Detecting Hidden Hurtful Humor in Narcissistic Friendships
Friend or frenemy? When humor becomes a friendship manipulation tool.
Posted May 7, 2026 | Reviewed by Jessica Schrader
What would life be like if we couldn’t laugh?
Mark Twain called humor “mankind’s greatest blessing,” while Jimmy Buffett described it as critical to our mental health in his song “Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes,” in which he sang: “If we couldn’t laugh, we would all go insane.” (On an interesting side note, I had thought this last quote was from Robert Frost and apparently it has been widely misattributed to him. Somewhere in the heavens I feel my Great-Uncle Billy, a devout Jimmy Buffett fan, is smiling widely.)
But not all humor is equal. Humor can be the tie that binds—or the one that cuts. In some friendships, this shows up in a “frenemy”—someone who calls themselves a friend, but whose behavior and humor undermine you.
After writing about humor as a defense mechanism for some and an aggressive tactic used by other more narcissistic and manipulative personalities in my upcoming second edition of Ten Keys to Staying Empowered in a Power Struggle, I was fascinated to read a study that looked at humor’s role in friendships when narcissism is present.
The authors (Altmann & Sauls, 2025) focused on measuring the two main categories of narcissism, grandiose and vulnerable, with uses of adaptive versus maladaptive humor in friendships.
For anyone not familiar with these types of narcissism, both have a sense of entitlement and grandiosity yet grandiose types tend to have more superiority, manipulation, and exploitation, while vulnerable types are often more defensive, hypersensitive, insecure, dependent, and marked by swings from shame to grandiosity.
Adaptive versus maladaptive humor is a lot like it might sound, yet in my work, it can be super difficult to detect in social settings when everyone is laughing and putting public pressure on the targeted person to laugh and not be too serious.
Fortunately, the authors of the study cite Martin et al.’s (2003) humor framework that describes adaptive (healthy) styles of humor as affiliative, when humor decreases tension, elicits bonding and camaraderie—and self-enhancing, where the person is able to take a more resilient humorous perspective about life and circumstances. The maladaptive types of humor (the ones that cut) include aggressive humor, in which there is mocking, ridicule, and it comes at someone’s expense—and self-defeating, which is self-deprecating and often used to get attention and reassurance.
The authors found that grandiose narcissists tended to use affiliative and aggressive humor but viewed themselves as using positive forms of humor while viewing their friend's use of humor as more maladaptive. The authors pointed out that this is in line with grandiose narcissists’ propensity toward devaluing others to maintain their sense of superiority. Meanwhile, the vulnerable narcissists were more likely to use self-defeating humor and view their friends and their humor styles with a more idealized perspective.
When thinking about friendships, humor, and frenemy detection, it might help to remember that healthy friendships engage in humor that invites genuine shared laughter . But humor that repeatedly places one person as the brunt of the joke can be a form of social dominance—and a red flag that you might be dealing with a grandiose narcissistic frenemy.
When a comment is made at your expense and everyone laughs, it puts you in the place of joining along while inwardly feeling the sting of embarrassment or humiliation.
But if you react, the joker's defense quickly follows:
Because laughter provides social cover, this type of humor can be especially damaging as it allows someone to undermine your dignity publicly or privately while avoiding accountability.
If you object, you are labeled humorless or overly sensitive. If you stay silent, the humiliation stands—and the confusing relationship with the frenemy persists.
But recognizing a frenemy pattern matters—because dignity and psychological safety cannot coexist with humiliation, control, and manipulation, no matter how cleverly they are disguised as humor or friendship .
Real friendship doesn’t confound or require you to shrink, perform, or laugh at your own expense to belong.
Altmann, T., & Sauls, D. (2025). Friendship through a narcissistic lens: The role of narcissism in perceived humor similarity among friends in Germany and the US. Personality and Individual Differences , 242 , 113211. doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2025.113211
Martin, R. A., Puhlik-Doris, P., Larsen, G., Gray, J., & Weir, K. (2003). Individual differences in uses of humor and their relation to psychological well-being: Development of the Humor Styles Questionnaire. Journal of Research in Personality , 37 (1), 48–75. doi.org/10.1016/S0092-6566(02)00534-2
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Kimberly Key, Ph.D., is past division president of the American Counseling Association and author of The Remembered Soul: Sacred Healing in a Forgetful World.
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This article is part of the Bringwise Psychology Journal — daily insights on human behavior, mental health, and personal growth.