Comedians have psychotic personality traits, study finds

By Kate Kelland LONDON (Reuters) – Having an unusual personality structure could be the secret to making other people laugh, scientists said on Thursday after research showed that comedians have high levels of psychotic personality traits. “The creative elements needed to produce humor are strikingly similar to those characterizing the cognitive style of people with psychosis – both schizophrenia and bipolar disorder,” said Gordon Claridge of the University of Oxford’s department of experimental psychology, who led the study. “Equally, manic thinking – which is common in people with bipolar disorder – may help people combine ideas to form new, original and humorous connections.” The researchers recruited 523 comedians – 404 men and 119 women – and asked them to complete an online questionnaire designed to measure psychotic traits in healthy people. The same questionnaire was also completed by 364 actors – who are also used to performing in front of an audience – as a control group, and the comedians’ and actors’ results were compared to each other as well as a general group of 831 people who had non-creative jobs.