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This study examined the relationship between humour styles, gelotophobia and self-esteem among 102 Indian and 101 Hong Kong university students. The Humour Styles Questionnaire, the GELOPH-15 Scale and the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale were used. Indian students rated the importance of humour significantly higher than Hong Kong Chinese students and considered themselves as being significantly more humorous as well. Both Indian and Hong Kong Chinese 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 Hong Kong students. Gelotophobia was negatively correlated with self-esteem and affiliative humour in both samples and was positively correlated with self-defeating humour in the Indian sample only. Affiliate humour mediated the relationship between self-esteem and gelotophobia in both samples whereas self-defeating humour mediated the relationship in the Indian sample only. Taken together, both Indian students and Hong Kong students valued adaptive humour, but Indian students valued humour more than Hong Kong students. This study is a pioneering study of its kind conducted in a Chinese- Indian sample. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]