如國語和日語所表現的，日本社會比台灣社會階層分明。一個階層分明的社會，產生較沒幽默感的人民(Lin, 1976; Abe, 1995)。本研究以七點量表比較台灣人和日本人欣賞英文笑話十一則。我們共收集五百多份問卷，捨棄那些有律師當親戚或朋友的受試者的問卷；對其餘問卷洗牌，選出前五十份台灣男、五十份台灣女、五十份日本男、五十份日本女比較。二因子變異數分析，發現，民族比性別因素更重要。台灣人和日本人在三則笑話的欣賞上，沒有顯著差異；在其餘八則笑話的欣賞上，有顯著差異；台灣人得分較高。台灣人也比日本人更迫切想了解不懂的笑話。日本人比台灣人不容易用笑話討好。

As shown in their languages, Japanese society is more hierarchical than Taiwanese society. A more hierarchical society produces less humorous people (Lin, 1976; Abe, 1995). This study compares Taiwanese and Japanese appreciation of other-versus self-deprecating jokes according to 200 Japanese and Taiwanese university students’ evaluation on a seven-point Likert scale—1 for ‘extremely dry’ and 7 for ‘extremely interesting’—to 11 English jokes. After gathering data from more than 500 students, we discarded those who are relations of lawyers, then divided the rest into four piles—Japanese male, Japanese female, Taiwanese male and Taiwanese female—shuffled them and used the first 50 sets of responses from each pile for this study. Two-way ANOVA (Analysis of Variance) together with post-hoc Scheffe’s test found that ethnicity plays a more significant role than gender in different appreciation of both self-and other-deprecating jokes. In three jokes, Japanese and Taiwanese appreciation levels are not significantly different. In the other eight jokes, Taiwanese appreciate them more than Japanese. Taiwanese are more eager than Japanese to understand an incomprehensible joke; in both nations females are significantly more eager than males. Verbal jokes please Japanese less than Taiwanese.