Abstract
In a field study, 180 naive students evaluated a randomly assigned chapter in an introductory textbook as to its interest level, enjoyableness, persuasiveness, credibility, capacity for teaching, and its potential to encourage more reading. Next the chapters were content analyzed by 90 pairs of students for humor content. Following the content analysis, 90 correlation coefficients were computed between the frequencies and types of humor utilized within the chapters and the students' evaluations of those chapters. A stepwise multiple regression analysis was also performed. The analyses indicate that, while use of humor is significantly related to the enjoyment of a text, it is not strongly related to interest, persuasiveness, capacity for learning, nor capacity to read more. Also, amount of humor was significantly negatively related to author's credibility.
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