Meaghan McKasy on using humor to spark conversations on tough scientific issues

In this 8th and last episode of season 1 for Science Engaged, I speak with Meaghan McKasy, who studies how humor affects people’s attitude and perception of science. Dr. McKasy is an associate professor at the University of Utah. She explains how, while humor can make science more accessible and engaging, its effectiveness varies by topic, platform, audience, and communication goal. When used strategically, humor could draw people’s attention and invite them into a conversation. However, when not mindfully delivered — such as using jokes that punch people down — humor could backfire and weaken people’s trust in the communicator. 

Dr. McKasy has a new book chapter that just came out in the Handbook of Climate Change Research in Transdisciplinary Education, titled “Humor as a Tool for Communicating Climate Information and Navigating Misinformation.”

This episode is made possible by support from Schmidt Sciences and the UC Santa Cruz Science Communication Catalyst Grant. Special thanks to Fanuel Muindi for co-producing this audio program. 

Here is our conversation:

Kristel Tjandra: Welcome to Science Engaged, where we explore why and how scientists partner with diverse communities.

Meaghan McKasy And so one of the goals of science communication is really to break down those traditional barriers and make science more inclusive, and there are many ways to do that, so many valuable things that people are working on, and humor is just one way that we can help to do that.

Kristel Tjandra  I’m your host, Kristel Tjandra, and today I’m joined by our guest, Dr. Meaghan McKasy. Dr. McKasy is an associate professor lecturer in the Department of communication at the University of Utah, where she teaches courses in strategic communication and conducts research on how humor affects people’s attitudes and perception of scientific issues. Today we’re going to hear all about how humor, hope, and emotion could be valuable tools in striking a meaningful conversation with those who might otherwise dismiss science. Dr. McKasy. Welcome to the show.

Meaghan McKasy  Thank you so much for having me.

Kristel Tjandra  First of all, tell me about yourself and your work.

Meaghan McKasy  Yes, so my work is in science and environmental communication, and I focus on how people process information, form attitudes, and respond to strategic messages and, and really, the crux of it all is I believe communication is about more than just giving people facts about science, you know, it’s about understanding motivation and prior knowledge, values, and the social context in which people encounter science before getting my PhD, I was designing and executing community campaigns for a utility company focused on their renewable energy program, and as I spoke with customers, I was fascinated about how they could all receive the same information in their mailers and in their emails from the utility, and yet they formed these vastly different opinions about the program, and so when I was training my staff, I would develop these mock scenarios where customers would have maybe different opinions or concerns, and my employees would have to address those in conversation, essentially framing in action, right. And I started to think, you know, I think that this is something maybe I wanted to study, and so I went to the University of Utah for a PhD in communication, where I focused on quantitative social science analysis of science and environmental issues, and my interest in emotion began early on. My dissertation actually focused on anger, which I’m not an angry person, but it’s truly a fascinating emotion. Anger is frequently thought of as this high arousal approach emotion that drives someone toward a stimulus to like engage with it, so you know we want to overcome an obstacle or confront the threat, but anger can also sometimes cause us to act in kind of a contrary way, where we, you know, stew and ruminate on things, and so I’ve studied several emotions, first starting with anger, but then also disgust and hope, and then some of my more recent work has really examined humor in science communication.

Kristel Tjandra  Yeah, so from renewable energy to utility bills, and you know, quantitative research. You know, how did that then lead to humor? I’m very interested in that.

