Replication Data for: How do Tertiary Students Adjust Their Humour Behaviours Across Ingroup/Outgroup membership and Relational Closeness?

Humour is a strategic tool for social bonding (Crawford, 2002). In an intercultural context, humour may help in overcoming social barriers, depending on the dynamics of the relationships and cultural backgrounds of the involved individuals. (Nevo, Nevo & Yin, 2001; Holmes & Marra, 2002). Laughter is understood to be a social activity, with behavioural contagion linked to agreement, affiliation, and acknowlement of communication (Provine, 1993, Smoski,2003). Social Identity Theory has established that individuals alter their communication based on their interactions with an ingroup vs an outgroup, including their use of humour (Tajfel & Turner, 1979; Hay, 2001; Boxer & Cortés-Conde, 1997). Martin (2003) created the Humour Styles Questionnaire (HSQ) that categorised humour styles into four types: affiliative, self-enhancing, aggressive, and self-defeating. These styles are largely consistent personality traits that determine how people use humour to cope, relate, or distance themselves from others. Despite being a widely used tool for measuring trait-based humour styles, the Humour Styles Questionnaire (HSQ) does not account for the way humour behaviours change depending on the social situation, such as when interacting with members of the ingroup versus those of the outgroup or with friends versus strangers. In the current study, we aim to investigate how humour behaviours (positive vs negative humour directed towards self, the interlocutor, and an unrelated third-party) adapt depending on group membership (ingroup vs outgroup) and relational closeness (friend vs stranger), using a novel tool, a questionnaire about directed use of humour, with international students selected as the target 'ingroup'. Project initiated in the 2025-6 academic year. This dataset contains replication data, survey files, code and results.

幽默是用于社会联结的策略性工具（Crawford, 2002）。在跨文化语境中，幽默可助力突破社交壁垒，其效果取决于互动双方的关系动态与文化背景（Nevo, Nevo & Yin, 2001; Holmes & Marra, 2002）。笑被视作一种社会性行为，其行为传染效应与共识达成、亲和联结及沟通认可密切相关（Provine, 1993; Smoski, 2003）。社会认同理论（Social Identity Theory）已证实，个体的沟通方式会因对内群体（ingroup）与外群体（outgroup）的互动而产生调整，幽默使用也包含在内（Tajfel & Turner, 1979; Hay, 2001; Boxer & Cortés-Conde, 1997）。Martin（2003）开发了幽默风格问卷（Humour Styles Questionnaire, HSQ），将幽默风格划分为四类：亲和型、自我提升型、攻击型与自我贬损型。此类风格属于较为稳定的人格特质，决定了个体运用幽默进行社交应对、建立关系或与他人保持距离的方式。尽管该问卷是测量特质型幽默风格的常用工具，但它未考虑幽默行为会随社交情境发生变化的情况，例如与内群体成员相较于外群体成员互动，或是与朋友相较于陌生人互动时的差异。在本研究中，我们旨在探究幽默行为（指向自我、对话者及无关第三方的积极与消极幽默）如何随群体归属（内群体vs外群体）与关系亲疏（朋友vs陌生人）发生适应性调整，我们将采用一款全新工具——定向幽默使用问卷，以国际学生作为目标“内群体”样本。本项目启动于2025-2026学年。本数据集包含复现数据、调研文件、代码与分析结果。