Sarcasm and IQ: Is Sarcasm a Sign of Intelligence?
No study links sarcasm to IQ directly. Sarcasm IQ claims rest on research showing that understanding sarcasm draws on reasoning and theory of mind.
Dr. Russell T. WarneChief Scientist
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No study has tested whether sarcastic people have higher IQs, so sarcasm is not an established sign of intelligence. What research does show is that understanding sarcasm is a demanding mental task: it depends on theory of mind and language, and in one study of 57 adults, people with higher fluid intelligence understood ironic remarks more accurately and quickly.
The popular claim usually comes with a quotation, "sarcasm is the lowest form of wit but the highest form of intelligence", and a 2015 business-school study that borrowed half of it for its title. This page covers how children learn to decode sarcasm, what brain-injury and adult studies show about the abilities involved, what the creativity study actually found, and where the famous line comes from.
What research exists on sarcasm and IQ
It helps to separate two things the headline blurs together.
• Understanding sarcasm: recognising that a speaker means the opposite of what they said, and why. This has been studied in children, in adults and in people with brain injuries.
• Using sarcasm: how often a person makes sarcastic remarks. This is a habit and a social style, and no published study has correlated it with a standard IQ test.
So the honest answer to "do sarcastic people have higher IQs?" is that nobody knows. The evidence that exists is about comprehension, and it suggests that sarcasm draws on several abilities that IQ tests also tap. That is a weaker claim than the internet version, and a more interesting one.
Understanding sarcasm takes theory of mind
To get a sarcastic remark, a listener has to notice that the words clash with the situation, infer what the speaker really believes, and work out the speaker's attitude, usually mockery or criticism. That chain requires "theory of mind", the understanding that other people hold beliefs and intentions that differ from the literal content of what they say.
Children build this skill gradually. Melanie Glenwright and Penny Pexman tested 71 children aged five to six and 71 aged nine to ten. The younger group was beginning to understand the non-literal meaning of sarcastic and ironic remarks, while the older group was more accurate and could also tell that sarcasm aimed at a person is meaner than irony with no target. In other words, children can decode sarcasm by about six but take several more years to grasp its social purpose.
Eva Filippova and Janet Wilde Astington studied 72 children aged five, seven and nine plus 24 adults. Understanding irony followed a fixed order: children first had to recognise the speaker's belief before they could judge the speaker's attitude. Theory of mind and language ability each predicted irony comprehension beyond the effects of age and memory.
Sarcasm, reasoning and the brain
Two lines of adult research tie sarcasm comprehension to broader cognitive ability.
Fluid intelligence. Marianna Kyriacou and Franziska Köder ran an eye-tracking reading study with 60 young Norwegian adults, 57 of whom were analysed. Participants also completed a computerised version of Raven's Advanced Progressive Matrices, a standard nonverbal reasoning test, and a working memory task. People with higher fluid intelligence answered questions about ironic meanings more accurately and faster, and needed to re-read less. There was no such difference for literal passages, and working memory had no direct effect. This is the closest study to a direct sarcasm and IQ test, and it is small and limited to comprehension.
Brain injury. Simone Shamay-Tsoory and colleagues gave a sarcasm task to 25 people with damage to the prefrontal cortex, 16 with damage further back in the brain and 17 healthy controls. The prefrontal group struggled with sarcasm while the other two groups did not, and damage to the right ventromedial prefrontal region produced the largest deficit. Performance tracked theory of mind and the ability to identify emotions. The authors concluded that the right frontal lobe helps people understand sarcasm by combining emotional processing with perspective taking.
Taken together, these findings show that understanding sarcasm is an achievement of reasoning and social cognition. They say nothing about whether frequent sarcasm users are smarter, since being able to decode sarcasm and choosing to use it are different things.
The study that called sarcasm "the highest form of intelligence"
The research most often cited in sarcasm IQ articles is a 2015 paper by Li Huang, Francesca Gino and Adam Galinsky in Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, titled "The highest form of intelligence: Sarcasm increases creativity for both expressers and recipients".
In a series of lab experiments, participants who expressed sarcasm, or received it, went on to perform better on creativity tasks than people in the comparison conditions. The authors proposed that producing or decoding sarcasm forces people to reconcile the literal and intended meaning, which triggers abstract thinking, which in turn helps creativity. The same exchanges also raised feelings of conflict for both parties. When sarcasm was exchanged between people who trusted each other, the creativity benefit remained without the added conflict.
Three limits matter for the IQ question.
• Creativity is not IQ: the outcome measures were creative problem-solving tasks, which overlap only partly with intelligence, as our article on whether a high IQ makes a person more creative explains.
