The Effects of Humor and Incongruence on Word Recall

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Running head: HUMOR AND INCONGRUENCE ON MEMORY

          The Effects of Humor and Incongruence on Word Recall

                                            Emily Ngo

                      University of California, Los Angeles

Abstract

Using in a two-way within-subjects design, the effects of humor and incongruence have on memory was investigated. Participants saw a slideshow with either humorous or nonhumorous sentences that was paired with either matching or nonmatching pictures. The number of italicized words correctly recalled was used to measure memory. Due to limitations within my experiment, there was no significant main effect of the type of sentences, no main effect of the type of image and no significant interaction found at the significant level p<.05. With certain modifications, future research can replicate this experiment and probably find significant data that will enhance the understanding of how these stimuli affect memory processes. Such information will be beneficial for real-world applications.      


The Effects of Humor and Incongruence on Word Recall

Memory is important in almost every aspect of life. Many studies have tried to identify and understand the ways in which different types of stimuli affect memory processes. Results from Schmidt (1994) showed that humorous sentences were consistently recalled higher than nonhumorous sentences. Participants were asked to rate the humor intensity of sentences. Schmidt manipulated the type of sentences by randomly presenting both humorous and nonhumorous sentences to participants. To measure memory, participants were asked to write down as many words in the sentences that they have seen as they can. The results revealed that the more humorous the participants found the words to be, the more likely subjects were to remember the words. Schidmt explained that the due to the distinct and incongruous nature of humorous sentences, participants gave more attention to the details of the sentences leading to a higher long-term retention of words compare to those that were in nonhumorous sentences, leading to higher word recall.

Hastie and Kumar (1979) examined the effects that incongruence has on memory. Incongruence was operationally defined as the type of discrepant behaviors in relation to personality traits. Participants were asked to read a list of personality traits and another list of either congruent, neutral, or incongruent behaviors relative to the personality. The results revealed that incongruent behaviors were recalled significantly higher than both congruent and neutral behaviors. Hastie and Kumar proposed a simple network model and a depth-of-processing model to explain their results. Through these models, they hypothesized that because incongruent information is difficult to comprehend and challenges prior expectation, it requires a more complex and profound cognitive processing of information than the cognitive processes of congruent and neutral information. Consequently, the retrieval of incongruent information is higher than that of congruent or neutral information.  

Houston, Childers, and Heckler (1987) furthered the research on the effects that incongruence have on memory by analyzing advertisements. In three experiments, they manipulated the interaction of product’s brand name with a visual stimuli, where there is a either congruent or incongruent relative to the brand name, and  the consistency of verbal information, discrepant or consistent verbal information relative to the brand name. After being exposed to the four conditions, participants were asked to recall as much information about the advertisement as possible. The results showed that when participants view discrepant pictures and words combinations, they showed higher recall of product’s attributes than when they viewed consistent pictures and words combination. Houston et al. postulated that based on personal experience, expectations of the verbal content of a picture are created so that when verbal materials provides incongruent information, a complex cognitive process is required to change our expectations and to replace it with the new information. This elaborate process results in higher recall of information.

Even with the extensive of amount of research about humor and incongruence, there is yet a study to date that explores the relationship that these two stimuli have together on memory. In my experiment, I was interested in the effects that these two factors have together in the recall of information. In my experiment, I was interested see which of two factors will have a greater impact on word recall, the type interaction that these two factors might have, and the total effect that humor and incongruence have together on word recall. Understanding how these two stimuli interact with one another will enable psychologists to make better prediction of the effects that these two stimuli have on memory and apply it to the real world.

        In my experiment, humor was operationally defined as the type of sentence, humorous or nonhumorous, and incongruence was operationally defined as the type of image respective to the italicized word of the sentence, matching or nonmatching images. Participants were randomly assigned to one of the four PowerPoint lists slides.  We operationally defined memory as the number of italicized words correctly recalled by the participants. I hypothesized that the more humorous articles are, the more you are likely to remember it. Specifically in my experiment, I predicted that italicized words in humorous sentences will have higher recall than words in nonhumorous sentences.  I hypothesized that the more incongruent an article is relative to the message, the more likely that the information of the articles will be remembered. Specifically in my experiment, I predicted that italicized words that are paired with nonmatching images will have higher recall than those that are paired with matching images. I also hypothesized that there would be an interaction between humor and incongruence. Specifically, I predicted that at the nonhumorous sentences level, nonmatching pictures will better recalled than matching pictures but at the humorous sentence level nonmatching pictures will be recalled even more. Thus, the when the effects of incongruence and humor are combined together, their effects intensify so the level with humorous sentences and nonmatching images would have a highest number of word recall relative to any other level.

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Method

Participants

        Fifteen undergraduates from the University of California, Los Angeles participated in this experiment. There were 8 men and 7 women, age ranging from 19 to 30 years old. All 15 participants were enrolled in a research method class and they participated in the experiment as a part of a course requirement.

Design

        A 2 x 2 (Type of sentence x image) within-subjects factorial design was used. The two independent variables were the type of sentence and the type of image with the respective to the italicized word in the sentence. The two levels of the type of ...

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