Why Do Some People Enjoy Dark Humor More than Others?

"What do you get when you cross a rabbit and a Rottweiler?" "Just a Rottweiler." If you found that somewhat macabre joke funny, you also might have a high IQ and be a generally nice person. That's according to a 2017 study published in the journal Cognitive Processing, which found a direct correlation between a person's appreciation of so-called "sick jokes" and both verbal and nonverbal intelligence. In fact, the study participants who most enjoyed dark humor were also better educated, boasted generally good moods, and had the lowest levels of aggressiveness. They also scored the highest on verbal and nonverbal IQ tests. Conducted by the Medical University of Vienna, the study focused on a group of 156 people who had an average age of 33. They were asked to relate their feelings after viewing 12 darkly funny cartoons by Uli Stein, a well-known German humorist.

The wonders of IQ:

• Some research has suggested that people who were breastfed as babies score higher on IQ tests and do better in school.
• The average person has an IQ of 100. In the early 1900s, American child prodigy William James Sidis was estimated to have an IQ between 250 and 300, although this figure may have been somewhat exaggerated.
• In 2006, a University of California at Davis researcher determined that John Quincy Adams was the smartest U.S. president, with an IQ of nearly 169.