If you meet someone new and realize they have a dark sense of humor, you may see it as a red flag. It could suggest that they are moody, aggressive, or lacking in compassion. After all, doesn’t it seem mean-spirited to laugh at something traumatic, unsettling, or a joke that punches down?
However, a study by the Medical University of Vienna, published in the journal Cognitive Processing, found the exact opposite. Cognitive and emotional demands of black humor processing: the role of intelligence, aggressiveness and mood says that people with a sick sense of humor are smarter, less aggressive, and less likely to be in a poor mood.
“These findings support the notion that humour processing depends on cognitive as well as emotional aspects, and suggest that this also accounts for black humour processing, which seems to be a complex information-processing task,” the study’s authors wrote.
Why is a sick sense of humor good?
It seems that a sick sense of humor is more about understanding humor and its ramifications than about appreciating the dark subject matter itself. It also shows you have the emotional maturity to feel comfortable with taboo and uncomfortable facts of life. It takes some self-development to laugh at things that many have a hard time even thinking about.
“So why the link between intelligence and enjoyment of black humour? One possibility is that you have to be clever to understand the joke, although most of the jokes were uncomplicated,” Ben Ambridge, Professor of Psycholinguistics at the University of Manchester, writes for The Guardian. “Perhaps more intelligent people are better able to rationalise away outrage—‘the existence of this joke does not harm anyone’—that might otherwise get in the way of their enjoyment.”
The researchers showed 156 participants 12 cartoons by Uli Stein from The Black Book. Here’s an example of his work. “Do you have a reservation?” the receptionist asks his fellow worms as they try to chow down on a recently deceased corpse.
What were the results of the study?
After rating the participants on aggression, IQ, and mood, they found that those who enjoyed dark humor and understood it the best also ranked highest on verbal and non-verbal IQ. They also ranked low for aggressiveness and moodiness. Conversely, those with average verbal and non-verbal intelligence and high aggression and moodiness showed the lowest appreciation and understanding of dark humor.
To put it simply: If you like sick humor, you’re probably smarter, better educated, less aggressive, and more even-tempered than those who don’t.
Ultimately, if you meet someone new and they crack a sick joke and it immediately seems like a red flag, relax and enjoy it, because it actually means they have a lot of great qualities. “One thing is clear: given the negative link between black humour and aggression, anyone who argues that a mean sense of humour leads to meanness in real life must be joking,” AMbridge writes.
