Human beings have the curious habit of communicate using words that appear to be independent of the actual meaning of the sentences Any poetry is a clear example of this, but our way of playing with language goes far beyond moments of artistic inspiration. Any of our conversations with our family, our friends, or our co-workers are plagued with moments when what we want to say and what we actually say seem to go in opposite directions. In fact, there are entire personalities that are forged in these types of contradictions.
He sarcasm It is another way in which this symbolic clash is revealed. When you send a message that incorporates a good amount of sarcasm, you are signing exactly the opposite of what is being said. And it is precisely this discrepancy that makes the covert burlesque attitude a good source of mental gymnastics to train our creativity, according to some studies.
While sending a message in which the information you want to transmit is perfectly encoded in a series of signs, which is what electronic systems do, sending any other type of message means demanding more from the brain, since it has to judge elements contextual and other variables that go far beyond the linguistic level. Using sarcasm, both to produce it and to interpret it, involves imagining something and at the same time its opposite and that represents a challenge for our organ of thought.
Knowing whether someone is being sarcastic or not involves making various parts of the brain work together, considering many possibilities and reaching a final agreement. In this way, while the language areas of the left hemisphere of the brain process the literal information of the words that have been registered while other areas of the right hemisphere and the frontal lobes are responsible for analyzing the Social context in which the message has been collected and the emotional charge associated with it.
Thanks to this parallel processing it is possible to detect the contradiction between the literality and intentionality of the same message, and for this reason most of us are not very bad at recognizing sarcasm when it is presented to us.
However, putting so many parts of the brain to work requires a degree of demand that we do not face when processing literal messages. Interpreting pieces of sarcasm involves developing a kind of theory of mind to put yourself in the other’s shoes and infer the meaning of their words, and producing messages with irony means being skilled at transmitting ideas by saying exactly the opposite. This is what has made some researchers think that people versed in the art of sarcasm could perform better at certain tasks related to creativity simply because they have been training their brains without realizing it.
A little mental training in creativity
Reinforcing this idea, a group of researchers carried out in 2011 a series of experiments in which it was proven how exposure to a speech with hints of sarcasm improves people’s performance in tasks related to creativity
In this research, volunteers listened to a message recorded on the customer service telephone line used by a company. In this audio track, a person could be heard complaining about the time slot during which the company made deliveries. However, not all participants heard the same message. Some people were able to hear a message in which the complaint was expressed directly, aggressively and with negative intonation. Others heard a complaint in an ironic tone, with negative intonation but positive language. A third group of volunteers listened to a complaint with neutral language and a tone of voice devoid of emotionality.
After experiencing this, participants were asked to solve a series of problems, some of which required lateral thinking and creativity and others being analytical in nature. The people who had heard the complaints in an aggressive tone performed slightly better than the rest in solving the analytical tasks, but they were the ones who did worse in the tasks that required creativity. It was the volunteers who had heard the complaint in a sarcastic tone who stood out with significantly better scores on creative problems
Apparently, people whose brains had had to work to interpret a sarcastic speech had for this reason become more capable of solving tasks whose resolution depends on integrating various information that is not directly related to the instructions to follow. In this way, someone who has been exposed to irony can excel in lateral thinking by finding new relationships between ideas that are apparently far from each other.
Pointing towards new research
It is clear that more research still needs to be carried out to see if the effects of this mental training based on the processing of sarcasm are maintained more or less over time or if they depend on the frequency with which people emit sarcastic messages. It is possible that sarcastic people are more creative, or it may be that we all see our ability to think creatively improve equally after being exposed to a helping of irony.
In any case, It is not difficult to intuitively find a relationship between sarcasm and creativity The idea of a brain accustomed to working on the one hand with literal elements and on the other with emotional and contextual aspects is a powerful image, easily associable to the world of people who work producing art, trying to express sensations that go beyond the technique and the elements used and who think about the context in which their work will be exhibited. Although I’m sure you had already realized that.
