幽默的社会理论及其应用研究

幽默的社会理论强调幽默在社会交往情境中娱乐基础上的交际功能，可更好地解释人们日常生活中的幽默现象。根据幽默的社会理论，研究者从幽默发出者的幽默创作、幽默接收者的幽默理解以及各种社会交往情境的幽默应用等角度来探讨幽默。文化背景对幽默的创作和理解具有重要影响，中西方幽默存在文化差异。最后指出社会理论框架下的幽默研究的不足并提出一些建议。

The Sociological Theory of Humor and Its Application Research

According to the sociological theory of humor,humor is an interaction in which people play with institutionalized meanings within a situation that can be defined as being humorous and funny through laughter.There are two purposes of humor:one is to create laughter and amusement from involved parties,to reduce conflict and enhance interpersonal relationship;the other is to serve as a mode of interpersonal communication that is frequently used to convey implicit messages in an indirect manner.Humor involves four essential components:humor creator,humor recipient,interpersonal context and humor message.Humor production was explored from the perspective of playfulness,sense of security,personality trait,interpersonal skill,relationship satisfaction,and interaction context.Playfulness is considered as the fundemental of the sense of humor,that is,refusing to look on things seriously.Individuals with a greater sense of security should be more involved in conversations,responsive to their partners,and attentive to the situation,which results in greater laughter and smiling.Humor orientation is positively correlated with optimism and openness.Humor production requires multiple skilled social competences that make interaction in a playful way.And relationship satisfaction and interpersonal context have an influence on the complex use of humor.Many factors contribute to humor understanding such as relationship satisfaction,familiarity with each other,humor tendency of involved parties and their interaction,and humor characteristics.If humor is understood and accepted,it must be appropriate to the situation and the conversational partners.Relationship satisfaction causes the recipient of humor,making different attributions to their argument partner’s reasons for using humor.Effectively employing humor requires knowledge of one’s partner and a shared history.It also requires the humor tendency of the involved parties,the dispositional tendency of the parties involved in the interaction,the characteristics of humorous messages such as funniness,timing,witness,relevance,unexpectedness and silliness.Humor is applied extensively in persuasion,comfort,conflict management,leadership,and mate selection.Humor can reduce tension and anxiety,create positive affection,increase liking for the source.It can relieve frustration,alleviate boredom,and facilitate information transfer at work.It can also enhance leadership ability by shaping the work environment.In mate selection,the targets who possessed a good sense of humor will receive significantly higher ratings in the measures of attractiveness and suitability as a long-term partner.Some suggestions were proposed for further studies.Firstly,to broaden the exploration of the age difference of humor production.Currently,most participants are college students.People with different ages can produce humor with different features,and their characteristics of humor should be explored.Secondly,more research methods such as experiments and journals should be employed to explore humor understanding in the social context.Thirdly,the application of humor in other contexts such as education,criticism and suggestion can be studies.Last but not the least,the cultural difference of humor is an interesting research field,and how to enhance the Chinese sense of humor is an important and tough task for Chinese humor workers.