Why sarcasm

The reason is simple: sarcasm expresses the poisonous sting of contempt, hurting others and harming relationships. As a form of communication, sarcasm takes on the debt of conflict. And yet, our research suggests, there may also be some unexpected benefits from sarcasm: greater creativity.

The use of sarcasm, in fact, promotes creativity for those on both the giving and receiving end of sarcastic exchanges. Instead of avoiding sarcasm completely in the office, the research suggests sarcasm, used with care and in moderation, can be effectively used and trigger some creative sparks. Sarcasm involves constructing or exposing contradictions between intended meanings.

The most common form of verbal irony, sarcasm is often used to humorously convey thinly veiled disapproval or scorn. Early research on sarcasm explored how people interpret statements and found that, as expected, sarcasm makes a statement sound more critical.

Participants rated sarcasm to be more condemning than literal statements. Both perspectives prompted participants to rate sarcastic comments by the second person as more impolite relative to literal comments. Other research has show that sarcasm can be easily misinterpreted, particularly when communicated electronically. In one study , 30 pairs of university students were given a list of statements to communicate, half of which were sarcastic and half of which were serious.

Some students communicated their messages via e-mail and others via voice recordings. Participants who received the voice messages accurately gleaned the sarcasm or lack thereof 73 percent of the time, but those who received the statements via e-mail did so only 56 percent of the time, hardly better than chance. By comparison, the e-mailers had anticipated that 78 percent of participants would pick up on the sarcasm inherent in their sarcastic statements. This is probably why studies find that although children can start to detect sarcasm at age five or six, they take longer to develop appreciation for why people use sarcasm.

Research shows that even when children have strong language and thinking skills, they still might not be able to detect sarcastic speech. These developmental skills are important to understanding sarcasm but they may not be sufficient. Something else is required. One possibility is that through experience children need to build knowledge about what sarcasm is and why people use it, in order to recognize it themselves. Together, we randomly assigned five- to six-year-old children to two groups.

One group received training about sarcasm and the other, a control group, did not. We provided sarcasm training to children with a short storybook that we read and discussed with each child. Why do people do this?

How do we learn to understand sarcasm? What happens in our brains when we are processing sarcasm? These are the questions addressed in scientific research on sarcasm.

Here, I explain some of what we have learned from research on these questions. Understanding sarcasm is a challenge for young children, for individuals with autism spectrum disorders, and for some patients with brain damage.

I like a quiet life, you know me. In fact, Harry is being sarcastic. It seems logical to assume that, when we speak, our main goal is for other people to understand exactly what we mean.

It is surprising, then, that we sometimes say the opposite of what we mean, speaking sarcastically as Harry does in his response to Mrs. Recently, scientific research has given us some good ideas about why we do this, and about how we understand sarcastic speech.

Sarcasm has been part of human language for thousands of years. We often use it to be funny, just as Harry does when he speaks sarcastically to Mrs. He is trying to be funny and succeeds in making Mrs. Weasley chuckle. These familiar forms of sarcasm are the type that children usually use first when they begin using sarcasm, around age four or five. Adults and older children often use more complex and creative forms of sarcasm, like Harry does in the example above.

More complex forms of sarcasm usually fit a specific situation and can be a way of hiding criticism from a listener. In addition to age differences, there are also personal differences in the way sarcasm is used: some people use sarcasm a lot and others use it very little Box 1.

Most adults hear sarcastic speech every day and understand it without much difficulty. However, some people struggle to understand sarcasm and tend to think the speaker literally means what he or she has said. The literal meaning is the actual, dictionary meaning of the words used. Sarcasm is also a handy tool. Most of us go through life expecting things to turn out well, says Penny Pexman, a University of Calgary psychologist who has been studying sarcasm for more than 20 years.

Otherwise, no one would plan an outdoor wedding. When things go sour, Pexman says, a sarcastic comment is a way to simultaneously express our expectation as well as our disappointment. But among strangers, sarcasm use soars if the conversation is via an anonymous computer chat room as opposed to face to face, according to a study by Jeffrey Hancock, a communications professor at Cornell University.

He also noted that conversations typed on a computer take more time than a face to face discussion. People may use that extra time to construct more complicated ironic statements. Kids pick up the ability to detect sarcasm at a young age. Pexman and her colleagues in Calgary showed children short puppet shows in which one of the puppets made either a literal or a sarcastic statement. The children were asked to put a toy duck in a box if they thought the puppet was being nice.

If they thought the puppet was being mean, they were supposed to put a toy shark in a box. Children as young as 5 were able to detect sarcastic statements quickly. And she says parents who report being sarcastic themselves have kids who are better at understanding sarcasm.