Comedians Display High Levels of Psychotic Personality Traits

Comedians possess high levels of psychotic traits, a latest study reveals. The researchers believe that this unusual personality structure explains their ability to entertain.

After one study linked creativity with madness, this collaborative study conducted by researchers at the University of Oxford and Berkshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust, discovered the secret of comedians' ability to make people laugh.

To prove the hypothesis, the study was conducted on 523 comedians among whom 404 were men and 119 were women. The participants in this study were recruited from agencies, societies, associations and comedy clubs.

For the study, the comedians were asked to complete a questionnaire that was designed to measure psychotic traits of a healthy person. The researchers, through this questionnaire measured four different aspects: Unusual Experiences (belief in telepathy and paranormal events); Cognitive Disorganisation (distractibility and difficult in focusing thoughts); Introvertive Anhedonia (limited ability to feel social and physical pleasure, including avoidance of intimacy); Impulsive Non Confomity (tendency towards impulsive, antisocial behaviour).

The same questionnaire was also completed by 364 actors that were the control group. The results of the two groups were compared with each other and also to a group of people who didn't belong to a creative occupation.

Professor Gordon Claridge, of the University of Oxford's Department of Experimental Psychology said, "The creative elements needed to produce humour are strikingly similar to those characterising the cognitive style of people with psychosis - both schizophrenia and bipolar disorder."

Analysis of the results showed that comedians scored higher on all the four types of psychotic personality traits when compared to the general group. The comedians scored high on Impulsive Non conformity scale that measures extroverted personality traits and also Intorvertive Anhedonia Scale that measures introverted personality traits.

When compared to the general groups, the actors did not score high on introverted personality traits. Based on the analysis the researchers assume that it is the unusual personality structure that offers clues to a comedian's ability to entertain people.

Professor Claridge concluded saying, "Our study shows that, as creative people, comedians rate highly on the same personality traits as those regularly observed in other creative individuals. The traits in question are labelled "psychotic" because they represent healthy equivalents of features such as moodiness, social introversion and the tendency to lateral thinking."

The study was published in the British Journal of Psychiatry.