Latest / Art of the Question / The Science of Dark Humor - Dr. Sonja Heintz - #63

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The Science of Dark Humor - Dr. Sonja Heintz - #63 · Art of the Question

• Julius Moorman: Sonia, thank you ⁓ so much for for coming on the show. ⁓ today's discussion is about dark humor. I think it's such an interesting topic because dark humor has existed for a long time. We'll get into that, I think so, but I see I think it's now much more visible than it ever was. ⁓ also due to social media, Instagram. We see a lot of the the comments happening there, we see clips of of of comedians. So ⁓ those are all things I'd like to get into. ⁓ but first of all, I was curious to know when did you first get interested in studying humor and specifically dark humor as well? ⁓ so ⁓ that's actually quite funny because I kind of stumbled into humor research. So when I studied psychology, I had the traditional, ⁓ I want to help people, I did clinical psychology. But when it came to the clinical training, I was like, ⁓ I can't really imagine doing that for forty years. So I looked into more positive and preventative approaches to mental health, which led me to positive psychology, which that was around two thousand nine, two thousand ten, when it was quite an emerging field still. ⁓ and I looked at options then after graduating to see where I could do a PhD in positive psychology, which ⁓ led me to Switzerland to ⁓ so I studied in Germany, ⁓ and then I found Professor Willi Baldruch, who is ⁓ one of the leading researchers in positive psychology, but also in the psychology of humor. ⁓ so I went to him wanting to study positive psychology and he said, ⁓ just to learn the ropes in the lab, just do this study on humor and and just that you get used to how we run things here. And it got me so interested that I ended up doing my PhD on humor re ⁓ on the psychology of humor. And really have that as my main focus of research since now around 15 years. Dark humor came into the picture only a bit later, ⁓ because what we did was a lot of foundational research, just understanding all the different humor styles that are out there. ⁓ because in the literature they only had four styles or five styles distinguished, and we thought that's actually much more because we all know that humor is so different. Everybody has a different sense of humor, people like different things, people find different things humorous. So we try to find all these different styles and then dark humor. turned up as one of those styles. And that's then how I got ⁓ with one of my students here at the University of Plymouth, ⁓ where we looked a bit more into dark humor and then ⁓ published a paper on that a few years ago. And yeah, that's how I got into ⁓ humor in general and ⁓ studying dark humor specifically. Yeah, so interesting. And dark humor is an intriguing ⁓ one. And yeah, I also really want in ⁓ wanna get into the comic styles framework to discuss ⁓ the different types of of comic there are and how we distinguish between those and and why it's important to do so. Just one thing, and this is just me being ⁓ unaware of of the all different types of psychology. You mentioned positive psychology. Does that mean like positive in like the literal sense of the word? It's like around positive topics or or what does that mean? ⁓ so positive psychology was found that it's a bit of a to balance psychology, let's say, because if you look at research on depression, anxiety, separation, anxiety, all these things, there is plenty of research out there. But if you look at the counterparts, happiness, life satisfaction, relationship satisfaction, There is much less research comparably. So ⁓ it was founded by two American psychologists, ⁓ Chiksant Mihai and Seligman in the year two thousand, where they said, ⁓ they had a a special issue in one of the preeminent journals in psychology, the American Psychologist, and said, Okay, we kind of need to balance psychology. ⁓ so they advocated we need to more studies to understand resilience, we need to look into flourishing, what makes people's lives meaningful, what makes people happy. And obviously if we increase happiness, for example, or people's meaning in life, we might already be able to prevent maybe some of the the mental health issues that might come down further in the line. So yeah, that's I found a very intriguing approach and it's quite young in comparison to to many of the other disciplines in psychology. But I think it's a very important approach to to pursue that. And obviously humour fits in quite nicely there as well, because there are a lot of resources we can get from our sense of humor, both personally and interpersonally as well. Yeah, that's so interesting. Yeah, and it's our negativity bias. ⁓ i from that perspective it makes sense that a lot of the research was about depression and anxiety and about unhappiness in general. But if we understand happiness better, then we might not even need to look why someone is depressed. Because yeah, if if if we can understand why people are happy, that might be a more positive approach if if you will. Interesting. I didn't know that. So Thank you for for filling me in there. yeah, your your comic styles ⁓ framework, because dark humor ⁓ fits in there. I believe it's like a spectrum or there's ⁓ different categories within humor. Can you maybe explain the framework and and which types of humor are in there and how we distinguish between those? So in general, we would treat a humor style or a comic style as an individual difference variable. So we would say It's not just good or bad humor, or people have or don't have a sense of humor, so it's not just categories, but people are on a dimension, on a spectrum, just like you said. So some people might have ⁓ low scores when we talk about dark humor, some people might have medium scores, some people have high scores. And in the published framework, we distinguished eight different styles. ⁓ and dark humor is not among them, ⁓ because we used an established framework that was derived from analysing words in the English language. ⁓ to see which words are there around humor. And we then translated this linguistic research into psychology. Because just because we have different words for things, it doesn't mean that there is a different experience for people. So when we look at individual differences in psychology, we always look at does it actually matter for people? Yeah? Are there actually different people liking different type or different styles of humor? Or is it the same people that like three different styles and then we would conglomerate that into one bigger style. Yeah. So when we do research, we always ask people. So we usually have questionnaires that we develop. We ask people to rate themselves on their sense of humor. We usually have ⁓ other people as well. So let's say people ⁓ their best friends or partners to also rate that person ⁓ on the sense of humor. And then we can compare those two ratings. So if I say, ⁓ I have a lot of dark humor, but my partner would say, ⁓ she doesn't Then there is something wrong with our measurement approach. Yeah. So that's a way to validate our our measures. Right. ⁓ and we also use behavioral measures. So we have people we actually show them cartoons or memes or jokes to rate, see, ⁓ how funny do you find this? ⁓ and also we have people actually write punchlines to then see are people able to actually engage in that style of humor. So these are the different approaches we would use. And then after all that research, which is very basic research, we then Derive our model. And as I said, in the current model we have eight styles. Some