Meaghan McKasy  Yeah, humor is, is so great to study, because it’s everywhere, you know. We engage with humor daily. It’s really quite accessible, and from a research and practice perspective, humor was already being used quite a bit. I mean, you could go on on social media and see it frequently, and it was oftentimes being recommended to scientists, but there really wasn’t enough kind of empirical evidence about whether it actually helped, and for whom, and under what conditions, and so early on, my colleagues and I, most of this early work was with Sara Yeo at the University of Utah, Mike Cacciatore at the University of Georgia, and Leona Yifan Su at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and, and we really started from that gap, so we early on kind of questioned how common was humor in science posts on social media, and what types of humor were being used, and then we really moved on to question how humor influenced engagement and likability and misinformation and attitude formation, and this really comes from, you know, we know that humans have kind of limited cognitive capacity, you know, we cope with just copious amounts of information every day, and to deal with that. Amount of information we tend to rely on quick mental shortcuts, and we commonly call these heuristic cues to kind of help us make judgments and decisions about complex information, and so laughter and the experience of finding a message funny can actually serve as one of those cues, it can help people to make sense of new information, and kind of how they feel about the communicator, and if they decide that a topic is something they want to learn more about or engage with, and so really these were influences that that needed to be tested rather than just assumed.

Kristel Tjandra  Yeah, it sounds to me that humor can be used as something that helps people get attuned to an info, a piece of information. Is that what you’re saying?

Meaghan McKasy  Yes, definitely. It can draw your attention.

Kristel Tjandra  Yeah, so when we talk about, you know, the stereotypical picture of science and scientists, it’s always serious, and you know, there’s no fooling around or anything like that, but you know, I think what you’re saying here is that humor has a place in science. So, I mean, I want to ask, you know, whether is there such a thing as a good science joke, and how would you define humor?

Meaghan McKasy  Yes, great question. I would say a good science joke is, is not simply one that a scientist thinks is clever, you know. In communication research, a humorous scientific joke is one that produces mirth, meaning that an audience actually experiences it as, as funny or playful or entertaining, and the joke also has to fit the audience, the platform that’s being used, the topic, and if there’s a communication goal, which is a pretty high standard, right, for a joke, and my colleagues and I have studied several types of humor, including wordplay, anthropomorphism, satire. satire, sarcasm, and parody, and we’ve actually found that even combining some of these humor types can produce higher levels of mirth, so maybe a joke that includes not just wordplay but also wordplay and satire, and that can help to make people more likely to engage with scientific content on social media through actions such as liking or commenting, and we’ve also found that these different humor types can can work differently across platforms. So, in one study we conducted, we found that wordplay and satire were positively related to audience engagement on Twitter or X, well, anthropomorphic humor was negatively associated with with comments on Instagram, and you know, we, we kind of theorized if that had anything to do with the nature of the humor. Anthropomorphic humor is, is kind of a little more childish, you know.

Kristel Tjandra  Yeah, do you mind giving me an example, because I don’t think I understand what antropormorphism is?

Meaghan McKasy  Yes of course, that’s where we would ascribe human traits onto a kind of non-human character, so you know, putting glasses and a tie on a cat or something like that, or a lab coat, right, on a cat or a frog or something, I don’t know where you’re ascribing these humorous human traits onto something non-human in an attempt to create humor, so people engage with these humors in different ways, and these differences often have to do with the underlying processes that make humor work. There are several humor theories that kind of offer explanations as to why people may find something funny. Relief theory kind of suggests that laughter comes from a release of tension, maybe built up tension that we finally get to let go of. And then superiority theory proposes that that mirth can come from, like, disparagement or, you know, positioning yourself as superior to others, kind of that punching down effect. And then incongruity theory suggests that humor really depends on on surprising or unexpected connection that that the audience kind of has to connect and understand, so, so I’d say yes, there’s, there’s a good thing as a science joke, but what counts as good is highly contextual,

Kristel Tjandra  Right! It’s so fascinating that people are studying so much about, you know, how humor plays a part in, in these contexts, you know, apart from, you know, capturing attention and engaging with audience response, how do you think humor plays a part in science communication?

