简单的回答:您必须了解其中的区别，并根据代码做出选择。

Long answer: In general I would rather try to avoid synchronize(this) to reduce contention but private locks add complexity you have to be aware of. So use the right synchronization for the right job. If you are not so experienced with multi-threaded programming I would rather stick to instance locking and read up on this topic. (That said: just using synchronize(this) does not automatically make your class fully thread-safe.) This is a not an easy topic but once you get used to it, the answer whether to use synchronize(this) or not comes naturally.

I think there is a good explanation on why each of these are vital techniques under your belt in a book called Java Concurrency In Practice by Brian Goetz. He makes one point very clear - you must use the same lock "EVERYWHERE" to protect the state of your object. Synchronised method and synchronising on an object often go hand in hand. E.g. Vector synchronises all its methods. If you have a handle to a vector object and are going to do "put if absent" then merely Vector synchronising its own individual methods isn't going to protect you from corruption of state. You need to synchronise using synchronised (vectorHandle). This will result in the SAME lock being acquired by every thread which has a handle to the vector and will protect overall state of the vector. This is called client side locking. We do know as a matter of fact vector does synchronised (this) / synchronises all its methods and hence synchronising on the object vectorHandle will result in proper synchronisation of vector objects state. Its foolish to believe that you are thread safe just because you are using a thread safe collection. This is precisely the reason ConcurrentHashMap explicitly introduced putIfAbsent method - to make such operations atomic.

总之

Synchronising at method level allows client side locking. If you have a private lock object - it makes client side locking impossible. This is fine if you know that your class doesn't have "put if absent" type of functionality. If you are designing a library - then synchronising on this or synchronising the method is often wiser. Because you are rarely in a position to decide how your class is going to be used. Had Vector used a private lock object - it would have been impossible to get "put if absent" right. The client code will never gain a handle to the private lock thus breaking the fundamental rule of using the EXACT SAME LOCK to protect its state. Synchronising on this or synchronised methods do have a problem as others have pointed out - someone could get a lock and never release it. All other threads would keep waiting for the lock to be released. So know what you are doing and adopt the one that's correct. Someone argued that having a private lock object gives you better granularity - e.g. if two operations are unrelated - they could be guarded by different locks resulting in better throughput. But this i think is design smell and not code smell - if two operations are completely unrelated why are they part of the SAME class? Why should a class club unrelated functionalities at all? May be a utility class? Hmmmm - some util providing string manipulation and calendar date formatting through the same instance?? ... doesn't make any sense to me at least!!

锁可以用于可见性，也可以用于保护一些数据不受可能导致竞争的并发修改的影响。

当您需要将基本类型操作设置为原子类型时，可以使用AtomicInteger之类的选项。

但是假设你有两个整数，它们像x和y坐标一样彼此相关，它们彼此相关，应该以原子的方式改变。然后使用相同的锁来保护它们。

锁应该只保护彼此相关的状态。不多不少。如果在每个方法中都使用synchronized(this)，那么即使类的状态是不相关的，即使更新不相关的状态，所有线程也将面临争用。

class Point{
   private int x;
   private int y;

   public Point(int x, int y){
       this.x = x;
       this.y = y;
   }

   //mutating methods should be guarded by same lock
   public synchronized void changeCoordinates(int x, int y){
       this.x = x;
       this.y = y;
   }
}

在上面的例子中，我只有一个方法同时改变x和y，而不是两个不同的方法，因为x和y是相关的，如果我给了两个不同的方法分别改变x和y，那么它就不会是线程安全的。

这个例子只是为了演示它的实现方式，而不一定是这样。最好的方法是让它成为IMMUTABLE。

现在，与Point例子相反的是，@Andreas已经提供了一个TwoCounters的例子，其中状态被两个不同的锁保护，因为状态彼此不相关。

使用不同的锁来保护不相关的状态的过程称为锁剥离或锁分裂

这实际上只是对其他答案的补充，但如果你对使用私有对象进行锁定的主要反对意见是，它会使你的类与与业务逻辑无关的字段混乱，那么Project Lombok有@Synchronized在编译时生成样板:

@Synchronized
public int foo() {
    return 0;
}

编译,

private final Object $lock = new Object[0];

public int foo() {
    synchronized($lock) {
        return 0;
    }
}

避免使用synchronized(this)作为锁定机制:这会锁定整个类实例，并可能导致死锁。在这种情况下，重构代码以只锁定特定的方法或变量，这样整个类就不会被锁定。同步可以在方法级别内使用。 下面的代码展示了如何锁定一个方法，而不是使用synchronized(this)。

   public void foo() {
if(operation = null) {
    synchronized(foo) { 
if (operation == null) {
 // enter your code that this method has to handle...
          }
        }
      }
    }

虽然我同意不要盲目地遵守教条规则，但“偷锁”的场景对你来说是不是很古怪?一个线程确实可以从你的对象“外部”获得锁(synchronized(theObject){…})，阻塞其他线程等待同步实例方法。

如果您不相信恶意代码，请考虑这些代码可能来自第三方(例如，如果您开发了某种应用程序服务器)。

“意外”版本似乎不太可能，但就像他们说的那样，“让一些东西不受白痴的影响，就会有人发明一个更好的白痴”。

所以我同意“这取决于这个班级做什么”的观点。

编辑以下eljenso的前3条评论:

我从来没有遇到过偷锁的问题，但这里有一个想象的场景:

假设您的系统是一个servlet容器，我们考虑的对象是ServletContext实现。它的getAttribute方法必须是线程安全的，因为上下文属性是共享数据;所以你声明它是同步的。让我们再想象一下，您提供了一个基于容器实现的公共托管服务。

我是您的客户，并在您的站点上部署我的“好”servlet。我的代码碰巧包含对getAttribute的调用。

黑客伪装成另一个客户，在您的站点上部署恶意servlet。它在init方法中包含以下代码:

synchronized (this.getServletConfig().getServletContext()) {
   while (true) {}
}

假设我们共享相同的servlet上下文(只要两个servlet位于同一个虚拟主机上，规范就允许)，那么我对getAttribute的调用将永远锁定。黑客已经在我的servlet上实现了DoS。

如果getAttribute在私有锁上同步，则这种攻击是不可能的，因为第三方代码无法获得此锁。

我承认这个例子是人为设计的，对servlet容器如何工作的看法过于简单，但恕我直言，它证明了这一点。

因此，我将基于安全性考虑做出设计选择:我是否能够完全控制访问实例的代码?线程无限期地持有实例锁的后果是什么?