are more benevolent, like good natured fun, which is like playing the clown, or ⁓ nonsense humor, so just ⁓ silly ideas. And then we have some darker styles that are more mockery related, ⁓ like sarcasm, irony, ⁓ and cynicism. And in yet unpublished research, but hopefully it will be published ⁓ in the next few years or months, ⁓ depending how long the publication process takes. we actually have twenty-three different styles that we distinguish now. But obviously there was over a dozen studies that went into there to actually see what styles are there. Are they all distinguishable? Are they all valid? Are they all reliable? So can we actually measure them properly? And are they relevant for people's everyday humor experience? And among those twenty-three styles, that's where dark humor comes in. And it sits more in this overarching topic of mockery-related styles, which is funnily enough the biggest category. So a lot of humor has more mockery-related topics. So we like to often joke about other people. and yeah, it fits within within that framework. Right. And I think when I think of these different styles, we can look at comedy movies as well, right? Because Dumb and Dumber is like a j like almost dry humor. It's kind of silly. And then Wolf of Wall Street, for example, I would consider to be a comedy as well, but more because it's outrageous, it's it's wild, it's it's crazy. Perhaps dark, if you could argue it's it's dark in some ways. ⁓ definitely a a film that I consider to be dark humor is Inglorious Bastards, which is ⁓ yeah, phenomenal movie by by Tarantino. It's funny, but it's pretty dark. There's a lot of violence in there. So how how important are movies when distinguishing those styles? Does that count come back in in the science at all? ⁓ so we actually looked at literary studies ⁓ because they're well-established comedy genres. Because we thought we originally used that in our eight comic styles approach, so we want to continue with this approach. ⁓ but like you said, it could just be applied as well to movies. So it's basically any type of Comedy that's out there independent of the media that is used. So it could be videos, it could be movies, it could be memes, YouTube videos, cartoons. So it should be applicable to all of these different media categories. Because usually when we investigate ⁓ humor, we don't really find big differences between these categories. So what type of media is presented, but it's really what is the content. Is it a darker content and more lighthearted content? And the structure. So is it really like a one line ⁓ joke that is really simple or is it something that is a bit more absurd and it it ⁓ engages your wit a little bit more? So that these are the categories that we find matter more ⁓ when we look at what distinguishes people's humor preferences. So and one of the things that you obviously now mentioned with if we have something as complex as a movie or even just a ten second video clip, there is usually a lot of different styles that are mixed in there. So our task was to really try to tease apart what is kind of that that recipe, the original ingredients that go into a finished comedy product. Because what we know is that the most successful comedians and the most successful comedy products like a movie, they usually have a lot of different ingredients because they know the audience has a lot of different humor preferences. So we try to cater to many of them by engaging in many different styles. So we try to tease that apart into that the single components and then they can be put together basically to create a funny show or a stand up routine or to create a a funny movie. Right. It's so it's super interesting. And I I really wanna get into your work regarding ⁓ dark humor specifically and the study you did there. But I think it would make sense to sit on on humor ⁓ a little longer in a in a general sense of the word, because humor is something quite strange when you think about it. It is something very complex. You need a lot of context. And correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't see animals making much jokes. So you need some processing and you need context and you need to also be able to kind of go into someone else's mind to see this is what this other person may find funny. And usually humor can also be implicit. So there's explicit humor, like telling a joke, but there's also making subtle jokes. ⁓ and those are usually based on common understanding of a situation. So it's really a very complex thing when you think about it. How do we define humor in a scientific ⁓ sense of the word and what are the pro what is the proposed explanation of why we have it in the first place? So that is one of the stumbling blocks I think the field has faced is that like you say, humor is something we all have experienced. But if you ask someone, define your humor, it's like what I laugh about? so it's something that happens automatically ⁓ rather than being a conscious process. so the field has thus developed a very broad definition, which is now the one that is most commonly used in humor research, or at least in psychological humor research, which is humor is just all phenomena that relate to the funny. So it could be humor appreciation, what do you find funny, humor comprehension, how do you understand a joke or a punchline, or you maybe misunderstand it? ⁓ and how do you produce humor? So do you create your own jokes on the spot, maybe situational humor? Or are you someone who stands in front of the mirror and rehearses a joke 50 times with different accents to get the performance perfect? So this is where we see all the individual differences. And the definition is by default very broad, so we can really incorporate all these different aspects into it. Then you mentioned animals and humor. There is actually a bit of a debate whether animals also have a sense of humor. We obviously can't ask them because of the we don't speak the same language. There is, however, a lot of research on ⁓ let's say there's some research where rats get tickled and they actually laugh about it. It's not something we can hear, but ⁓ they do like a a very high squeak that can be recorded with certain equipment. There is also quite a bit of research on chimpanzee humour, where for example, chimpanzees that have been trained in sign language, they intentionally miss ⁓ attribute that so let's say they are shown a banana and they show, ⁓ this is a ball. And they don't have the laughter as we do because of the vocal chords. So they have more this relaxed play display, as they call it. ⁓ so they showed some enjoyment after these mismatching signs that they've done. so there is actually some evidence, whether we call it a sense of humor or just they find something funny, but they do get some enjoyment from these incongruities that we would term humor in in humans. ⁓ in terms of the origin of humor. So there are quite a few evolutionary theories on humor that they say it can actually serve as a mating signal. Because when someone is witty, for example, they show that they are intelligent, they are they ca they can think quite quickly. Humour is also related to creativity. So there is a fitness aspect of if I mate with someone who has ⁓ a high sense of humor, to simplify it, then I might produce offspring that is more intelligent or more capable of dealing with the environment and stresses that are in the environment. So that is one of the prevalent theories that humor is this this positive mating signal, and that's why we are drawn ⁓ to humorous friends, but also if you ask couples, ⁓ or or ⁓ s singles I should say, who they would like to partner with, then sense