If You Have A Really Sick Sense Of Humor, You Might Be More Intelligent

Death is funny, right? Oh, you don't think so?

You must be an idiot.

OK, so maybe that was harsh, but the fact is, a link between intelligence and dark humor has been discovered by researchers in Vienna, and the findings were recently published in Cognitive Processing.

Led by Ulrike Willinger at the Medical University of Vienna, the study asked 156 participants to rate how much they enjoyed and understood dark cartoons from the "The Black Book" by Uli Stein.

His cartoons are described on his website as, "Abysmal, deep black humor beyond all limits of taste."

Sounds goddamned hilarious, am I right? I think so.

The participants in the study who rated their enjoyment of the cartoons were then tested for their verbal and non-verbal IQ levels.

Interestingly, those with the highest levels of education, verbal and non-verbal IQ also rated the highest levels of appreciation for sick and twisted humor.

Researchers concluded this finding suggests that processing dark humor is a more "complex information-processing task."

While the sample size of the group was small, this study isn't the first of its kind to yield these results.

According to Indy 100,

Humour can be a coping mechanism for psychological injury - a study among journalists exposed to trauma found a correlation with black humour use, while studies have found that laughter can lead to immediate increases in heart rate, respiratory rate, respiratory depth and oxygen consumption - possibly even helping decrease stress hormones.

Well, this explains why my humor took a turn for the dark side.

When you've been through a lot of death (which I have) or have had near-death experiences yourself, you strangely gain both an appreciation for life and an ability to not take it so seriously.

So the next time you're in the office and someone makes a dark joke, don't be afraid to laugh at it.

It's good for you, and it makes you smarter than everyone else.

Citations: Liking dark and twisted jokes could be sign of intelligence (Indy100)