In the last decade, in Iran, a serious look at the field of humor and research activity in this field have grown noticeably. However, despite the quantitative growth of research, the lack of a comprehensive and integrated analysis that can provide an overview of research in this field is noticeable. In this study, we will try to fill this gap by conducting a systematic review of this research.

87 selected articles were identified as the final research population. Then, a combination of meta-analysis and content analysis was used to analyze the data.

The findings of the meta-analysis showed that the absolute dominance in these studies is with a qualitative approach and content analysis method, and the theory of "dissimilarity" was the most frequently used theoretical framework. The findings of the content analysis also led to the identification of three main thematic areas: 1) Pattern, style and techniques of humor, 2) Religious and moral humor, and 3) Humor and artistic and media communication. Under these areas, key themes such as mechanisms of humor creation, critical and educational functions, and contextualization of humor in the context of culture and media were extracted.

The results of this study showed that humor research in Iran is moving from textual-literary studies towards functional and interdisciplinary analyses. However, this field suffers from a lack of methodological diversity (lack of quantitative and mixed studies).