of humor is usually coming up quite high. What that usually often means though is not just a sense of humor, but a matching sense of humor. Because let's say one partner is engaging in a lot of dark humor and the other partner is very subtle in their humor and very benevolent, then you could imagine that probably doesn't go so well. Which causing some issues because the one gender difference we find in humor research is that men tend to engage more in mockery related styles and women are more on the laughing about themselves and the more benevolent and gentle humor styles. So there can sometimes be a bit of a mismatch in a relationship. And I think we all know that if someone makes jokes that we are uncomfortable with and then that can create some interpersonal tension. Yeah. So yeah. I I can imagine. I can see why that will be problematic. On the other hand, I don't know. Like I really enjoy dark humor. It's part of the reason why I wanted to do this episode. I'm not sure if I want a a girlfriend who's like sending me like the darkest ⁓ stuff. I I I don't know if if I would find that attractive in in women per se, but ⁓ yeah, it does make a lot of sense that if you are on kind of on the same wavelength that you can joke about things together, that can also be a bonding experience, right? Because again, humor is all about context and mutual understanding of a situation. Exactly. And I think that's ⁓ what you mentioned as well, that we adapt humor to the situation and to the people that we're with. So when you are with your mates and you're going out for a drink, you probably have a very different sense of humor that you display than if you're having a Sunday dinner with your parents. So ⁓ we always so we have these we adapt our humor styles with the people and oftentimes When we don't know someone, we might be a bit more reserved in our humor because we don't know yet what will land and what will not. But once you know someone else's st style and the thing is with ⁓ dark humor, for example, it would be fine if your lady appreciated that humor, or is at least not offended by it, rather than that she has to produce it as well. Yeah. So it would just be that there is no ⁓ you joke about this and and You know, the other person gets like, ⁓ this is like really distasteful and horrible because then then it could create the friction, but as long as they laugh along and think actually, ⁓ that's funny. I wouldn't say that myself, but actually if you say it, it's funny. ⁓ so it could be so that's where we need to distinguish the ⁓ appreciation and the preference, ⁓ the the displaying of humor as well, because that can make a big difference. And men tend to engage more ⁓ in those styles of humor especially. Yeah, I figured. And w One thing that you haven't mentioned that I'm curious about ⁓ as for why we how we use humor and and why we have it is what about humor as a defense mechanism? Because you see a lot of people who get sick, for example, or they're missing a leg or something just bad happened to them. And there's people who understandably don't want to joke about it at all. There's also many people that like to joke ⁓ about their situation. Hey, I I lost all my hair, or hey, ⁓ yeah, I'll I'll go for the run with you while while they're in the wheelchair. Just naming some some silly examples, but ⁓ I see this happen a lot, and I tend to do it myself as well. When I find myself in in a predicament, I find it easier to joke about it and it kind of lightens the situation. And it even happens at I don't know, funerals. When the funeral is happening, it's usually very sad and it's emotional. But then when you have a coffee or or drinks after and you get together with the family and the friends, sometimes people start making some some jokes there. And I feel that can be very helpful to kind of deal with tough situations. Is that being reflected in in the science too? So that's actually one of the earliest humor theories that we got. is ⁓ by Sigmund Freud, who wrote about all topics that you can imagine. And also he has two ⁓ quite well known papers about humor. So he dissected jokes and ⁓ explained how jokes work. But also he talked about humor as a what he called a mature coping mechanism. So he said it's one of the higher forms of coping with adversity, coping with stress ⁓ when things go wrong. And this is obviously where humor has an important function. And it's he one of the the personal resources that we would have and there are a lot of coping inventories out there that ask a lot of different coping styles and usually humor is one of those as well. And I think you mentioned a lot of great situations where humor would be relevant. ⁓ and where dark humor or laughing about oneself also comes in. ⁓ if things go wrong and then I can either be really distraught about it, I can be angry about myself or angry about other people, or I can just laugh it off and say, ⁓ silly me, that happened again. ⁓ also if really more severe things happen and that's where we actually see the emergence of dark humour. ⁓ in people, for example, who had ⁓ a disability, in in cancer patients. So there's quite a bit of research that shows that that those are people that actually engage in humour and they are affected by by it, so they joke about themselves but in a dark way and it helps them really to cope with the ⁓ difficult circumstances that they are facing. Yeah, it's so interesting. It kind of puts it in in a more more lighter framework and you're in the situation anyway. So yeah, you might as well turn it into something funny. But of course I can imagine that there are huge differences between people because ⁓ it's not always easy to do so and also not easy for the people around them, right? I I know situations where people joked about themselves while they were dying and the family was like, I yeah, can you please stop joking about that? Because we don't find it as funny as as you seem to find it. But yeah, it it makes sense ⁓ as a as a coping coping mechanism as well. ⁓ I wanna ⁓ get into your study about ⁓ dar dark humor. You you did a study on dark humor. ⁓ before we get into the results of it and and the findings of of that study, can you maybe explain w what you did and how how do you go about studying ⁓ humor? You briefly touched on it, but I I wanna know the specifics of it. Yeah, so when you look at the history of psychological humor research, there was The first wave, so to speak, which was starting around with Freud, ⁓ and then continuing until the sixties, seventies, where usually people were presented with jokes and hand-drawn ⁓ or black and white cartoons, and then people were asked to react to those cartoons, see how funny do you find them. ⁓ and then they were related to personality, to well-being, and any other outcome. So then around seventies, eighties it started that we had self-report questionnaires. So rather than showing people a cartoon and saying, okay, how funny do you find it, we just ask them, do you laugh a lot? Are you someone who ⁓ finds jokes and cartoons funny? Are you someone who produces a lot of humour? and now the questionnaire approach is actually the prevalent one that we use in psychological research. What we try to do in this piece of research, but also in general, is that we try to use the different methods together because they have different strengths and weaknesses. ⁓ I remember you had a a podcast ⁓ a few weeks back where it was about ⁓ purchasing and why people purchase things. And ⁓ your guest explained that yeah, if you just use self-reports, that might not be reflected in actual behavior. And that's exactly the same with humor. Just because someone says, ⁓ I yeah, yeah, I'm