ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews studies of humor and various personality traits that were conducted in Chinese societies. The results generally show that optimism, use of humor styles, and subjective well-being are closely related. They also show that affiliative humor and self-enhancing humor tend to enhance creativity, optimism, playfulness, self-compassion, self-esteem, and subjective happiness. Aggressive and self-defeating humor styles tend to increase depression, loneliness, pessimism, and stress. These findings could be explained by the Confucian doctrines of the mean or moderation that form the basis for the Chinese sensitivity to social contexts and desire for socially harmonious humor. Consequently, the cultivated Chinese would reject radical, aggressive, and self-defeating humor. They would instead favor humor used for affiliation, self-enhancement, interpersonal harmony, guanxi and face work. This may be attributed to the Confucian ethic acting benevolently and the Confucian ethic for avoiding shame which encourage the Chinese to use humor for group solidarity and self-enhancement.
