Title: Field Guide: Sarcastic Masters | Psychology Today
Headings: Field Guide: Sarcastic Masters
Field Guide: Sarcastic Masters
They're smart, they're funny, and they know it. But is cracking jokes that put other people down truly wise?
Genesis of the Jibe
Sarcasm's Slippery Slope
When to Take The Edge Off

Content: His hilariousness doesn't give him the right to belittle you. Genesis of the Jibe
"Just blurting out an insult is pedestrian at best," says Vacheh Joakim, an IT specialist in Los Angeles who prides himself on his sardonic wit. " But a sarcastic jab that can masquerade as a compliment is much more enjoyable, and it also gives the person being sarcastic a sense of superiority." Though Stosny and others theorize that such verbal jujitsu is rooted in insecurity, wisecrackers themselves, predictably enough, tend to admit feelings of inadequacy only indirectly. Joakim, for example, acknowledges the possibility of using sarcasm to compensate for shortcomings, but sidesteps a personal revelation: " Sarcasm doesn't help satisfy a Napoleon complex, but it does give you a little ego boost." article continues after advertisement
Albert Katz, a cognitive psychologist at the University of Western Ontario, has recently looked at the wisecrackers' focus on one-upsmanship from a biological perspective, showing that people whose brains are best equipped to understand sarcasm tend to have aggressive personalities. Subjects who scored high on aggression tests showed different patterns of brain activity in response to sarcasm than those who did not. The differences suggest that the aggressive subjects were processing nonliteral meaning more quickly. " Sarcasm is definitely a dominance thing—it's related to being top dog," Katz says, both for initiators of sarcastic banter and those who catch on and offer a retort.