Meaghan McKasy  Great question. I think humor can just make science feel more accessible and engaging, you know, scientific conversations. Have often been shaped by by people and institutions that hold power in those spaces, and those conversations can be difficult for the public to access, you know, experts, scientists, policy makers, and whatnot. They, they may use complex jargon, and there are systemic barriers in place, like paywalls to academic journals, right, and they can keep people from engaging with scientific information, and so one of the goals of science communication is really to break down those traditional barriers and make science more inclusive, and there are many ways to do that, so many valuable things that people are working on, and, and humor is just one way that we can help to do that, you know. Humor can help draw attention to an issue, it can make a scientist, a communicator, seem more likable, and it can invite people into a conversation rather than making science feel like a lecture, right, and that’s this is backed up by research. In one of our studies, we found that that mirth was positively associated with the perceived likability of a communicator on social media, and also influenced motivation to follow more scientific content online. So we really do see these positive impacts, but it’s also important to note that across the board, humor is not a magic cure-all, right? Like the same research we conducted show that these effects can vary depending on audience knowledge, their individual need for humor, their need for cognition, and what the topic was, and what platform was being used. So, really, if choosing to use humor, it really should be chosen in a strategic way.

Kristel Tjandra  Yeah, I’m interested to hear about, you know, what have you observed so far from your research or other people’s research in this field on how people respond to humor, and you know, does the type of humor, you know, you mentioned satire, jokes, sarcasm, does it, does it matter, or does the topic matter, the scientific topic you’re talking about, vaccines or environmental research? Yeah, what have you seen?

Meaghan McKasy  Yes, so I think we can safely say that people do respond to humor, but not uniformly. So, as I said, people’s experience, mirth can can influence how they engage with science. Much of our research has focused on intentions, so you know, intention to engage with with science, but a study we did a few years ago, led by Mike Cacciatore, examined kind of actual behavior. We looked to see how humor would influence commenting behaviors on a social media post, and we found that participants who experienced higher mirth were more likely to leave a meaningful comment on a science post, so not just like gibberish, right. And then people who had kind of a higher need for cognition, they really wanted to think critically about something, were especially likely to comment when they found the content to be humorous. So this helps us to argue that that science humor online can help initiate conversations and make science and scientists more and more approachable.

Kristel Tjandra  Yeah, so when you just want to clarify, when you talk about mirth, you mean something that’s funny, something that’s amusing, is that right?

Meaghan McKasy  Yes, yes. So mirth is really the terminology we use in this line of research, because you know it’s so easy to slip into the idea of humor means laughter, but it’s not that’s not always how we engage with humor, right? It’s not always like the lol, laugh out loud, oftentimes you know humor is a feeling, and so mirth is kind of the broader terminology used.

Kristel Tjandra  Yeah, thanks for clarifying that. So, you know, some of your research involves quite, you know, heavy topics and complex topics, such as global warming, artificial intelligence. Where do you think you know the communication barriers are with topics like these?

Meaghan McKasy Yeah, sure. Great, great question. I think naturally, you know, we’re going to think of scientific complexity, right? These are issues that are just naturally difficult to discuss, but it’s, it’s more than that. They’re also emotional and social and political and identity-based, and so people face many constraints, both individual constraints, such as differing level of science and media literacy related to these topics, as well as structural constraints. Practitioner science communication has its own threats, you know, we know there. Are issues with declining local science journalism and news deserts where people don’t have someone who’s focused on communicating these complex science issues to local audiences in a way that resonates with them, but of course the topical context is is also important, so in one of our studies, we compared humorous influence on three topical areas: global warming, artificial intelligence, and microbiomes, and we found that humor type, so these different kind of humor types, such as satire and wordplay, affected mirth and engagement intentions for for AI and microbiomes, but not in the same way for global warming, and our thought process when kind of working through those differences was that these three issues fall on very different points of the issue attention cycle for people, and so that humor choices may matter more when people are still forming impressions. So microbiomes are really more of an emerging science topic, you know. They’re not discussed as much, and though AI has existed for over half a century, you know, it’s changing quickly, and so public attitudes may not be settled, and so for those topics we think humor has has more of an ability to have have an impact, but discussions related to like global warming and climate change have been high on the public consciousness for for quite some time, and so the barrier here is not simply that people haven’t heard the facts, we’ve heard the facts, right? We’ve had those conversations, and so people, you know, have that awareness, and so perhaps humor is less effective there. But however, using that same data set, I led a second study that focused on support for global warming action and the role of climate concern, kind of deep diving a little bit more thoroughly into one topic area, and we found that climate concern moderated the effect of hope on support for action, and that hope was especially promising among people who had low climate concern, which suggested to us that, you know, hopeful emotional appeals may engage audiences who are otherwise dismissive of global warming.