I'm really, really funny, I'm the funniest person ever, that might not actually be reflected in a behavior. And just ⁓ To say when you just ask people, is your sense of humor average, below average or above average? The vast majority of people will say above average. Now if we think about a normal distribution, that can't really work statistically. So people have to self report bias thinking they are funnier than they actually are. ⁓ which we can quite nicely see when we ask people then, okay, you think you're funny, produce some humor and then they struggle. So ⁓ yeah. That's why it's important to measure both the behavior and to ask people obviously their self view on their own humor. So that's what we did in this study as well. And we asked people their their view on dark humor, so just simplified. Do you enjoy dark humor? Do you produce dark humor? We showed them memes as well that contained dark humor and said, okay, do you find that funny? Do you find that offensive? And we showed them some memes where we removed some of the the speech or we remove the heading and said, okay, now produce some dark humour captions or fill in that blank with a dark humor or as many as you can. ⁓ So those were the tasks we gave them in in in terms of humour and then we looked at all of these together and see what picture does emerge when we then look at the other variables that we investigated in the study. That's so that's okay. It must be a lot of fun to be part of one of those ⁓ studies. The feedback is usually ⁓ all these memes were not funny because also you can't cater to everyone's humor preferences. So you get a lot of complaints about please use these jokes next time because they're much funnier than what you have shown me. Yeah, of course everyone thinks their humor is the more sophisticated one, right? But wha wha what are some of the findings? Because I think ⁓ a general bias on dark humor and and people that enjoy dark humor are that they are violent people, that they are are Machiavellian, that they are perhaps psychopaths in the worst ⁓ cases. So so what are some of the findings and and do you have to be a psycho to enjoy dark humor? So just to say from the outset our study is correlational. Yeah so we just looked at we looked at ⁓ maladaptive personality traits online trolling and then the dark humor. ⁓ but also we can't talk about causation. So cause and effect would need a different type of design, like a longitudinal design to see how humor develops along with personality, ⁓ or maybe an experimental intervention study. But when we just look at the relationship, so ⁓ we looked at maladaptive personality traits, which is not to be confused with something like narcissistic personality disorder or antisocial personality disorder, which would be the psychopaths or sociopaths. So we look at the general population because the general population varies already in psychopathic traits, but it is in a an even the high scorers would not be people where we say, ⁓ they are dangerous. ⁓ so it is what we call subclinical. So it would be, yeah, those people they still so show some low empathy and ⁓ the people that are high in narcissism would show a lot of self absorption. But it wouldn't be people who are necessarily violent or engaging in anything illegal. So we just looked at the normal population. It would be interesting to do the same study in a clinical population that actually has personality disorders. ⁓ But I'm not aware of that study ⁓ being conducted in relation to dark humor yet. ⁓ So yeah, we looked at those personality traits that are more on the maladaptive spectrum. And then we looked at online trolling as well. And what we found is that yes, people who self report to like and engage in dark humour and the ones who actually enjoyed the memes we showed them and who were able to create dark humour in response to those blank memes that we showed them, those who actually higher especially in psychopathy, ⁓ and in sadism. Those were the two ⁓ so especially sadism across the study showed up as the most prevalent predictor. And Everyday sadism as we define it or as is defined in research is that you like it if other people suffer. Yeah. And obviously that makes a lot of sense because in dark humor there are people ⁓ that are being made fun of and then people who are higher in this everyday sadism are actually liking that more. A bit of psychopathy we found and a bit of the Machiavelli Machiavellianism. I I knew I would struggle with that word, but Yeah, I do too. I do too. ⁓ Machiavelli is easy to say, but then ⁓ it's turned into a big so it's basically people who like to manipulate and deceive others. ⁓ so they also showed slightly higher scores ⁓ in in dark humor. But throughout the board, sadism was usually the biggest predictor, then psychopathy, and then people who like to deceive others. Just go around it. ⁓ and narcissism actually didn't show that many relationships. So that was throughout the board the lowest predictor. So it's not just Not necessarily people who are self absorbed, but really people who like if others are not in a good spot. ⁓ and people who don't have that much empathy. So that would be the the general picture of ⁓ it's it's very interesting because there there's w what I to just zoom in on the ⁓ s sadism part. I I find I can find it funny when I see like a a a bad bike crash on on Instagram, for example, or or when there is some some sort of mockery going on. Definitely dark humor. I enjoy it. But at the same time I also really enjoy videos where they're tipping away their ten thousand dollars or they ⁓ they they are giving money to a a poor family, which would be the the opposite of of sadism. So they can go together. At least in my case, my preference for for dark humor does go together with a preference for also seeing people made very happy and and more more wholesome ⁓ content. ⁓ is is that strange or or do you see that in in in more ⁓ people as well? So I think you're pointing to two very important aspects. One is You talked about these fail videos where someone falls off a bike. so most of the humour is happening in a safe space. So it makes a difference. So let's say you someone has a funny fall off a bike, they get up, ⁓ and then we might find it really funny. However, if he falls off a bike and he's severely injured or even worse happens, we would not find it funny anymore. Then we'll be like, ⁓ this is tragic. Right. So there's a fine line between tragedy and comedy. And obviously the dark humor says, okay, it's dark, but it's still safe in a sense that it isn't consequential. Yeah? Because in your example, if we then knew there was a negative consequence from that, it would stop to be funny, it would just be dark and it wouldn't be humorous anymore. So ⁓ and this is why I think we need to be more nuanced when we talk about humor, because in a lot of research it says Positive and negative humor or adaptive and maladaptive. It is a much more complex picture. Yeah, because I like dark humour, but if I knew someone was really injured from that, I would be like, ⁓ okay, I don't really want watch that. ⁓ while if they're fine afterwards and might even like, you know, laugh about it themselves, then it's hilarious. ⁓ and the other thing is, those styles go together. So there might be people who say, Okay, I'm high in sarcasm, cynicism, dark humor, sexist humor, stereotypes and all that. But there might obviously other people, like you said, you also like the more benevolent humor. Yeah, or you also like to make fun of yourself. ⁓ you like the dark humor. So everyone's expression of humor, because it is this blend of those different styles that then come together, is