Is Humor Underrated?

The other day, I was talking to an early career professional who shared how they were with a new group and cracked a few jokes that did not land. I nodded. I have vast experience with jokes that do not land. I’d consider myself kind of an expert in fact. But I thought about it a bit longer and realized I naturally gravitate toward coworkers and leaders I find both funny and effective. That made me curious about the connection between humor and effectiveness in the workplace.

In implementation science, there is a lot of talk about systems, workflows, and intervention fidelity. But we also know that evidence-based practices don't implement themselves. Successful implementation depends heavily on climate, leadership, and whether people feel safe enough to try new things and fail forward. Yet when we talk about what makes organizations function or what helps new initiatives take root, I don't see much about humor.

Is that a miss? Organizational research consistently links positive humor to organizational effectiveness. Meta-analytic work shows that functional humor improves team performance, buffers workplace stress, strengthens group cohesion, and enhances change readiness (Kong et al., 2019; Mesmer-Magnus et al., 2012). In implementation contexts where staff are routinely asked to adapt to continuous shifts, humor reduces friction, lowers hierarchy, and builds the psychological safety teams need to adopt new practices.

That organizational reality applies directly to schools. We talk a lot about rapport in school psychology: how to build trust with students, get a teacher to actually listen to a recommendation, or make parents feel like partners instead of subjects. One tool that doesn't get much attention in that conversation is humor, at least that I have seen.

I'm not suggesting school psychologists need to become stand-up comics. Plus, there are plenty of situations where humor is completely inappropriate. Our jobs are serious and we deal with serious problems. But used well, humor can be a legitimate relationship tool, and there's research behind it.

Luo and colleagues (2023) studied 367 students and found that students' perceptions of related humor were positively associated with teacher-student relationship quality and engagement, and the link to engagement was partly explained by relationship quality. This makes sense to me. Humor doesn't make someone learn more on its own. Humor can help make someone more comfortable with the person teaching them, and comfort matters for learning.

It is more than just using humor to be more effective in your job as a teacher or school psych. St-Amand, Smith, and Goulet (2024) looked at different types of teacher humor among nearly 400 students. Humor related to course content was positively associated with students' sense of belonging and emotional well-being.

Humor can backfire! Other-disparaging humor was associated with lower belonging. Unrelated humor was associated with poorer emotional well-being too. So the research doesn't support "more humor is better." It supports "the kind of humor matters."

Robinson and colleagues (2024), in a scoping review of 43 studies on humor with students ages 11-18, found a similar split: humor can support classroom management, engagement, and learning, but can also become distracting or lead to a loss of control. They also flagged that the research base on adolescents specifically is thin. Most of what follows here leans on that adolescent literature and adult workplace research, so younger kids may respond differently, and I wouldn't assume this generalizes cleanly down to elementary-age students.

I'm not arguing school psychologists should start writing jokes into interventions or when relaying results during meetings. I'm arguing we should recognize humor for what it actually is: a relationship tool, not a personality requirement.

Students don't always walk into a school psychologist's office thinking, "Yay, I get to spend time with the school psych!" They've been sent or are required to do things we ask of them. Often, students we see are struggling, in trouble, being evaluated, or dealing with something they don't want to discuss with an adult they barely know. That's not a natural setup for trust.

A little humor can drop the temperature, not because the joke solves anything, but because it signals something simple: I'm a person, you're a person, we can relax a little. A student comfortable enough to laugh with you may also become comfortable enough to tell you something important or give you their best effort.

But there are limits to the research on humor: most of this is correlational, showing that appropriate, relationship-oriented humor is associated with relationship quality, belonging, and engagement, not that humor is proven to cause those outcomes.

Schools are stressful for adults as much as kids. Anyone working in schools knows there is too much to do. Sometimes, we need to laugh at the absurdity of it. Not that we are going to throw our hands up and not try. But some levity can help.

A new study hit home for me, even though this was not school-based research. Sohr, Knaut, and Kowalski (2026) studied self-deprecating humor from leaders in a sample of 197 employees and found it was positively associated with psychological safety, with relationship quality helping explain that link. It's a workplace study, but the underlying idea holds up: humor that reduces hierarchy can help people feel more comfortable in a relationship. I was told early on: take the job seriously, but don't take yourself seriously all the time.

"Humor builds rapport" is true but incomplete. Poorly timed or targeted jokes can hurt. Missed jokes can damage rapport. The simplest rule: laugh WITH people, not AT them.

Here are a few guardrails I've tried to operate by. The first two are non-negotiable, but I've also picked some of these up by trial and error over time:

• Don't make the student the punchline- EVER.

• Don't joke about a student's disability, family, appearance, academic struggles, trauma, mental health, or social difficulties- EVER.

• Don't use sarcasm with a student who isn't sure yet whether they can trust you. Sarcasm isn't helpful and it's hard to avoid.

• Don't assume laughter means someone found it funny.

• Don't use humor to sidestep someone's emotions.

  
  

If a student is upset, the first response is usually "yeah, that really stinks," not a joke. There's time for humor later, if there should be any at all. Empathy and understanding first.

Self-directed humor is generally the safer lane. Making fun of yourself for forgetting something or double-booking a meeting is low-risk. When in doubt, I'll be the punchline every time.

Sometimes I get the impression that some expect school psychs to be serious all the time to be professional. To me, professionalism means always working to do what is best for a student, treating others with respect, and knowing what I know while being honest to admit what I do not know.

We don't need to be the funny school psychs. We do need to be willing to be human: sitting quietly with a student who needs that, having a hard conversation when it's called for, or laughing together at something genuinely ridiculous when that's what the moment needs. The skill is telling those moments apart, and that isn't always easy.

Humor won't fix problems, replace evidence-based intervention, or solve a student's problems on its own. But used well, it can make people a little more comfortable and a little more willing to work with us. Humor can also help us build relationships which, in my mind, are the key to high-functioning schools.

Am I always funny, definitely not. Will I keep trying when I think it’s the right time? Yep.

References

Kong, F., Xu, L., & Zhou, W. (2019). Positive humor in the workplace: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 113, 103-116.

Luo, Y., Zhang, Q., & Wang, L. (2023). Perceived related humor in the classroom, student–teacher relationship quality, and engagement: Individual differences in sense of humor among students. Heliyon, 9(3), e13035.

Mesmer-Magnus, J., Glew, D. J., & Viswesvaran, C. (2012). A meta-analysis of positive humor in the workplace. Journal of Managerial Psychology, 27(2), 155-190.

Robinson, S., Smith, J., & Patel, K. (2024). Humor in adolescent educational settings: A scoping review of empirical studies (ages 11-18). Educational Psychology Review, 36(1), 14.

Sohr, M., Knaut, M., & Kowalski, S. (2026). Leader self-deprecating humor, relationship quality, and employee psychological safety. Journal of Business and Psychology, 41(1), 45-58.

St-Amand, J., Smith, J., & Goulet, M. (2024). Types of teacher humor, student sense of belonging, and emotional well-being in secondary schools. School Mental Health, 16(2), 210-223.