The Hidden Psychology of Humor in Athletics

What happens when you stop studying humor from the outside and finally ask the athletes?

My dissertation research, completed at GCU in 2025–2026, examines how women NCAA Division III track and field athletes describe their experiences of humor in practice and competition. Through semi-structured interviews with 18 athletes and rigorous qualitative analysis, I discovered that humor in athletics is far more sophisticated, purposeful, and psychologically significant than the existing literature had recognized.

Dissertation Details

Title: How Women University Track and Field Athletes Describe Their Experiences of Humor in Practice and Competition
Institution: Grand Canyon University
Methodology: Qualitative Descriptive | Reflexive Thematic Analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2022)
Participants: 18 NCAA Division III women track and field athletes
Theoretical Framework: Reversal Theory (Apter, 1982/2013) | Humor Styles (Martin et al., 2003)

The Seven Themes

1. Humor as Performance Enhancement Tool — athletes using humor deliberately to manage pre-competition anxiety and enable mental flexibility

2. Humor as Social Glue in Team Culture — inside jokes as the primary mechanism for building and sustaining team identity and cohesion

3. Coach Humor in Power Dynamics — how timing, vulnerability, and hierarchy shape whether coach humor builds trust or causes harm

4. Humor as Coping Mechanism for Physical Suffering — transforming the pain of training and competition into shared, survivable experience

5. Humor as Double-Edged Sword — how the same humor can build confidence in one moment and fracture it in another depending on timing and context

6. Humor as Ritual of Inclusion and Belonging — inside jokes as initiation rites that mark who belongs to the team and when

7. Humor as Expression of Joy and Collective Celebration — laughter as intrinsic reward and one of the primary reasons athletes love their sport

Athlete Voices

"I feel like I race better when there's humor involved — it's a good way to just relax yourself."
— Swift, Theme 1: Humor as Performance Tool

"If there's no humor on the team, then you're not really a team. There's not that oneness with everybody. I think humor brings all of us together."
— Phoenix, Theme 2: Humor as Social Glue

"Sounds like laughs. It sounds like giggles… You can hear the smiles in their voices. Everything around you feels lighter, and everything's uplifting."
— Thunder, Theme 7: Humor as Expression of Joy

Key Findings

• Strategic, not spontaneous: Athletes deploy humor deliberately, demonstrating sophisticated metacognitive awareness about when and how to use it

• Complex, not simple: Coach humor carries power-laden risk; the same joke lands differently depending on timing, hierarchy, and relationship quality

• Missed by quantitative methods: The nuanced, contextual nature of how humor functions in performance cannot be captured by scales and correlations alone

APA Convention 2026

This research was selected for presentation as a virtual poster at the American Psychological Association Annual Convention 2026, with the APA Division 47: Society for Sport, Exercise and Performance Psychology.
Poster title: Listening to Athletes: The Hidden Psychology of Humor
Presentation: August 2026 | Virtual Poster Session

Future Research Directions

• Gender comparisons: Examining whether the seven themes operate similarly in men's athletics

• Competitive level: Comparing Division I and Division III experiences

• Humor literacy interventions: Testing whether coach training produces measurable gains

• Mixed methods: Combining athlete testimony with physiological measures

• Longitudinal studies: Following athletes across four collegiate years

Interested in this research?

I'd love to hear from you.