an attempt to describe the natural occurrence of humor produced by students in a third, seventh and eleventh grade classroom. In addition, this study sought to describe relationships among the production of various humorous events and the student's self concept, creativity and tendency to produce other disruptive classroom events besides humor.
In order to provide such descriptions of classroom humor, observational data were collected from 78 school children in grades 3, 7 and 11. Creativity was measured by the Torrance Creativity Tasks—Figural Form A and self concept was measured through scores obtained on the Piers-Harris Children's Self Concept Scales. The final component of the present study included observational data on the frequency of disruptive behaviors which were produced by these 78 students.
Results revealed very few sex differences either in humor production or in humor appreciation. There were several grade differences in the rate of humor production. In general, the frequency of all types of humorous events decreased as grade level increased. Possible explanations and causes for this effect were discussed at length.
An interesting finding revealed that students produced humor while the teacher could not see or hear the event occur more often than they did when the teacher was in position to appreciate and respond to the humor event. Possible explanations for this effect were discussed at length.
Relationships among humor and creativity were non-meaningful except in the eleventh grade where humorous students tended to be highly creative. With respect to self concept, humorous third and seventh graders tended to think negatively of themselves while no relationship between humor and self concept was found for eleventh graders.
Another significant finding yielded by the present data indicated that students who produced humorous events to which others laughed tended to produce other disruptive classroom behaviors as well. Discussion was made of the implications of this finding for identifying and treating "class clowns".
A factor analysis revealed three distinct aspects of humor—a socially positive component, a socially negative component and a sociability component. These aspects of humor, together with other current findings, suggested that humor is an important aspect of social interaction.
Recommended Citation
Fabrizi, Michael S., "A naturalistic study of humor in a third, seventh and eleventh grade classroom. " PhD diss., University of Tennessee, 1982.
https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_graddiss/13227