Loving and sharing dark humour

The central question of this study is to examine whether the appreciation of dark humour depends more on the participants' Need For Humour (NFH) than on their gender. Dark humour jokes were selected on various topics (i.e., death, disease, victim suffering, alteration of body integrity) to be evaluated by men and women in terms of their understanding, funniness, the willingness to share them on social media platforms and the emotions they evoked (i.e., amusement and disgust). These participants were also asked to complete a questionnaire usually used to score their need for humour (i.e., high versus low in NFH). The main results show that participants' need for humour (rather than their gender) determines their appreciation of dark humour and their willingness to share this type of content on social media platforms. These results deepen the understanding of inter-individual differences in the appreciation of dark humour, emphasizing the importance of the need for humour over that one related to gender differences. Another contribution of this study relies on highlighting the value of comparing personal and interpersonal measures when considering the appreciation of dark humour. In addition, the emotional response to dark humour also shed light on the appreciation process in its interpersonal aspect (i.e., sharing dark humour contents on social media platforms). Overall, the findings underscore the need to go beyond gender as an explanatory factor, emphasizing that individual’s traits such as NFH better account for variations in dark humour appreciation.