In general these are mostly the same other than being explicit about the object's monitor that's being used vs the implicit this object. One downside of synchronized methods that I think is sometimes overlooked is that in using the "this" reference to synchronize on you are leaving open the possibility of external objects locking on the same object. That can be a very subtle bug if you run into it. Synchronizing on an internal explicit Object or other existing field can avoid this issue, completely encapsulating the synchronization.

来自Java规范摘要: http://www.cs.cornell.edu/andru/javaspec/17.doc.html

The synchronized statement (§14.17) computes a reference to an object; it then attempts to perform a lock action on that object and does not proceed further until the lock action has successfully completed. ... A synchronized method (§8.4.3.5) automatically performs a lock action when it is invoked; its body is not executed until the lock action has successfully completed. If the method is an instance method, it locks the lock associated with the instance for which it was invoked (that is, the object that will be known as this during execution of the body of the method). If the method is static, it locks the lock associated with the Class object that represents the class in which the method is defined. ...

基于这些描述，我想说以前的大多数答案都是正确的，同步方法可能对静态方法特别有用，否则您必须弄清楚如何获得“表示定义方法的类的Class对象”。

编辑:我原本以为这些是对实际Java规范的引用。澄清一下，本页只是对规范的总结/解释

TLDR;不要使用synchronized修饰符或synchronized(this){…}表达式but synchronized(myLock){…其中myLock是一个持有私有对象的最终实例字段。

在方法声明中使用synchronized修饰符与在方法主体中使用synchronized(..){}表达式的区别如下:

The synchronized modifier specified on the method's signature is visible in the generated JavaDoc, is programmatically determinable via reflection when testing a method's modifier for Modifier.SYNCHRONIZED, requires less typing and indention compared to synchronized(this) { .... }, and (depending on your IDE) is visible in the class outline and code completion, uses the this object as lock when declared on non-static method or the enclosing class when declared on a static method. The synchronized(...){...} expression allows you to only synchronize the execution of parts of a method's body, to be used within a constructor or a (static) initialization block, to choose the lock object which controls the synchronized access.

然而，使用synchronized修饰符或synchronized(…){…}使用this作为锁对象(如synchronized(this){…})，也有同样的缺点。两者都使用它自己的实例作为锁对象进行同步。这是很危险的，因为不仅对象本身，而且任何其他持有该对象引用的外部对象/代码也可以将其用作同步锁，这可能会产生严重的副作用(性能下降和死锁)。

因此，最佳实践是既不使用synchronized修饰符，也不使用synchronized(…)表达式作为锁对象，而是使用该对象的私有锁对象。例如:

public class MyService {
    private final lock = new Object();

    public void doThis() {
       synchronized(lock) {
          // do code that requires synchronous execution
        }
    }

    public void doThat() {
       synchronized(lock) {
          // do code that requires synchronous execution
        }
    }
}

您也可以使用多个锁对象，但是需要特别注意，以确保在嵌套使用时不会导致死锁。

public class MyService {
    private final lock1 = new Object();
    private final lock2 = new Object();

    public void doThis() {
       synchronized(lock1) {
          synchronized(lock2) {
              // code here is guaranteed not to be executes at the same time
              // as the synchronized code in doThat() and doMore().
          }
    }

    public void doThat() {
       synchronized(lock1) {
              // code here is guaranteed not to be executes at the same time
              // as the synchronized code in doThis().
              // doMore() may execute concurrently
        }
    }

    public void doMore() {
       synchronized(lock2) {
              // code here is guaranteed not to be executes at the same time
              // as the synchronized code in doThis().
              // doThat() may execute concurrently
        }
    }
}

唯一真正的区别是同步块可以选择在哪个对象上同步。同步方法只能使用'this'(或同步类方法的相应Class实例)。例如，它们在语义上是等价的:

synchronized void foo() {
  ...
}

void foo() {
    synchronized (this) {
      ...
    }
}

后者更灵活，因为它可以竞争任何对象(通常是成员变量)的关联锁。它也更细粒度，因为您可以在块之前和块之后执行并发代码，但仍然在方法中。当然，您也可以通过将并发代码重构为单独的非同步方法来轻松地使用同步方法。使用任何使代码更容易理解的方法。

使用同步块，您可以有多个同步器，因此多个同时但不冲突的事情可以同时进行。

在实际应用中，同步方法相对于同步块的优势在于它们更能抵抗白痴;因为您不能选择任意对象来锁定，所以您不能滥用synchronized方法语法来做一些愚蠢的事情，比如锁定字符串文字或锁定从线程下面更改的可变字段的内容。

另一方面，使用同步方法，您无法保护锁不被任何可以获得对象引用的线程获取。

因此，在方法上使用synchronized作为修饰符可以更好地保护你的奶牛免受伤害，而将synchronized块与私有final锁对象结合使用则可以更好地保护你自己的代码免受奶牛的伤害。