Science communicators have been encouraged to use humor in their online engagement efforts. Yet, humor’s effectiveness for engaging people with science remains an open question. We report the results of an experiment designed to elicit varied levels of mirth in respondents, which was positively associated with perceived likability of the communicator and motivation to follow more science on social media. Furthermore, mirth and perceived likability serially mediated the effect of the experimental manipulation on motivation and factual science knowledge served as a moderator. This indicates that, while humor might be an effective means of reaching audiences, downstream effects are likely to vary depending on individuals’ knowledge.

鼓励科学传播者在他们的在线参与工作中使用幽默。然而，幽默在让人们参与科学方面的有效性仍然是一个悬而未决的问题。我们报告了一项实验的结果，该实验旨在引起受访者不同程度的欢笑，这与感知到的交流者的可爱度和在社交媒体上关注更多科学的动机呈正相关。此外，欢笑和感知的可爱性连续调节了实验操作对动机和事实科学知识的影响，起到了调节作用。这表明，虽然幽默可能是吸引观众的有效手段，但下游影响可能会因个人的知识而异。