Studying and Promoting Humor in China: A Cultural and Personal Reflection

Humor is a virtual character for optimal humor functioning. It is among the 24 character strength outlined by positive psychology and has been heavily studied and practiced in Western society. In Chinese society, however, it is rarely studied. In the past 10 years, I have been studying and promoting humor in China and Hong Kong. My findings generally show that Chinese students all thought highly of humor but lowly of their own humor potential, and that positive humor promoted one’s mental well-being and social relationships while bad humor jeopardized both. My findings also show that students in China used more affiliative humor and less aggressive than did Hong Kong students whereas Hong Kong students did the otherwise. In addition, my studies show that Chinese tended to perceive humorists as comprising mostly of comedians, DJs, actors, while Westerners tended to think of humorists as comprising people from all walks of life. Above all, my findings show that in humor was not correlated with creativity, particularly for Hong Kong students. In my workshop, I will give a cultural analysis of the above findings. To promote humor in China, I have been invited to give talks and to run seminars/workshops on how to apply humor in everyday life (e.g., classrooms, workplaces, hospitals, jails, etc.). In this paper, I will present and reflect my such works with teachers, nurses, business executives, and the like.