different. Yeah. So we need to see is it someone who is dark? And has these sadistic tendencies and all the enjoyment comes from, ⁓ yes, he gets what he deserves and and something really bad happened and that's hilarious? Or is it more this, ⁓ it just looked really funny and and that's why we laugh, or because we can relate to it because we've fallen off a bike and you know that's a funny story now. We tell our friends 20 years later. ⁓ so all these motivations underlying the other styles that come into play and the personality that someone has, that all comes together in really shaping this. This dark humor experience, if you may. Yeah, I understand. And w you mentioned earlier that ⁓ there is a difference between ⁓ men and women and that men tend to enjoy dark humor more often than than women do. Makes sense to me. I mean that that's what my expectation would be. But why do we think that is? Is there a psychological explanation for that? ⁓ so in the research that is published, so there's been a meta analysis ⁓ a few years back from one of my colleagues, and yeah, that's really one consistent finding. All mockery related styles, including dark humor, are hired by men. So you could argue again from an evolutionary fitness point of view that men are the ones more who need to make themselves attractive to the the female counterparts and that's what they engage in sh more in humor. ⁓ and then the ladies think, ⁓ wow, he is really fit and and and he has the good genes to pass on ⁓ to my offspring. So that could be an explanation, but also personality-wise, we know that women are more agreeable than men, ⁓ women have more empathy than men, and these are the traits that go along with more benevolent styles and with lower mockery-related styles. So we can't really say Again, hen and the egg. ⁓ is it due to the personality or is the humour developing somewhat independently? But it could also be just related to women are more the nurturers, the supporters, and men are more the ⁓ evolutionary. ⁓ I have to fight and defend my family. So they have more of these ⁓ outgoing and and defensive traits, so to speak. ⁓ and and women have a bit of a more gentler and softer nature and then that also translates into their humor styles. I'm obviously generalizing, but also we talk about average differences between men and women. ⁓ so yeah, it could be either or and at this moment we need to speculate until we have ⁓ some very firm evidence to corroborate that. No, yeah, I understand. And yeah, you you mentioned there the the the there's a line. It's it's it's not a very clear line but not a line not nonetheless where that can get crossed where it goes from dark humor to just something horrible. Instagram is also filled with videos of car crashes. There's some terrible shootings on there. Some videos from Brazil where where where people try to to rob a motor or store or something and they get shot and killed. There's some very dark stuff on the internet. ⁓ and I don't think anyone would watch those videos ⁓ thinking like, hey, that that was really funny, or that that's dark humor per se. But these videos do get a lot of views and and some people do find them entertaining or at least fascinating or or interesting. how do we categorize that? Is that outside of dark humor? Is that a different category altogether? I think there is this morbid curiosity. Right. So if there is a car crash in the road and then everybody tries to get a look when they drive by or walk by. So I think it's just in our nature that ⁓ there is something happening out of the norm. And obviously it's safe when you watch it as a video, you know nothing can harm you. ⁓ but you really want to know, ⁓ what happened there, what's going on. So yeah, there could be a lot of motivations that are not humor related. Because usually when it comes to humor there is this punchline, there's this incongruity and there's usually the sign of This is not to be taken seriously. So there is no harmful consequences. So anything that is just an observation of just what you said, a crash or or some of these negative events, then obviously it could be turned into dark humor in the comments. then that someone makes a joke about it and then people might be divided as to ⁓ it's distasteful or this is funny. But the video itself would not be classified as dark humor, but it could be as a source of all these kinds of disaster jokes. ⁓ that happened. ⁓ but it always come in in waves basically when there is an event and then after a little while usually we need a little bit of time afterwards and then people come up with jokes and then that could be then a way of processing that event as well. Right. And we we've mostly discussed people enjoying dark humor, but what about the recipients? People being the the main character inside of a dark joke. Is there is there any studies being d done on that? Because as we've discussed, ⁓ humor requires context, ⁓ but one of the most prevalent forms of humor usually involves another person. are yeah, are are there people who are are did must be people dealing with that in in very different levels. I'm I'm curious whether there is any any science being done on that as well. Yeah, so most of the h ⁓ research on dark humor actually investigates people making fun of themselves. so as I mentioned, for example, cancer patients. ⁓ and it's also received very differently. So let's say if I make a joke about myself, I usually imply, look, I'm comfortable with joking about this topic, and I invite others then to joke back or to laugh along with me. Yeah, and then maybe this negativity creates a a ⁓ positive pro social situation. It's quite different. ⁓ so let's say you have someone in ⁓ a wheelchair and that person makes fun of themselves and then about their disability and then everyone laughs along. Now imagine someone who can walk and they make a joke about that person. Depends on the relationship. If they already know, you know, they are ⁓ then bouncing the jokes off each other, it would still be funny then. But if let's say those people didn't know each other, that would not be human. That would be quite shocking then to say, ⁓ How dare you to make a joke about yeah? ⁓ so then the same joke, different context would not be perceived as humorous anymore because there is this this transgression, the social norm that is ⁓ violated that ⁓ yeah, we shouldn't make jokes about other people's disabilities unless we know that person either ⁓ j jokes about themselves or we know that person really well and we know that's their style of humor. They do find it funny. So yeah, it's very important that The receiver either gives the permission or the receiv ⁓ sorry, the the sender ⁓ has the permission of that that joke target, or I make fun of myself. And then that permission is already there because I'm part of that group that is being made fun of. And usually the coping aspect comes in more when people joke about themselves, because then as I said, it means that, ⁓ I'm comfortable with it. And of course, in the example you mentioned, if someone jokes on their deathbed, and then maybe The family doesn't find it funny, but it shows kind of that they are at ease with it if they can make fun of it. Probably the family hasn't yet come to terms with it, because obviously it's a very emotional ⁓ situation. But yeah, that would be the most adaptive way, so to speak, to engage in in dark humor. And then if it's coming without a permission, with someone you don't have a relationship with, and as ha can happen online now more prevalently, because people are anonymous on the internet, so they're much more likely to attack someone and to mock someone for certain things that