The literal meaning is the actual, dictionary meaning of the words used. If you do not understand the sarcasm in what a person says, you miss the joke and may feel left out of the conversation. This can lead to some difficult social situations. In research in my laboratory, we have found that young children do not usually understand sarcasm until they are 5—6 years old, and they may not find sarcasm funny until they are even older.
We then ask children a series of simple questions to figure out whether they understood the sarcasm. This work has shown that while 5- to 6-year-old children may understand that the speaker means the opposite of what he or she has said, the children do not understand why the speaker would talk that way; they do not see the humor [ 2 ]. Children start to see the humor in sarcasm around 8 or 9 years of age.
With a cabbage patch! Around 9 years of age children start to find more humor in teasing other people and also in sarcasm. In another version of our puppet show task, children tell us what they think the speaker means without having to say much at all. So, if the children choose the duck, they are showing us that they think the speaker means something nice the literal meaning. If they choose the shark, they are showing us they think the speaker is being mean the sarcastic meaning.
At the beginning of each experiment, the shark and duck are placed on the table, one to the left and one to the right of the child. We put a video camera nearby to continuously record where the children are looking and how long they take when they are making their decisions. Studying where people are looking when they perform a task is called eye tracking. Eye tracking gives researchers clues about what is happening in the brain, because scientists have shown that people tend to look at whatever it is they are thinking about.
If children look at the shark while they are making their decision, we assume that they are thinking about the shark the sarcastic meaning. If children look at the duck while they are making their decision, we assume that they are thinking about the duck the literal meaning. After selecting the shark or the duck, children are asked two simple questions about what the speaker believed and whether the speaker was trying to be funny.
With this experiment, children can demonstrate their understanding of sarcasm without having to explain themselves. This makes this experiment a good choice for use with young children, who are just developing their language skills, and for children with an autism spectrum disorder, who tend to struggle with explaining what people mean.
One theory, called the literal first account , suggests that children must first think about the literal meaning before they can figure out that the literal meaning does not fit, then they move on to the sarcastic meaning. According to this theory, in our experiment, children would look first at the literal response object the duck before shifting gaze to the sarcastic response object the shark.
According to this theory, in our experiment, children would not necessarily look at the duck first. People with an autism spectrum disorder usually have a hard time understanding sarcasm and may take sarcastic speech literally. This makes it hard for them to understand teasing and joking.
We compared the results from this group of children with the results from a group of 19 children who did not have autism spectrum disorders. We found that the children with autism spectrum disorders were just as able to detect sarcasm as the children without these disorders. The children with autism spectrum disorders made their choices more quickly: they took on average 3. Although they were accurate and fast, the children with autism spectrum disorders did not detect that the sarcastic puppet was trying to be funny, while the other children did.
The Greek root for sarcasm, sarkazein , means to tear flesh like dogs. According to Haiman, dog-eat-dog sarcastic commentary is just part of our quest to be cool. 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. There appear to be regional variations in sarcasm. A study that compared college students from upstate New York with students from near Memphis, Tennessee, found that the Northerners were more likely to suggest sarcastic jibes when asked to fill in the dialogue in a hypothetical conversation.
Northerners also were more likely to think sarcasm was funny: 56 percent of Northerners found sarcasm humorous while only 35 percent of Southerners did. Others were recipients of these different types of messages from others.
Not surprisingly, the participants exposed to sarcasm reported more interpersonal conflict than those in other groups. More interestingly, those who engaged in a sarcastic conversation fared better on creativity tasks. The processes involved in initiating and delivering a sarcastic comment improved the creativity and cognitive functioning of both the commenter and the recipient. Why might sarcasm enhance creativity?
Because the brain must think creatively to understand or convey a sarcastic comment, sarcasm may lead to clearer and more creative thinking. To either create or understand sarcasm, tone must overcome the contradiction between the literal and actual meanings of the sarcastic expressions. This is a process that activates, and is facilitated by, abstraction, which in turn promotes creative thinking. Consider the following example, which comes from a conversation one of my co-authors on the research Adam Galinsky, of Columbia had a few weeks before getting married.
This is not the first set of studies showing that creativity can be boosted by things that would commonly be considered creativity killers. In one series of studies , for example, researchers found that moderate noise can be an untapped source of creativity, providing a welcome distraction that helps the brain make disparate associations. In addition, alcohol is believed to aid creativity , up to a point, by reducing focus and relaxing the mind.
Sarcasm can be interpreted negatively, and thus cause relationship costs. So, how do we harness its creative benefits without creating the type of conflict that can damage a relationship? It comes down to trust. Our studies show that, given the same content and tone, sarcasm expressed toward or received from someone we trust is less conflict provoking than sarcasm expressed toward or received from someone we distrust. Of course, if we were to vary the tone and content, it would make a difference too — given an extremely harsh tone and critical content, even trust might not be enough.
Given the risks and benefits of sarcasm, your best bet is to keep salty remarks limited to conversations with those you know well, lest you offend others—even as you potentially help them think more creatively. Are you a scientist who specializes in neuroscience, cognitive science, or psychology? And have you read a recent peer-reviewed paper that you would like to write about?
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