Lu Jackson G
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, United States.
Curr Opin Psychol. 2023 Oct;53:101690. doi: 10.1016/j.copsyc.2023.101690. Epub 2023 Aug 23.
Humor is universal but also culturally nuanced. This review (including 31 empirical articles in English) systematically examines cultural differences in humor perception and use. Most notably, North Americans tend to perceive humor more positively, rate themselves as more humorous, and use humor more than East Asians. Moreover, this review highlights complex cultural differences in the use of four humor styles (affiliative, self-enhancing, aggressive, and self-defeating). Finally, I discuss limitations of the cross-cultural literature on humor and propose future research directions. Theoretically, more studies should move beyond comparing East Asian and North American cultures, examine the consequences of cultural differences in humor, and track changes in humor perception and use over time. Methodologically, more studies should employ experiments to strengthen causality, recruit larger and more representative samples, and preregister theory-driven hypotheses.
幽默具有普遍性，但也存在文化差异。本综述（包括31篇英文实证文章）系统地研究了幽默感知与运用中的文化差异。最显著的是，北美人往往对幽默的感知更为积极，认为自己更具幽默感，且比东亚人更多地运用幽默。此外，本综述还突出了在四种幽默风格（亲和型、自我提升型、攻击型和自我挫败型）的运用上存在的复杂文化差异。最后，我讨论了跨文化幽默文献的局限性，并提出了未来的研究方向。从理论上讲，更多研究应超越对东亚和北美文化的比较，考察幽默文化差异的后果，并追踪幽默感知与运用随时间的变化。在方法论上，更多研究应采用实验来强化因果关系，招募更大且更具代表性的样本，并预先登记理论驱动的假设。