they would never dare to say to someone's face. ⁓ but because in that internet setting it opens up that possibility to anonymously make fun of people and to engage in dark humor, then there can often be very inappropriate things happening that ⁓ wouldn't happen in a in a personal interaction. Yeah, it's interesting, right? Because you see a lot of these ⁓ c clips of comedians and I've been to comedy shows myself as well, and you kinda know that when you enter into the front row, you're going to be made fun of. This has happened many times, but I kind of enjoy it, so that's why I buy the the front row seats. And you it you could argue that by posting things on the internet, you open yourself up to these negative comments as well. But sometimes ⁓ things can go quite far. I just know when I open a certain video and I just see like why why is this in my feed? It seems out of the ordinary. And then I see, ⁓ I I think the comments are going to be horrible. And then I I gently open the comments, and then there it is. It's it's the most ⁓ people say the most horrible things ⁓ on the internet, which is it c yeah, unfortunately it it ca it can be funny, but it it it can also be ⁓ quite cruel. So i I I can imagine that must be ⁓ difficult when that happens to you. What I'm what I'm curious about is you mentioned that ⁓ some of the results from from those study do imply that people who tend to enjoy dark humor have some other ⁓ traits that can be seen as I don't know, you mentioned ⁓ s sadistic traits, you you mentioned ⁓ some other ones, please f film fill me in there again. But does that necessarily mean that sh should we feel bad when we enjoy dark humor? What what does that say about us? So it was everyday sadism we found in the study, and then other studies found lower empathy, for example, ⁓ lower agreeableness, lower conscientiousness. ⁓ so people who are just who don't have to follow the norms or the rules. ⁓ so those would be the people who tend to engage in dark humor more. However, when I say that, that is just a correlational trend, that is just a relationship. So we have that tendency of someone who likes dark humor to also have higher scores in sadism. It doesn't mean that has to be the case, because as I mentioned, it can be quite complex. So there can be people who are high in dark humor, but who are also very empathetic and who are very low in sadism. That's just the general trend is is towards that. But we can never make a judgment about individual people because we are all different and then people can fall all along the spectrum. And it's just if we look at a group, then yes, this is the tendency we see. If we have an individual, we we don't know. We would have to basically test. So you would have to do questionnaires on empathy and then dark humour and then ⁓ we could make a judgment about this individual person. We'll go back to the conversation in just a second, but first I have an important announcement to make. If you've made it this far, I'm going to assume that you're enjoying the show. If you want to support the show, you can do so by leaving a like or a comment if you're watching on YouTube, or by rating the episode if you're listening on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. However, the single biggest thing you can do to support the show is by sharing it with someone you think might enjoy this episode. This could be a friend, it could be a family member, it could be a colleague. It doesn't really matter. If everyone who's currently listening to this episode would share it with just one person, the show would blow up in no time. Which also means that I could go full time. That means more episodes, it means better episodes, and it also means a happy host. So Please consider sharing the episode. It really helps me a lot. And I thank you. Now let's get back to talking. Yeah, and we we've discussed the the reason why we evolved to enjoy humor in the first place. There's ⁓ the the sense of perhaps that it helps with mating, signaling intelligence. We've discussed coping mechanisms which appear Presumably ⁓ concerns dark humor a lot as well. ⁓ are there any more reasons ⁓ why we think that people enjoy dark humor? So another group that shows a lot of dark humor is people that work in emergency services. So I've done ⁓ A qualitative study with a student of mine, but also there are quite a few studies out there already that looked at, for example, police force or ⁓ people working in hospitals, people working in emergency care. Because this is where the coping can happen when they see adversity, obviously a lot of stress, but also they are confronted with death and disability in their daily lives. And for them they would usually obviously not joke with the patients, but they would joke among them in the team. ⁓ so let's say they had ⁓ fatality ⁓ on that day, then often the debrief can involve humor, and that's usually not planned humor, but just spontaneous humour that comes out as a way to cope with the the really emotional things that they have experienced. ⁓ so I think we are very adapted to coping with adversities because that's why obviously a lot of research is on clinical psychology, because We first look at the things that that go wrong and see, okay, how can we still survive even if if things don't go the way we planned, how can we build resilience? ⁓ and that's is where dark humour can come in because we all experience loss in our lives, ⁓ or we might experience other things, and then that's especially where dark humour shines. ⁓ and especially dark humour in combination with self directed humour, so with the ability to laugh at yourself. Because then you can use both this lighthearted perspective about yourself and a little bit of a darker approach and then integrate it into something that actually makes you feel more at ease and hopefully makes the ones around you ⁓ more at ease as well. Yeah, I can I can see that being useful for police officers as well, people in the army. ⁓ that's ⁓ I I believe I know those are groups of people that also tend to resort to to dark humor ⁓ a lot. And w when we talk about ⁓ maybe hi ⁓ humor in general, but then also dark humor, ⁓ w what do we know about the h the history of it? Well d did we always w I mean it must be pretty difficult to to study because a lot of the history is lost and from from the very early stages of our history we resort to to ancient drawings and and depictions. But Is it known how far our desire to engage in humor goes goes back? That's actually a very interesting question. So ⁓ I'm not actually aware if there are drawings that shows people laughing, but we do know that when we look at infants, for example, because obviously when we look at human development, we can look at whenever humans first ⁓ arrived, or we can look at ⁓ a newborn. And see how they go through the different stages of humor. And that is kind of a a microcosm of human development that we can see. And what we know is that smiling develops very early in laughter. And it always develops. So it's an innate signal. They don't need to see anybody else laughing. They will always do that. So it is something that is that we are born with. So I would imagine that any human, ⁓ obviously I can't empirically validate that, but from what we can see is it's like a biological ⁓ it's it's built into us that we can smile and laugh. ⁓ because especially in the beginning of life, it is so important because we know attachment is a very important predictor for future health and well being. And how do we create attachment with others? We smile and laugh. Yeah, so it's a sign of the infant bonding with the mother or the caretaker. So it is something that