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Scientists link brain activity and sarcasm

People with aggressive personalities have brains that are more highly attuned to identifying a sarcastic remark, according to new research by a team of Canadian and American psychologists. The as-yet-unpublished research builds on other findings, recently published by the scientists, which report that it's possible to measure electrical changes in brain activity related to the processing of sarcastic meaning.

"What we've found is that there are quite reliable and measurable neurological differences among people in how they respond to sarcasm. The brains of people with highly aggressive personalities are reacting to sarcastic statements much differently than less aggressive people, who may perceive it more harshly," says Dr. Albert Katz, an NSERC-funded cognitive psychologist at the University of Western Ontario.

The research is part of ongoing efforts to understand the social influences that shape how we know when someone's saying something they don't mean. For, example, men make sarcastic remarks twice as often as women, and are thus more cued to interpret a comment such as "Good driving," from a man as having sarcastic intent, says Dr. Katz, who has studied the mental processing of indirect language for the past decade.

In earlier studies, the researchers hooked EEG sensors onto the scalps of 35 undergraduate students and recorded the surface electrical activity of their brains as they read sentences like "Bob, you're a really good driver." In some cases the statement was preceded by a context that implied the meaning was literal, in others that the meaning was sarcastic. (The same technique was later used to make the connection between aggressive personalities and a keen nose for sarcasm).

According to the study results, when we experience sarcasm we go through the neural equivalent of scrunching our faces and asking, "Are you being sarcastic?" as we try and interpret the indirect communication. After a subject read the last word of a sarcastic sentence, the researchers noted a greater surge of electrical activity several hundred milliseconds after the one traditionally associated with the processing of literal meaning. Dr. Katz says that this sarcastic spike is literally the brain working harder to process the intended meaning of the statement.

"We're seeing this as one of the first direct indications that people are attuned to the sarcastic message. They're trying to make sense of it within the context of what they've heard," says Dr. Katz of the research, which is reported in the October, 2004 issue of Current Directions in Psychological Science. The study was conducted with colleagues Dr. Dawn Blasko and Victoria Kazmerski of Penn State University and student Kristen Shaffer.

For those trying to understand how we process language, the theoretical question is whether we "get" sarcasm within the same time frame as literal meaning, or if it takes rethinking to "get it." Dr. Katz says the results to date don't conclusively answer that question, but the brain electrical activity technique does provide a means of testing the social cues that guide our ability to interpret what has been called the verbal weapon of the disenfranchised. - NSERC.

More information:

Contact: Dr. Albert Katz (519) 661-3681 or katz@uwo.ca

Web site: http://www.ssc.uwo.ca/psychology/faculty/katz_res.htm

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