Kristel Tjandra  That’s really interesting. I feel like, you know, you’ve, when you mentioned that it seems like something that’s unfamiliar, or like something that’s emerging, people don’t really know how to feel about that yet, so it seems like even the humor isn’t very isn’t coming across, is that right?

Meaghan McKasy  Yes, yes, for sure. There’s there’s just too much going on.

Kristel Tjandra  17:55

Yeah, have you seen any examples of how humor break down these communication barriers?

Meaghan McKasy  Yeah. so while humor may not change someone’s mind about a contentious issue, you know, it can draw attention to a topic and it can create dialog. So, again, in that last study, you know, we found that humor played a significant role in engagement intentions for an AI social focus social media post, and AI is a complex and contentious issue, so, so that’s promising. So we know that humor can can draw attention to science issues, it can direct attention to accurate information embedded in a joke, and it can humanize scientific sources. I’ve looked quite a bit into how humor can play a role in combating misinformation, and misinformation is, you know, an incredibly important issue. Research shows that self-reporting is, you know, one in four adults have said that they have shared misinformation publicly, and that that’s probably actually much higher given kind of self-report bias, and you know, social desirability bias with reporting, and so we, we know that misinformation is is an incredibly important topic to discuss, and humor can help potentially draw information, sorry, draw our attention to accurate information in a unusual way.

Kristel Tjandra  Yeah, I was wondering if you have any examples of that, of you know, maybe humor helping steer people to the right type of information.

Meaghan McKasy  Yes, so there is a researcher named John Cook at Monash University who has this incredible background experience as both a cartoonist and a researcher, and he. Has he has a website called CrankyUncle.com and he’s developed essentially both a comic book and an app. It’s a game that gamifies how to approach misinformation. The play on words is, you know, your cranky uncle at the Thanksgiving dinner table, you know, saying climate change isn’t real, and he’s really gamified and humorized how to have those hard conversations, and I think it is just a wonderful example of how humor can really break down those, those really difficult conversations in a productive way.

Kristel Tjandra  Yeah, that’s so interesting. Now, on the flip side, is there, you know, context where humor is just inappropriate, or when, when does humor actually backfire? Have you seen that?

Meaghan McKasy  Yes, I would say humor can backfire if it, if it makes the communicator seem dismissive or ill-informed or not serious to the audience, so in a study published last year with several of my mentioned colleagues, we tested the effects of gentle satire compared to harsh satire, and then a no satire condition, in a study that used audio clips about enhanced geothermal systems, which is kind of a new approach to geothermal energy development, and we wanted to focus on satire because it’s one of the more complex humor types, and traditionally actually very much studied in kind of a political communication context, so a lot of focus on like late night TV shows and whatnot, and so we wanted to bring this study of satire into the science communication realm, and really we found that even people who heard the satire that was intended to be gentle and playful perceived the scientists as, as kind of more aggressive, and then that perceived aggression then was linked to lower perceived trustworthiness of that scientist, and that matters, because you know science communication often depends on trust, you know, people aren’t just judging the, the information, the science that’s mentioned, but they’re also judging the, the communicator, the scientist who’s delivering it. So, if, if the, the humor makes the scientist seem like they’re mocking someone, or they’re attacking an opposing view, or maybe treating an issue too lightly, the joke can undercut the very credibility that that communicator needs to deliver their message, so you know the joke may be funny, it may get a laugh, but if it costs the audience’s trust, then it’s really failed as a method of science communication, right?

Kristel Tjandra  That’s such an important point. My next question is actually, you know, for scientists who are working on contentious topics, or you know, science communicators who are trying to explain really hard issues like these. What are some advice you have for them in terms of engaging in meaningful conversation with those who might be, you know, on the opposite side of the spectrum from them?

