The Science of Dark Humor - Dr. Sonja Heintz - #63
Oct 12, 2026 · 1 hr 6 min · 15 segments
Sonja Heintz is a Lecturer in Psychology at the University of Plymouth, where she studies the psychology of humour and positive psychology. She earned her PhD at the University of Zurich under…
Sonja Heintz is a Lecturer in Psychology at the University of Plymouth, where she studies the psychology of humour and positive psychology. She earned her PhD at the University of Zurich under Willibald Ruch, one of the leading figures in humour research, and has spent around fifteen years studying what makes people laugh and how humour styles differ from person to person. Her work builds a framework of distinct comic styles, expanding the field's long-standing handful of categories into a far more detailed model that now distinguishes twenty-three. One of her studies looked at whether people who enjoy dark humour score higher on so-called dark personality traits, and found everyday sadism to be the strongest predictor. She has also worked with emergency responders, cancer patients, clinic clowns and hospice patients to understand how dark humour helps people cope with adversity. Expect to learn how humour researchers define humour and why the field settled on such a broad definition, what positive psychology is and how humour fits into it, how the comic styles framework maps the different kinds of funny, whether animals have a sense of humour, why humour may have evolved as a mating signal, how dark humour works as a coping mechanism for illness and grief, what Sonja's study found about dark humour and the dark tetrad of personality traits, why sadism predicts dark humour enjoyment more than narcissism does, why a joke is only funny when no one is actually hurt, why men engage in mockery-based humour more than women, how anonymity online changes what people find acceptable to joke about, whether humour can be trained to make you happier, and why some people seem born without a sense of humour at all. Sonja Heintz online: Website: plymouth.ac.uk/staff/sonja-heintz Research: Do Dark Humour Users Have Dark Tendencies, in Behavioral Sciences 2024 0:00 Introduction 3:15 What positive psychology is 5:10 The comic styles framework 12:53 Defining humour and why we have it 18:33 Humour as a defense mechanism 22:10 Inside a dark humour study 25:43 Do you have to be a psychopath 32:38 Why men like dark humour more 37:02 Being the target of a dark joke 44:38 Dark humour in emergency services 46:56 The history of humour 52:46 Can humour make you happier 55:21 People born without humour 58:28 What Sonja is working on next 1:04:33 Where to find Sonja's work
Sonja Heintz is a Lecturer in Psychology at the University of Plymouth, where she studies the psychology of humour and positive psychology. She earned her PhD at the University of Zurich under…
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