is probably shown by or has always been shown by humans to signal, ⁓ you're my mommy, you're here for me, you support me, and then hopefully the mom smiles back as well and they create this nice bond. So ⁓ from that perspective, I would say yes, it has always been it's not something that we learned as a society. I think the society comes more in in terms of what humor is allowed and what is not allowed, what is a taboo. What can be joked about or how we engage in humor? Obviously, with the internet, a lot of things have changed. Mont many more people can create humor and and reach further audiences. But this innate recip ⁓ reception of humor and production of humor. I mean, my little one, he's now almost two years old and he takes a banana for a phone and puts a f ⁓ a car on his ⁓ on his head. And they just love it when they get the attention and and the laughter. So it's just something that they do because they're very playful, obviously. and and learning is playing. So actually being playful and and humour is a process of development, so also of cognitive development. Playing with speech then facilitates the speech development. ⁓ when they joke about ⁓ objects and things, it's about understanding what objects mean. Or just ⁓ exploring the motor skills. So humor and playfulness is tied to infant motor, cognitive, and emotional development as well. So from that perspective, I would say it's always been there and it serves actually a very important developmental function ⁓ for us. That's such an interesting point you raised there, because it's very true. A lot of my friends have have young children, babies at the moment, and when I go to to visit them ⁓ their babies are laughing like ⁓ as from a few months old they they are laughing and they're they're curious and they're they're they're gaggling so that is something that seems to arise almost immediately and also if you look at the other end of the the spectrum if you will ⁓ that ⁓ people who are very old they still like to joke around as well so it's something that is really happening throughout our entire lives. Is I I Sorry can I just do one quick point on that? ⁓ because we worked ⁓ with clinic clowns and we worked with people at end of life in hospice care. ⁓ and saw and looked at how humor interventions or clown interventions could maybe provide a bit of quality of life at that stage. And one thing the clowns would always say to us is let's say someone has dementia or cognitive decline. And they can't they don't even recognise their spouse anymore, they don't recognise their kids anymore, but they still have the sense of humor. That is something that is preserved until the very end. So they were able to engage in funny songs or or silly ⁓ games, and that was still making them laugh and smile. So humor is really one thing that can still connect until the very end of life. So I think you made a very important point there. Wow, that's so interesting. And ⁓ pr presumably the humor the the the taste in humor would be quite different if you have dementia because as we've established, a lot of jokes require a lot of context and mutual understanding of a situation, which sadly gets lost when people suffer from dementia. But it's very interesting that still humor persists perhaps in a different form, and that we ⁓ have it basically throughout our our entire lives. What one thing that that seems interesting to me is that o obviously when people are depressed, w when they are very sad, like a sad person may still make a a self mockery joke. ⁓ i when they are sad, but someone who is like truly depressed won won't probably engage in in any form of of humor. Is having a life full of humor can that it's it's like kind of a chicken and egg story, right? So is a life filled with humor you probably don't have ⁓ a a l a lot of depression, but can humor actually help to make us more happy, or do happier people just tend to make more jokes and engage in humor more often? So here I can actually give you an empirical answer because there are a lot of humor interventions out there. some are developed for determinally serious. So even people who think they don't have a sense of humor, or who might be ⁓ more prevalent ⁓ in bad mood or depressed states. So what we know from quite a bit of though there are many different humor interventions. Some are in a group setting, some are self paced and can be done online. A very simple one maybe for your audience is for a week at the end of each day, sit down and think about three funny things that you experienced on that day and write down briefly why you thought that was funny. If you do that the first day, it's might be a bit difficult because you think, ⁓ my god, what was there? And then as you go along during the week, it will be much easier. And what happens is it rewires our brain to look more at the funny things that we experience in daily life and it increases our memory for funny experiences as well. So that is one empirically validated human intervention that we know. And if you do this for just a week, ⁓ the that what we call the three funny things intervention, there are empirical studies that show for up to half a year You experience less depressive symptoms and more happiness and more life satisfaction. Yeah, so we do know from human interventions, yes, they can increase ⁓ quality of life, they can increase resilience, they can increase your coping skills. And there are some more elaborate programs. ⁓ but yeah, even a simple intervention like that is already showing quite long-lasting effects. So we do know, yes, humor actually contributes to positive. ⁓ outcomes that can be quite long lasting. Wow, that's so interesting. So actually by paying more attention to the humor in our day-to-day lives, we open ourselves up to having more humor and fun into our lives, which then rewires our brain, which then subsequently makes us see the funny things in life more often, which then makes us more happy. Exactly. Wow, that's that's fascinating. One thing I want to touch on that you briefly mentioned there as well. I I recently did a ⁓ an episode with ⁓ Robert Zatori ⁓ about the science of music, the neuroscience of music. And ⁓ there are some people who are more responsive to music and get more emotional when they listen to it. They just react stronger to hearing sound, hearing music. But there were interesting interestingly, there were also people that didn't feel anything when listening to music. So they would hook up their brains to a machine so they could see the ⁓ electrical activity and the different parts of the brain that would normally light up. And their ears were completely fine. They can register the sounds. It just didn't do anything to them. And basically the wiring between those areas was actually much weaker. ⁓ compared to people who feel very strongly about music. Is there something similar with humor? Are there just people that aren't necessarily depressed are just pretty happy, I guess, but just don't find anything funny? So we see the full spectrums of so you could think of comedians as the high level, they might have loads of different humor styles that have they have at their disposal, but then we also have people who might not engage in any humor style. They might say, humor is not for me. And ⁓ in one of the temperament models of humor that has been proposed in the literature, there are actually two types of humorlessness that are distinguished. One is that we already mentioned bad mood. So someone who would like to engage in humor, but they are just too deep down in depressive thoughts or in the situation so they can't see the funny side of it, even if it is presented to them. And I think we have