Meaghan McKasy  Yeah, that’s it’s why we’re here. It’s such an important question. I would just say, you know, starting, starting by assuming that the barrier is not just a knowledge deficit. You know, early science communication was really influenced by the idea that if we simply give people more facts, then they’re going to come to the, you know, quote unquote right conclusion, right, but people bring their values and their identities and their trust judgments and emotions and prior beliefs to a conversation, and that means that the goal shouldn’t be just to win with facts alone, but to understand what people care about, and, and where science connects to those concerns. For example, I’ve recently examined religion and confidence in science with my colleagues, Isabelle Freiling at the University of Utah, and Mike Cacciatore, and we found that attitudes toward religion and science are more nuanced than often assumed, and that by highlighting common ground between the two, such as, you know, environmental protection, then you can help kind of cultivate a confidence in science. Now that example is not related to humor, but as someone who grew up in a religious household, I would love a study that connected the two. For humor specifically, I would encourage scientists to invite community to kind of invite communication and conversation through humor, rather than maybe ridicule, so you know, avoiding jokes that punch down on people’s communities, or their intelligence, or their identity. Humor is going to be a more promising avenue if it’s humanizing a science, or it’s lowering the temperature of a contentious topic, you know, or creating conversation, so, so to do that, you should do your research, right? Know your audience, clarify what your goal is, if possible, test your message, that’s always great, and look for shared beliefs and values right, the best science communication, it isn’t just accurate, although that’s really, really important, but it’s also ethical and relational and audience aware.

Kristel Tjandra  Yeah. Thank you so much. And Dr. McKasy, before we close, what are you working on now?

Meaghan McKasy  Yeah, so much of my research focuses on new media effects, and you know, as I’ve mentioned in our discussion, I’ve conducted experimental research on Instagram and X, as well as on LinkedIn, but my current research has been examining humor on TikTok, and TikTok, aside from being an incredibly popular platform, especially with Gen Z, is really an interesting space to examine humor, you know. It allows for discussion of serious topics in kind of a more playful format, which makes it more accessible. So, I’ve recently collaborated with my colleague Diana Zulli, who’s a political communication scholar at Purdue, to examine the use of humor in political news content, and broadly, you know what we found is there’s so many humorous opportunities on TikTok, like you have the digital features, such as filters and green screens that can be used individually or kind of combined with textual or audio-based humor, and in our research together, we found that, despite TikTok being this kind of great humorous resource, news organizations weren’t really tapping into the potential that is there, except for the Washington Post, they’re crushing it, so hopefully that is going to be kind of a new trajectory for news and political communication on TikTok, because there is so much that they can do there. My current project on TikTok is with Melissa Parks at the University of Utah, Maria Blevins at Utah Valley University, and Megan Cullinan at the University of Montana, and we are working on a pretty interesting project that examines the 2025 hashtag only parks TikTok trend, which used these parody accounts of national parks that splice together some pretty risque content with national parks content as this kind of humorous attention grabbing strategy that really was meant to direct attention to the Big Beautiful Bill proposal from President Trump and its potential negative ramifications on the national parks, considering staffing, budgetary reasons, and whatnot, and so we really are examining how the various humorous humor theories that we discussed previously kind of manifest in in this trend, and how humor really was used strategically to spotlight this this important environmental issue, and humor and environmental activism really is a pretty underexplored area in terms of research, and so I’m really excited to kind of continue that research trajectory in the future.

Kristel Tjandra  Wow, these are exciting and interesting fields to look into. Thanks for sharing that. And Dr. McKasy has a new book chapter that just came out in the Handbook of Climate Change Research in transdisciplinary education, so be sure to check it out. Well, Dr. McKasy, thank you so much for sharing your work with us. 

Meaghan McKasy Thank you. 

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Kristel Tjandra

I'm a science writer who specializes in drugs and diseases. I hold a doctorate in Chemistry and have more than 8 years of experience in academic research. My research portfolio spanned a range of scientific disciplines, including drug discovery, cancer biology, microbiology, and nanotechnology. As a science writer, I bring my background in chemistry into the dynamic world of science journalism.