What makes you laugh could indicate whether you are a narcissist or a psychopath, a new study has found.
Researchers at Studio Psi.Co. in Italy investigated the connection between comic style descriptors and ‘dark triad’ personality traits.
These are psychopathy, defined by lack of empathy and antisocial behaviour; narcissism, a self-centred personality style; and Machiavellianism, demonstrating manipulation and indifference towards morality.
The psychologists claim that those exhibiting these traits may use humour to belittle others or elevate themselves in a more socially-acceptable manner than outright attacking or bragging.
The authors wrote: ‘Machiavellianism and psychopathy correlated positively with the darker styles.
‘Psychopathy showed the strongest positive correlations with the mockery styles; satire, sarcasm, and cynicism.
‘Machiavellianism was the best predictor of irony and was not related to the other comic styles.
‘Narcissism mainly correlated significantly with the lighter styles, being the best predictor of wit and humour, while it was not related to nonsense.’
The researchers gave 715 adults two questionnaires; one to determine their comic style and the other to uncover any dark personality traits.
They used statistical analysis to determine any correlation between the two.
The eight comic styles were defined in a 2018 study, and were split into ‘lighter’ and ‘darker’ styles.