all experienced that that Even if let's say we're funny person, but we're really stressed out and then there is a joke and it's just annoying rather than making us smile because we just think, ⁓ we need to get this thing done and this happened and so we need to be in the right state of mind to actually be able to enjoy humor. We need to have this playful and safe feeling ⁓ so the humor can actually land. But then there are the people who are very serious who just say, I don't understand why people engage in humor. Life is about being productive, about doing important things, and humor is just distracting me. So they don't want to engage in humor because they just don't see the point. So, yes, both of these people, some want to do it but can't, and some others just don't understand what what humor is all about. So yeah, that happens. No, that's that's interesting. I yeah, and some people are just effortlessly funny. I don't know if you know the comedian ⁓ Theo Vaughn. Who has a podcast as well, but he he is very funny. Like he does make jokes, so he he knows how to make jokes. He is a comedian, but he's also effortlessly funny. So the things he he his mind just works in ⁓ in a different way, I suppose. before we end it today, I you briefly touched on your ⁓ ⁓ upcoming ⁓ study ⁓ that you're currently ⁓ working on ⁓ regarding the new new category. So ⁓ w what is next and and what is it that ⁓ we can expect ⁓ from ⁓ on the on the humor ⁓ side of things? Yeah, I still have a whole host of unpublished studies. ⁓ and yeah, I chip away slowly but ⁓ steadily. So a lot of it is in collaboration with my my former colleagues in Zurich, ⁓ Professor Willi Balduch and others. And ⁓ yeah so One thing is that we look a bit at the ⁓ humor styles questionnaire, which is what I already did in my PhD, and we now have a bit of a a roundup that we are preparing, ⁓ where we review because it's the most commonly used measure in psychological humor research. ⁓ and it's now twenty-five years in almost, so ⁓ we thought it's time to to review it a bit. ⁓ then we have our big model of humor with the currently 23 styles. Which is gonna be ⁓ yeah, a big effort because there are loads and loads of studies that that come in. But we kind of try to set a comprehensive framework and then publish measures along at as well in German and in English. we have already some translations available as well from some other collaborators, and that we will then make available so people can use that in in their own research, ⁓ which includes dark humor, but also ⁓ a style that you mentioned, dry humor. So this really dead pen ⁓ telling jokes. So there's lots of different styles in there that are relevant for our everyday humor experience. We also have an article planned on humor styles in children and adolescents. So we have some data there that we're writing up. ⁓ one study I would really ⁓ and we have a study on ⁓ self-directed humor where we dissect laughing at yourself and ⁓ what was called self-defeating humor in the research. So to look at what are the more Adaptive and maladaptive aspects of making fun of yourself. So I think those are some of the big articles that are coming up. And what I would really love to do, but ⁓ that requires a lot of funding and persistence, is a longitudinal study on humor where we actually look at from infancy to adulthood and actually see how does humor develop along with personality, creativity, intelligence, because most of the research that we got is just all taken a snapshot at one time or maybe half a year or a year maximum. And I would really be interested in how humour develops, especially now that I see it with my little one. but yeah, that requires obviously long term funding for ten, fifteen, twenty years. ⁓ but yeah that would be kind of my ⁓ my ideal too. maybe start a study like that and then maybe see it happen in my lifetime. Yeah, the Holy Grail. That's that's that's an incredible study. I think that would be fascinating to see if ⁓ it probably needs quite quite a big group too, if you want to pull some some real answers out of it. But to if you would be able to see how our humor develops, what we enjoy in early life, and then as we go into our teenage years and then ⁓ when we are all mature that that would be very ⁓ very fascinating to see i i hope you ⁓ i hope you get it done. I think we we've we've ⁓ established the importance of of humor, how it can be a coping mech mechanism, how it can signal mating importance, how it's very important ⁓ to what people look for in in a partner. we've discussed how It can help us that if we are more open to humor and introduce more humor into our day-to-day lives, how it actually makes us happier, that people report to be happier and have a fuller life. So I just want to re-emphasize at the very end ⁓ why is it so important to do science on humor? Why is it so important to understand ⁓ why we enjoy it and and these different types of humor? So I think with humor especially, that it's a very small field, comparably speaking, in comparison to many other disciplines in humor. And it's very multidisciplinary as well. So we have lots of people in linguistics, literary studies, folklore studies. And I think it's interesting that it's actually quite a small field in psychology, considering how important humor is in our everyday lives. So ⁓ I hope that there will be continued interdisciplinary and also within psychology loads of different efforts to better understand humor because Such a foundational experience. We should really understand to see, okay, how does humor affect the person? So do the sender. How does humor affect other people? So taking the social reception and the situation into account. And then how can we foster humor and especially adaptive forms of humor that are benevolent for the person, benevolent for others? So I think there is a lot of untapped potential because there aren't that many researchers who really do humor studies full-time. and yeah, I think that can be really a great benefit for our everyday understanding and how that we can give recomm recommendations as well for people in how can you best employ humour, ⁓ humour trainings, how can you improve your sense of humour and then really reap those benefits in terms of the personal skills, resilience, coping and so on and interpersonal skills relating to others and romantic relationships. Yeah, I completely agree and I find it incredibly fascinating and yeah I really wanna ⁓ thank you for this wonderful conversation. I I had a great time and I'll make sure to ⁓ start writing down the things I found funny on a single day because the the ⁓ humor journaling sounds like a good approach and sound like it sounds like it could have ⁓ real real benefits. If if people wanna keep up with ⁓ all the st studies you're currently doing, wanna look up your your previous work, wanna stay up to date, ⁓ what are some of the good places to go? Where can they find you? So have a website here at University of Plymouth ⁓ and an email as well because I saw sometimes you put the the contact of your guests in the in the description. So I'm sure we can do that. So ⁓ I can just say it's ⁓ sonia.heinz at Plymouth. Plymouth.ac.uk. So that's my email address where people can contact me. I also have a LinkedIn page so I can share that with you as well. And then yeah, I'm happy to connect with people or ⁓ if they have any questions, then ⁓ please just reach out and I'm happy to to hear from you. Wonderful. Well, Zayan, thank you so much for for coming on today. This was ⁓ phenomenal. And ⁓ yeah, let's ⁓ let's stay in touch because ⁓ I'm very curious to ⁓ all the future ⁓ work ⁓ that you're doing. I am too. ⁓ Thank you.