Dissections of human organs and animals are an important part of medical and science education but students usually express negative emotions towards dissections. Some studies show a negative influence of disgust and anxiety on motivation, interest and achievement. Therefore, reducing anxiety and disgust should be an important aim. As humor can lead to lower anxiety in medical settings, we hypothesize that a kind of humor treatment prior to an educational dissection of fish may also lead to a lower anxiety and lower disgust. We used humorous video clips before the dissection and compared them with a control video of the life history of the fish (trout). A total of 49 University students received the treatment with the humor video clips and 65 the life-history video. We measured state anxiety and disgust prior to the treatment and after the film treatment. The treatment with humorous video clips reduced anxiety and disgust compared to the control group with the life-history film. Although this study has been carried out in dissection of an animal in teacher students, we believe that these results can be generalized and transferred into other parts of dissection, such as cadaver dissection of humans in medical education.

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