Does Humor in Course Tests Reduce Anxiety and Improve Performance?

decrease anxiety and increase test perfor mance? How do you even use humor appropriately in tests? The purpose of this article is to provide an up-to-date summa ry of the research related to humor in test ing, to present new evidence on the effec tiveness of humor in constructed-response items, and to describe specific strategies for using humor in tests. Two research domains exist in which evidence has been collected to determine the value of humor in course tests: first, the psychological and physiological effects of humor, and second, the effects of humor in testing. Brief reviews of these domains follow.

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