• A short-term state: the studies measured a boost right after a sarcastic exchange, a temporary shift in thinking style. They did not compare sarcastic and non-sarcastic people.
• One research group: the findings come from a single set of experiments, and we found no large independent replication.
The title nodded to a popular saying. It was never a finding about IQ, yet it travelled further than the results did.
Where "the lowest form of wit" comes from
The full line, "sarcasm is the lowest form of wit but the highest form of intelligence", is widely credited to Oscar Wilde. We could find no source for it in his writings or in any reliable quotation reference, so it is best treated as unverified. Wilde attracts misattributions so often that Dorothy Parker wrote a verse about it in 1927 ending "We all assume that Oscar said it", according to the researchers at Quote Investigator.
The "lowest form of wit" half has a longer history, and it was originally aimed at puns. In 1672 John Dryden criticised Ben Jonson for puns, which he called the "lowest and most groveling kind of wit", and a 1787 London magazine recorded a pun-hater calling punning "the lowest of all wit". At some point the insult migrated to sarcasm, and the flattering second half was added later still.
Humor is a separate question with better data. Studies of humor production, where people have to come up with something funny on demand, find positive correlations with intelligence (Greengross and Miller's 2011 study of 400 university students is the best known), covered in our article on whether humor is a sign of high IQ. Sarcasm has not been tested that way.
Frequently asked questions
Is sarcasm a sign of high intelligence?
There is no direct evidence that it is. Understanding sarcasm draws on theory of mind, language and reasoning, but no study has linked how often someone is sarcastic to their IQ.
Do smart people understand sarcasm better?
Probably somewhat. In a 57-person study, adults with higher fluid intelligence understood ironic remarks more accurately and faster, and children's sarcasm comprehension tracks their language and theory-of-mind skills.
Did Oscar Wilde say sarcasm is the lowest form of wit?
There is no reliable source showing that he did. The idea of a "lowest kind of wit" goes back at least to John Dryden in 1672, and he was talking about puns.
Does sarcasm make you more creative?
One 2015 set of lab experiments found that giving or receiving sarcasm briefly improved performance on creativity tasks, while also raising conflict unless the people involved trusted each other. It has not been widely replicated.
At what age do children understand sarcasm?
Children begin to understand the non-literal meaning of sarcasm by about age six. Recognising its social purpose, such as that it is meant to criticise, develops later in middle childhood.
The takeaway
Sarcasm is a sophisticated kind of language, and understanding it relies on reasoning about other minds. That does not make a sarcastic habit a marker of high IQ, and no study has tested that claim. If you are curious about your own reasoning ability, a sharp tongue is no substitute for an online IQ test built by psychometricians.
References
1. Glenwright, M., & Pexman, P. M. (2010). Development of children's ability to distinguish sarcasm and verbal irony. Journal of Child Language, 37(2), 429-451. [doi.org/10.1017/S0305000909009520](. doi.org
2. Filippova, E., & Astington, J. W. (2008). Further development in social reasoning revealed in discourse irony understanding. Child Development, 79(1), 126-138. [doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8624.2007.01115.x](. doi.org
3. Kyriacou, M., & Köder, F. (2024). The cognitive underpinnings of irony comprehension: Fluid intelligence but not working memory modulates processing. Applied Psycholinguistics, 45(6), 1219-1250. [doi.org/10.1017/S0142716424000444](. doi.org
4. Shamay-Tsoory, S. G., Tomer, R., & Aharon-Peretz, J. (2005). The neuroanatomical basis of understanding sarcasm and its relationship to social cognition. Neuropsychology, 19(3), 288-300. [doi.org/10.1037/0894-4105.19.3.288](. doi.org
5. Huang, L., Gino, F., & Galinsky, A. D. (2015). The highest form of intelligence: Sarcasm increases creativity for both expressers and recipients. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 131, 162-177. [doi.org/10.1016/j.obhdp.2015.07.001](. doi.org
6. Quote Investigator. (2020). I never seek to take the credit; we all assume that Oscar said it. [quoteinvestigator.com](. quoteinvestigator.com
7. Quote Investigator. (2023). "The pun is the lowest form of wit" "Yes, that means it is the foundation of all wit". [quoteinvestigator.com](. quoteinvestigator.com
8. Greengross, G., & Miller, G. (2011). Humor ability reveals intelligence, predicts mating success, and is higher in males. Intelligence, 39(4), 188-192. [doi.org/10.1016/j.intell.2011.03.006](. doi.org
Hero image: Ironic road sign (street art by Clet Abraham), photo by Massimilianogalardi, CC BY-SA 3.0. Via Wikimedia Commons.
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