Sarcasm - not just for being smartass anymore

[DarkSilver]

Meredith F. Small
LiveScience's Human Nature Columnist
LiveScience.com 1 hour, 32 minutes ago

Humans are fundamentally social animals. Our social nature means that we interact with each other in positive, friendly ways, and it also means we know how to manipulate others in a very negative way.
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Neurophysiologist Katherine Rankin at the University of California, San Francisco, has also recently discovered that sarcasm, which is both positively funny and negatively nasty, plays an important part in human social interaction.

So what?

I mean really, who cares? Oh for God's sake. Don't you have anything better to do that read this column?

According to Dr. Rankin, if you didn't get the sarcastic tone of the previous sentences you must have some damage to your parahippocampal gyrus which is located in the right brain. People with dementia, or head injuries in that area, often loose the ability to pick up on sarcasm, and so they don't respond in a socially appropriate ways.

Presumably, this is a pathology, which in turn suggests that sarcasm is part of human nature and probably an evolutionarily good thing.

How might something so, well, sarcastic as sarcasm, be part of the human social toolbox?

Evolutionary biologists claim that sociality is what has made humans such a successful species. We are masters at what anthropologists and others call "social intelligence." We recognize and keep track of hundreds of relationships, and we easily distinguish between enemies and friends.

More important, we run our lives by social calculation. A favor is mentally recorded and paid back, sometimes many years later. Likewise, insults are marked down on the mental score card in indelible ink. And we are constantly bickering and making up, even with people we love.

Sarcasm, then, is a verbal hammer that connects people in both a negative and positive way. We know that sense of humor is important to relationships; if someone doesn't get your jokes, they aren't likely to be your friend (or at least that's my bottom line about friendship). Sarcasm is simply humor's dark side, and it would be just as disconcerting if a friend didn't get your snide remarks.

It's also easy to imagine how sarcasm might be selected over time as evolutionarily crucial. Imagine two ancient humans running across the savannah with a hungry lion in pursuit. One guy says to the other, "Are we having fun yet?" and the other just looks blank and stops to figure out what in the world his pal meant by that remark. End of friendship, end of one guy's contribution to the future of the human gene pool.

Fast forward a few million years and the network of human relationships is wider and more complex, and just as important to survival. The corporate chairman throws out a sarcastic remark and those who "get" it laugh, smile, and gain favor. In the same way, if the chair never makes a remark, sarcastic people are making them behind his or her back, forming a clique by their mutually negative, but funny, comments. Either way, sarcasm plays a role in making and breaking alliances and friendship.

Thanks goodness, because life without out sarcasm would be a dull and way too nice place to be, if you ask me.

* Video: Humor and the Sexes
* Top 10 Mysteries of the Mind
* Emotional Wiring Different in Women and Men

Meredith F. Small is an anthropologist at Cornell University. She is also the author of "Our Babies, Ourselves; How Biology and Culture Shape the Way We Parent" (link) and "The Culture of Our Discontent; Beyond the Medical Model of Mental Illness" (link).

* Original Story: Sarcasm Seen as Evolutionary Survival Skill

I'm not sure how to respond to this one......

[phred]

Are we having fun yet?

[Darth Wong]

Isn't it simpler to recognize that a lot of humour relies upon cognitive dissonance and surprise, and that sarcasm is an example of this? Why elevate sarcasm to the level of a distinct survival trait?

[CmdrWilkens]

Isn't it simpler to recognize that a lot of humour relies upon cognitive dissonance and surprise, and that sarcasm is an example of this? Why elevate sarcasm to the level of a distinct survival trait?

Because there is no research grant money for comedy.

[J]

I'm not sure how to respond to this one......

I know! I know!





Of course now everyone will think I'm on drugs...

[Patrick Degan]

Isn't it simpler to recognize that a lot of humour relies upon cognitive dissonance and surprise, and that sarcasm is an example of this? Why elevate sarcasm to the level of a distinct survival trait?

Because there is no research grant money for comedy.

Actually, this is how you get the research grant money for comedy.

[Dooey Jo]

It's also easy to imagine how sarcasm might be selected over time as evolutionarily crucial. Imagine two ancient humans running across the savannah with a hungry lion in pursuit. One guy says to the other, "Are we having fun yet?" and the other just looks blank and stops to figure out what in the world his pal meant by that remark. End of friendship, end of one guy's contribution to the future of the human gene pool.

I hope that's supposed to be sarcasm, for a large number of reasons...

[Molyneux]

So...if someone finds it hard to detect sarcasm except through context, it means they're likely brain-damaged?

Great. Guess I'm doing just fine, then.

[The Yosemite Bear]

Does this mean that Nitram, and Bean are part of a sarcasm Eugenics project?

[Akumz Razor]

Our social nature means that we interact with each other in positive, friendly ways, and it also means we know how to manipulate others in a very negative way.
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Anyone else find this hilariously ironic?

[Alyrium Denryle]

Isn't it simpler to recognize that a lot of humour relies upon cognitive dissonance and surprise, and that sarcasm is an example of this? Why elevate sarcasm to the level of a distinct survival trait?

Because humor in general is energetically costly and leaves you vulnerable. It it was not adaptive, it would be selected against and we would not have the brain pathways to appreciate it.

Take non-sarcastic humor. If you laugh with someone, you build social bonds, which increases your fitness. But why does it build social bonds? It could be a signal of safety. "We have enough resources and are safe from predators it is time to take this moment to build inter-personal alliances" You tell a story about how Ugh ate that shellfish that tasted bad, everyone laughs, remembering shared experiences. The more you laugh with someone, the more of these social experiences you have, the stronger the bond, additionally it signals over time that this person is a good social partner because you have sufficient resources and are safe often enough to indulge in such frivolities more often.

As an aside, look at kids when they play. You have a couple. If they fall, or something else happens that could injure them, and they laugh, they are not injured. They are signaling safety. If they cry, they are injured or in need of some other situation addressed.

Sarcasm is using this signal as tool to more aggressive social ends. You can use it to exclude someone, making a negative comment regarding them in front of others decreasing their social status, while increasing your own by inducing laughter. You could do this to increase your fitness at the expense of a rival. Killing two birds with one stone.

In times of drawn-out stress and difficulty, sarcasm can also be used to increase espirit de corps, and morale. "Wow, that cavalry charge was a cakewalk wasn't it?"

I can go on, example after example....

[The Yosemite Bear]

hey guys we get to fight in the shade

[Alyrium Denryle]

hey guys we get to fight in the shade

<insert laughter and corresponding increase in morale and thus chance of victory and thus fitness here>

[Darth Wong]

Because humor in general is energetically costly and leaves you vulnerable. It it was not adaptive, it would be selected against and we would not have the brain pathways to appreciate it.

I was not saying that humour is not a potential evolutionary adaptive trait. I was saying that it is unnecessary to separate sarcasm from other types of humour for special treatment as a distinct adaptive trait.

[The Yosemite Bear]

Except those guys at Thempyle got killed except for two guys.

[Alyrium Denryle]

Because humor in general is energetically costly and leaves you vulnerable. It it was not adaptive, it would be selected against and we would not have the brain pathways to appreciate it.

I was not saying that humour is not a potential evolutionary adaptive trait. I was saying that it is unnecessary to separate sarcasm from other types of humour for special treatment as a distinct adaptive trait.

Oh.

Not necessarily, but there are lumpers and splitters. Personally I am a splitter, well, really more a of a nester. Sarcasm is a special sort of humor that has specific applications within the rest of humor.

[Wyrm]

Actually, this is how you get the research grant money for comedy.

Does this mean we'll finally build a better comedian?