Scientists have done their research on class clowns and the results show that they may be smart than the frontbenchers. From the results, it was concluded that the sense of humor and smartness are closely related in young children of the school. This was all according to research published in the International Journal of Humor Research.
“We were particularly interested in the quality of humor made by children but evaluated by adults,” lead study author and Anadolu University researcher Ugur Sak said in a press release. “Parents and teachers should be aware that if their children or students frequently make good quality humor, it is highly likely that they have extraordinary intelligence.”
It was also disclosed that young kids use humor for different purposes than adults do.
“While humor is frequently used for entertainment by adults, children use it mostly for peer acceptance,” Sak said in the release. “Therefore, the nature of adult and child humor differ.”
In order to measure the level of the sense of humor of these children, researchers asked the experts to rate the captions written by 217 middle school children that they wrote for ten of the cartoon series. The experts were described as cartoonists and “humor education” instructors by the paper. They judged the cartoons for comedic value and relevance. They were able to find out that the students with more verbal logic as well as more generalized measures of intelligence were funnier than the rest.
The study helps in identifying students’ different aspects of smartness and then this can be applied in providing them with better-educating methods.