SENSE OF HUMOR IN CHINA: THE ROLE OF INDIVIDUALISM, COLLECTIVISM, AND FACEWORK

This paper aims to investigate the role of emic cultural values and facework in sense of humor for the first time in Asia. Specifically it explores the relationships between humor styles, individualism, collectivism, and facework in mainland China. Measures of these constructs were administered to 148 female and 124 male Chinese university students (mean age 20.92 years, SD = 1.73). Results showed that uses of humor were generally related to dimensions of cultural values and facework. Specifically, the two potentially beneficial humor styles (affiliative and self-enhancing humor) were positively related to horizontal collectivism and saving other-face. The two presumably detrimental humor styles (aggressive and self-defeating humor) were positively related to saving self-face. Cultural values and facework together could explain an average of 11.25% of the total variances for the four humor styles. Correlations between cultural values and humor styles in the present study were compared with those of previous research.