DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.

When I set out to see the impact of laughter on cognitive conflict, I imagined that it would significantly help about 2/3rds of students, and that about 1/3rd would not really see any change from the activity. What I found with the data from one class is that about half of the students did find that the activity lowered their discomfort with the topic. Here are some sample responses:

“The topic did seem slightly less controversial. Laughing at things has a way of making people more relaxed and less defensive…It just helps people listen more and argue less”

“The topic doesn’t seem as heavy as before.”

“The topic does seem less controversial because we made it seem like it was something to laugh about rather than taking it seriously. It gave the topic a comedic edge.”


I give this last comment to show a real tension that emerged from this research. For some of the students, laughter had the impact that Hutchison described; it “brought down our high imaginations” or the exaggerated “passions…enthusiastic admiration, or fear” related to the topic.

 

But, as you heard, some commented that it helped them take it less seriously. Hutchison idealistically put forward the idea, which I initially believed, that laughter would restore one to “a conformity to the real moment or importance of the affair.” Yet from the comments, it sounds like laughter seemed to provide a get-out-of-seriousness free card for some students. This was an unanticipated side of the research, and when I spoke with a professor about doing it this semester, he expressed reservations about the laughter activity precisely because he wanted to generate as much cognitive conflict as possible and did not want to provide students with an “out,” a way to take it less seriously and to remain complacent and disengaged.

 

In addition to this tension, this dark side of laughter as potentially reinforcing complacency and disengagement, another surprise emerged from the data. A few students expressed how the activity actually increased their level of cognitive conflict. Here are some of their comments:

"Actually it seems more controversial because laughing at it revealed more the true controversy of it and made it more clear to me. I realized how conflicting it truly is. By laughing at it and thinking why I laughed at it I have realized that the conflict is greater because the ideas are so different. "

"It only reinforces the gravity of the conflict."


When I looked at the in-class responses of these students, I found that they described many of the items as ironic, hypocritical, and satirical. Some of the items “brought to light sad truths.” Irony and satire are the dark and darkly critical side of laughter. Satirical laughter has a very different dynamic than responding to an incongruity’s pleasant shift. These response went against my earlier assumptions and against ideas about how laughter inherently helps feel more at ease.

DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.