Tight cultures curb humor production
Feb 27th 2026
A multi-study paper in American Psychologist finds that strict social norms make people less likely to create original humor while leaving their ability to find things funny largely intact.
- People in tighter cultures produced fewer and less funny original jokes across tasks and countries.
- Humor appreciation showed little or no difference between tight and loose cultures.
- The evidence comes from six studies using self-reports, photo caption tasks, cross-national samples, and experimental priming.
- Priming participants with strict social rules reduced their ability to produce funny joke completions in both China and the United States.
- Collectivism did not account for the effect; cultural tightness uniquely predicted lower humor production.
- Limitations include unbalanced age and gender samples and use of fictional priming rather than real-world strict settings.