Crack a grim joke in the wrong room, and you’ll likely get silence, side-eyes, or a fast subject change. It’s an easy way to look insensitive, even rude. A line that feels clever in your head can quickly turn into an awkward silence or a round of uncomfortable looks. But if you’ve ever laughed at a dark or twisted joke and admitted it out loud, that might actually signal something about you, research suggests it could be linked to higher intelligence.
A study looked into this. The researchers described dark humor as humor that deals with heavy topics like death, illness, disability, or war, but presents them in a way that is meant to be funny. It is the type of humor that walks the line between discomfort and laughter.
The study, led by Ulrike Willinger at the Medical University of Vienna, asked 156 adults with an average age of 33, including both men and women to rate how well they understood and enjoyed 12 dark-humor cartoons taken from The Black Book by Uli Stein. The participants also took standard verbal and nonverbal IQ tests and answered questions about their mood, aggression levels, and education.
The results showed a trend: people who scored highest on both verbal and nonverbal intelligence tests were the ones most likely to say they understood the jokes and actually enjoyed them. Interestingly, these same people also scored lower on aggression and did not report being in especially bad moods. This finding challenges the common belief that people who enjoy dark humor are bitter, angry, or even sadistic.
Those who scored in the middle range of intelligence showed mixed patterns. Some reported average levels of mood and aggression, while others were more negative: they enjoyed the cartoons the least, had higher aggression scores, and reported worse moods.
The researchers explained that the link between intelligence and enjoyment of dark humor may come from the mental work required to process it. Understanding a dark joke is not simple. Like understanding a pun, it takes effort to connect the layers of meaning and see why it is funny. On the other hand, being able to laugh at grim content also requires some emotional distance. The study noted that people who like this type of humor are often able to treat unpleasant subjects as “playful fiction” rather than real threats.
It may not be wise to test out every dark joke at the office, the study suggests that if you get them and actually find them funny, it might say more about your intelligence and your ability to handle uncomfortable topics with ease than it does about any hidden anger.
