ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews studies of humor and mental health that were conducted in Chinese societies. The results generally show that mainlanders, compared with Hong Kong people, use significantly more self-enhancing humor and significantly less aggressive or self-defeating humor. This echoes previous findings that Mainlanders are more likely than Hong Kong people to use more adaptive humor styles and less maladaptive humor styles. Subjective happiness is reported to be associated with affiliative humor and self-enhancing humor, but was negatively correlated with aggressive humor. In contrast, depression tends to be negatively associated with affiliative humor and self-enhancing humor, and positively associated with self-defeating humor and aggressive humor. These results echo previous finding that adaptive humor styles more strongly predicted mental health, while maladaptive humor styles were less associated with subjective happiness. As Chinese culture has been heavily influenced by collectivism and Confucianism, Chinese people are more likely to embrace adaptive and healthy humor styles, for the greatest influence on mental health, while maladaptive and unhealthy humor styles are less influential
