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Humour styles, gelotophobia and self‐esteem among C hinese and I ndian university students

2014; Wiley; Volume: 17; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1111/ajsp.12066

1467-839X

Neelam Arjan Hiranandani, Xiaodong Yue,

Communication in Education and Healthcare

This study examined the relationship between humour styles, gelotophobia and self‐esteem among 102 I ndian and 101 H ong K ong university students. The Humour S tyles Q uestionnaire, the GELOPH ‐15 Scale and the R osenberg S elf‐Esteem Scale were used. Indian students rated the importance of humour significantly higher than H ong K ong C hinese students and considered themselves as being significantly more humorous as well. Both I ndian and H ong K ong C hinese students engaged in significantly more affiliative and self‐enhancing humour. Indian students engaged in significantly more affiliative and self‐enhancing humour and reported less gelotophobia than H ong K ong students. Gelotophobia was negatively correlated with self‐esteem and affiliative humour in both samples and was positively correlated with self‐defeating humour in the I ndian sample only. Affiliate humour mediated the relationship between self‐esteem and gelotophobia in both samples whereas self‐defeating humour mediated the relationship in the I ndian sample only. Taken together, both I ndian students and H ong K ong students valued adaptive humour, but I ndian students valued humour more than H ong K ong students. This study is a pioneering study of its kind conducted in a C hinese‐ I ndian sample.