How does sarcasm equate to creativity?

by Terry Robson September 18, 2015

You only have to watch the Twitter feed on an episode of “Q&A” to realise that sarcasm is the flesh on which Twittervores, and denizens of other social media lairs, feed. You can imagine someone at home rubbing their fingerless gloved hands in sarcastic glee as they punch out something to the effect of “Ooh, a government minister and a cellist on the #qanda panel. There’ll be sour notes tonight”. It’s not that sarcasm has been invented by social media of course; it at least dates back to our hunter-gatherer ancestors when Og said, “OK Ug, you’re the one chasing the bear today”, to which Ug replied, “Fantastic”. As pervasive as it is, sarcasm has been labelled the lowest form of wit but according to a new study, maybe not so much.

Our word ‘sarcasm’ probably comes from the French ‘sarcasmor’ which means to “tear the flesh”. After all, that is what sarcasm does, it ridicule a person or thing, tearing it down by word or tone, without directly addressing the subject. It is usually meant to wound to a degree which may be why it is so poorly rated however new research does suggest that sarcasm benefits not only the sarcasmiser (the sarcaster? the one who is sarcastic?) but also the sarcasmees (the sarcasualties? those who hear the sarcasm?).

As pervasive as it is, sarcasm has been labelled the lowest form of wit but according to a new study, maybe not so much.

The research involved a series of studies in which people were randomly assigned to simulated conversation tasks in which they were either instructed to make replies that were sarcastic, sincere, or neutral. They were then responded to with sarcastic, sincere, or neutral replies and so a conversation was built.

When the subjects came to perform tasks after the conversations, those who had expressed sarcasm and those who had been subjected to sarcasm did better on tasks requiring creativity compared to the people in the sincere or neutral groups.

The theory goes that to create or decode sarcasm the expresser of the sarcasm and the recipients of the sarcasm all need to psychologically resolve the contradiction that exists between the literal and actual meanings of the sarcastic expression. This resolution of psychological distance involves abstraction and that in turn promotes creative thinking.

So maybe sarcasm isn’t so low after all, and if you don’t agree, my heart bleeds for you.