The effect of humor and perceived social interdependence on teamwork engagement in student groups

Given the widespread use of collaborative learning as an instructional practice in education, our study focuses on teamwork engagement, a key factor influencing the success of collaborative efforts. We use a longitudinal multi-level approach to test the impact of social context and engagement in student groups and examine the effect of social interdependence and type of humor on teamwork engagement. We collected data at six-time lags in a sample of 435 students organized in 97 groups. Our results show that positive interdependence has a positive influence on teamwork engagement, while negative interdependence as well as social independence have a negative effect on teamwork engagement. Moreover, affect mediates the influence of affiliative and aggressive humor communication on teamwork engagement. Practical implications are discussed.