“I absolutely adore midterm season!!!! WOOOHOOO!” If you have ever been a student, then you know that I am being sarcastic. You also understand what I feel and know what I mean. But how can a computer algorithm, which cannot relate to my situation and does not know me personally, tell that those words do not carry their literal meaning? Researchers compiled 78 thousand Dutch tweets with the hashtag “#sarcasm” in an attempt to answer this question.
Sarcasm appears in a wide range of contexts, and while most utterances are literally positive with negative connotations, the targets range from complaints about school and the weather to commentaries about celebrities and vacuum cleaning. (Liebrecht, Kunneman and Bosch, 2013). Looking at the Dutch sample, an algorithm was able to create a method of classifying tweets as sarcastic or not. Of explicitly hashtagged tweets, 75% could be recognized as sarcastic by the algorithm without the presence of the explicit hashtag.
So what signifies sarcasm on Twitter? Hyperbole, intensifiers and exclamations are all indicators. “Fantastic weather” is better identified as sarcastic than “the weather is good.” Intensifying the meaning with adverbs and adjectives like “very” and “wonderful” avoids misinterpretation. If the messages do not have these cues, they often have a hashtag for clarification of the tone. These hashtags are a substitute for non-verbal expressions and intonation in face to face sarcasm (Liebrecht, Kunneman and Bosch, 2013).
It takes us humans much longer than a computer to learn to identify sarcasm. 6-10 years of our childhood are needed to form a “database” for understanding sarcasm. We spend years gathering cues on others’ emotions and attitudes when they speak. Eventually, we develop our empathy and can see a variety of perspectives (Nicholson, Whalen and Pexman, 2013). Empathy plays a role in understanding sarcasm at it involves understanding and seeing the speaker’s intended meaning as opposed to just what they say. Children who had developed stronger empathy are more frequently able to detect sarcasm (Nicholson, Whalen and Pexman, 2013). In these years, we also learn that sarcastic utterances are characterized by slower tempo, greater intensity and lower pitch (Rockwell, 2000).
There is more neural activity in sarcastic exchanges than direct ones because sarcasm makes contradictory statements. Both creating and deciphering sarcastic statements, regardless of context, involves reconciling the contrasting ideas. We make sense of this contradiction between literal and intended meanings through abstract thinking. So essentially, sarcasm leads to increased creativity for all those involved (Huang, Gino and Galinsky, 2015).
Li Huang and colleagues tested this theory by putting subjects into one of five different experimental levels of sarcasm: control, receiving/giving sincere comment, and receiving/giving sarcastic comment. After the sincere or sarcastic exchange, subjects were asked to complete the olive in a glass problem. In this problem, subjects are told they can move two matchsticks to get the olive from inside the glass to outside (Figure 1).
Figure 1: Set-up (left) and solution (right) to the olive in the glass problem. The solution involves moving the horizontal match half a length left and moving the right edge of the glass down to the bottom left (Huang, Gino and Galinsky, 2015).
Succeeding at this task is considered creative because you must first reject the idea that the glass stays upright. Those receiving and expressing sarcasm excelled at this task compared to all other groups (Figure 2) (Huang, Gino and Galinsky, 2015).
Figure 2: Percentage of subjects able to correctly complete the task within each group. Levels of low and high trust are also shown but have no significant impact on success. Figure created using data from Huang, Gino and Galinsky.
Sarcasm is often blamed for harming communication and leading to conflict. So do the creative benefits outweigh the costs? It comes down to trust. Trust among close family and friends reduces the cost of sarcasm while allowing the creativity benefits to flourish (Huang, Gino and Galinsky, 2015). So friends, keep those sassy, snide remarks coming – they are beneficial for us all.
References
Huang, L., Gino, F. and Galinsky, A.D., 2015. The highest form of intelligence: Sarcasm increases creativity for both expressers and recipients. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes. [online] Available at: <http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S074959781500076X> [Accessed 16 Oct. 2015].
Liebrecht, C.C., Kunneman, F.A. and Bosch, A.P.J. van den, 2013. The perfect solution for detecting sarcasm in tweets #not. http://aclweb.org/anthology/W/W13/W13-1605.pdf. [online] Available at: <http://repository.ubn.ru.nl/handle/2066/112949> [Accessed 16 Oct. 2015].
Nicholson, A., Whalen, J.M. and Pexman, P.M., 2013. Children’s processing of emotion in ironic language. Developmental Psychology, 4, p.691.
Rockwell, P., 2000. Lower, Slower, Louder: Vocal Cues of Sarcasm. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 29(5), pp.483–495.