When you try to imagine what someone looks like who is trying hard to learn, desperately studying over a set of notes, or concentrating hard over a note on a piano lesson, it’s rare that we imagine them to be smiling, or heaven forbid, actually laughing. Our brains are already hardwired from our own previous learning experiences to associate learning with being serious.
In some cases, research shows that some of us associate learning something new with stress (I personally blame driving lessons for this!)
But, there is a smile on the horizon, some happy laughing good news. Science has come to save the day and the science says that if you want to get to grips with a new subject, you will ultimately fare a lot better if you swap out stress face for a cheesy grin.
Yep – you heard it right – the scientists say we can smile while we learn – woohoo!
Behavioural scientist, PHD owner, blog writer and celebrated author, Susan Weinschenk shared some exciting information on her blog. Turns out, the learning and smiling things starts earlier then we might think! She describes a situation where you might let your toddler have some tablet time (we don’t judge at Learning & Design). She explains that if you have two apps downloaded, both educational but one is super serious and matches music with letters and numbers or the crazy one with noisy music with animals popping up all over the place, you might fall into the assumption that the serious one is the better app to help them learn. You’d be wrong. In her studies, following the learning outcomes of two groups of toddlers, the ones that laughed while they learned were the ones who remembered more and learned the most. In this study giggling almost certainly increased learning power.
Ok, so that’s babies and toddlers, but, what about us grown-ups? Are we allowed to laugh too?
You’ll be pleased to know the answer is a resounding yes. There is tons of research out there that says us grown-ups learn more if there is humour involved, especially the odd joke according to one piece of research from an Ohio University. Another article written in College Teaching claimed that lectures that were the most fun to be in, and enjoyed the most laughs, yep, you’ve guessed it, were also the ones that were most effective when it came to learning.
So, hang on, we’re allowed to laugh while we learn? But why?
Turns out its all about our clever powerhouse brains. Neuroscience shows us that humour and laughing in particular triggers that special dopamine reward system that makes us happy and lets us know we did something our brain likes, so when associated with learning, it means the brain remembers it more fondly, because it liked it, which makes it easier to retain, recall and regurgitate. Dopamine is proven to be important for long term memory and even for goal setting and the motivation to achieve them. WOW.
So what? Do I need to become a stand up comedian to deliver training now?
Nope! But you’d be clever to look at how you can incorporate humour and laughing. Try a funny icebreaker just before a serious learning point, use comedy videos, memes, popular culture and bad dad jokes to illicit the response you need to help your learning stick.
So, its official, smiling and laughing helps you learn and recall. No excuses, the serious faces are not welcome in the training room anymore.