Dr Zoe Stephenson on what research reveals about people who enjoy bleak humour

Finding dark comedy funny does not necessarily mean there is something dark about you. That may sound obvious to comedy audiences, but psychology has not always treated dark humour with as much nuance.

Humour research has often drawn a broad distinction between lighter, more playful forms of humour and darker forms involving hostility, discomfort or taboo subjects. A conclusion had been drawn that people who enjoy dark humour may be less agreeable or more psychologically troubled themselves.

The problem is that ‘dark humour’ is far too broad a label. Historically, dark humour has often been grouped together as a single style, meaning jokes about highly taboo or potentially upsetting subjects (e.g. sexual crime against children, war or death) can end up being treated alongside other forms of humour that might still be considered dark, but are much less taboo in their subject matter.

The Comic Style Markers make a finer distinction, focusing more on what the humour is doing than simply on its subject matter. They distinguish between four dark comic styles – sarcasm, cynicism, irony and satire. For fear of coming across as condescending to readers, I will briefly outline these: Sarcasm and cynicism tend to be harsher and more negatively toned; irony plays with the gap between what is said and what is meant; and satire directs ridicule towards folly, hypocrisy or something perceived to need changing. 

These four styles do not capture every kind of dark comedy, but they help show why darker forms of humour should not all be treated as psychologically equivalent. I’m sure dark comedy fans hardly need telling that the four styles are not interchangeable; psychology has taken a little longer to catch up.

I recently brought together 21 studies examining associations between people’s engagement with these dark comic styles and their individual characteristics, including personality, character strengths and well-being. The clearest conclusion was that what dark humour appears to say about someone depends very much on the particular style involved.

Of the four styles, cynicism was most consistently associated with poorer well-being - more worry, more stress and lower life satisfaction. Cynicism and sarcasm also tended to show stronger links with lower agreeableness and some of the so-called 'dark' personality traits, such as sadism, Machiavellianism and psychopathy.

Satire, however, often behaves differently from sarcasm and cynicism. Across the review, it appeared more contextually flexible, with links to openness, wisdom, intellectual strengths and a more constructive or morally directed form of criticism. In one analysis, once its overlap with the other dark styles was controlled for, satire showed only positive links with character strengths. Irony sits somewhere in between: linked in some studies with anxiety, stress or lower optimism, but also with wisdom and a search for meaning.

The review also produced a counterintuitive finding about narcissism. Taken as a whole, narcissism was weakly related or unrelated to dark comic styles in some studies, and showed stronger links with lighter styles such as wit and fun. So, contrary to the stereotype, darker humour was not generally the preferred territory of more narcissistic people. There was an important qualification, however: when researchers separated narcissism into different forms, its more defensive and confrontational side was associated with sarcasm and irony, while its admiration-seeking side was not.

Comedy lovers and creators do not need psychologists to tell them that the humour someone enjoys or uses can reveal something about them. Some forms seem tied to social performance, admiration or status; others to criticism, moral purpose or exposing hypocrisy. 

What the research adds is evidence that different comic styles are linked with different traits and patterns of well-being. These are trends, not certainties - it would be a mistake to start reading personality diagnoses into what someone happens to find funny - but they challenge the idea that all dark humour points in the same psychological direction.

That more nuanced picture also fits with what we know about dark humour outside entertainment. It has been documented in demanding professions and settings - among emergency service staff, crime scene investigators, hospice workers and people working in forensic contexts. These are not groups of people who lack care or compassion. Quite the opposite: they are often working in close proximity to distress, death, trauma or risk. In those contexts, dark humour can help people cope, bond and connect with others who understand the same pressures. That alone should make us cautious about assuming that dark humour reflects negative character traits.

Beyond helping people cope, dark humour can also make difficult subjects easier to approach. It is not only about shock or transgression; it can take us into places most people would rather avoid - grief, depression, ageing, dementia, disability, sexuality, shame, trauma, death, illness, care and institutional failure. At the satirical end, it can also turn outwards towards politics, media panic, hypocrisy and power. Whether it deals with personal pain or turns outwards, dark humour can make difficult subjects easier to face, giving audiences enough room to laugh while still allowing the uncomfortable part to land.

British comedy has often excelled at using darkness not simply to shock, but to make difficult material easier to approach. Sometimes that darkness is deeply personal. Fleabag uses self-lacerating humour to explore shame, grief, sex and emotional avoidance, while After Life places bereavement and depression at the centre of its comedy. Small Prophets takes a gentler, more offbeat route into loneliness, ageing, dementia and loss. Together, they show that dark comedy can be harsh, gentle or quietly unsettling.

Elsewhere, dark comedy turns towards institutions, politics and systems of belief. Porridge found humour in the prison system without reducing its characters to either villains or victims, while Getting On finds bleak absurdity in the everyday machinery of NHS care. The Thick Of It uses ridicule to expose political vanity, institutional dysfunction and spin, and Everyone Else Burns finds comedy in a family’s life within an apocalyptic religious sect, exploring faith, control and the tension between belonging and escape. 

Universities have provided plenty of comic material too - Campus being one example - and current pressures around money, bureaucracy and AI suggest there is still plenty to work with. Blackadder Goes Forth found comedy in the absurdity and futility of war across an entire series, before allowing the horror beneath the jokes to land with unusual force in its final episode.

Dark comedy does not always need a clear social mission. Inside No. 9 often works through unease, cruelty and moral discomfort without offering an obvious lesson. Darkness can be clever, cathartic or simply entertaining without having to improve society every time. It can also, however, humanise, expose hypocrisy and make difficult subjects harder to ignore.

That is not to say that its effects are simple or guaranteed. A comedy about grief may invite compassion, but it does not guarantee that every viewer accepts the invitation. A satirical sketch does not necessarily change anyone’s politics. Harry Enfield has made this point neatly in relation to Spitting Image, noting that the Tories kept winning while the programme was on air. Satire can make those in power look absurd, but it does not necessarily diminish their power.

That does not mean that dark comedy is powerless. Its influence may be difficult to isolate, but at its best it can draw attention to what society would rather overlook, make familiar assumptions seem absurd and encourage compassion for people too easily defined by a label, an offence or their circumstances. At a time when society can feel increasingly divided, helping audiences to understand lives unlike their own, recognise shared humanity and see hypocrisy or injustice more clearly is no small achievement.

Dark comedy, then, deserves a more nuanced reading - not only in what it may reveal about the people who enjoy and use it, but in what it can help audiences to see. There are already plenty of examples of dark comedy doing this successfully, but there is still scope for more. Its richest territory often lies in complicated people, relationships and moral situations - areas where a psychologist might come in handy, advising on personality, behaviour, morality and how audiences may respond.

Now that I think about it, perhaps this entire article has been an elaborate pitch. Should anyone developing a dark comedy need a psychologist with an interest in dark humour, human behaviour and what comedy might contribute beyond the laugh, I would be delighted to hear from them. Naturally, this would be diversification alongside an academic role I greatly value. Any relationship between the timing of this offer, any note of desperation, and the wider pressures facing the higher-education sector is purely coincidental.

• Dr Zoe Stephenson is an associate professor of forensic psychology at the University of Birmingham. Her systematic review of dark comic styles is published in Current Psychology.

Published: 8 Sep 2026