No laughing matter

It’s a tough gig to get up on stage in front of an audience who expect you to make them laugh, or at least titter, every few minutes. Stand-up comedy is one of the most arduous of professions in many ways, yet despite our great communal desire for laughter, there is not a lot of study that has been done on the psychology of the people who pursue this career; the comedians of this world. Now however, a new study has shown that these comedy professionals differ from the rest of the world in very significant ways.

Early research showed that comedians are likely to come from disadvantaged backgrounds with approximately 80-85 per cent of comedians coming from low socioeconomic homes. Around 30 years ago a study found that comedians are more preoccupied with themes of good and evil than other people. One study found that male comedians tend to be close to their mother and distant from their father while another study found the reverse is true for female comedians. This is all interesting but it doesn’t feel like it explains the delicate butterfly that is the comedic temperament whereas the new research has taken us a step further in that regard.

The researchers recruited more than 500 female and male comedians to take part in their study from comedy clubs, agencies, and associations mainly in the UK, USA, and Australia. All the comedians were asked to complete an online questionnaire designed to measure psychotic traits in healthy individuals. The four different aspects measured by the questionnaire are: Unusual Experiences (belief in telepathy and paranormal events); Cognitive Disorganisation (distractibility and difficulty in focusing thoughts); Introvertive Anhedonia (reduced ability to feel social and physical pleasure, including an avoidance of intimacy); and Impulsive Non-Conformity (an extraverted tendency towards impulsive, antisocial behaviour).

The questionnaire was also completed by a group of more than 350 actors who acted as a control group since they are also are accustomed to performing in front of people but without the need to make their audience laugh.

The comedians’ and actors’ questionnaire results were compared with each other, and also with a general group of more than 800 people who had “non-creative” occupations.

The results showed that comedians scored significantly higher on all four types of psychotic personality trait compared with the general group. Most striking was their high scores for both extraverted personality traits (as measured by the Impulsive Non-Conformity scale) and introverted personality traits (as measured by the Introvertive Anhedonia scale). By contrast, the actors scored higher than the general group on three scales, but did not display high levels of introverted personality traits.

The researchers believe that this type of unusual personality structure may help explain comedians’ ability to entertain.

It seems that somehow the blend of excessive introversion and extraversion that is a feature of psychosis is what allows the magical thinking, or thinking outside of the usual parameters, of comedians which in turn can make us laugh.

As one of the truly great comedians observed…comedy is not pretty.