Comedians display high levels of psychotic personality traits, according to a new University of Oxford study.

Researchers say that it is this unique personality that probably gives them the ability to "think out of the box," and entertain people.

"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," Professor Gordon Claridge, of the University of Oxford's Department of Experimental Psychology said in a news release.

The link between creative people and certain psychotic traits isn't new. Previous research has shown that the dopamine system in highly creative people is quite similar to the one found in people suffering from schizophrenia. Additionally, it has also been observed that creative people are at a higher risk of mental disorders.

In the present study, researchers wanted to know whether comedians, too, shared these traits.

The study included 523 comedians of which 404 were men and 119 were women. Participants mainly came from the U.K., the U.S. and Australia.

All participants were asked to answer a questionnaire designed to test psychotic traits in healthy individuals.

The questionnaire dealt with four aspects;                                                                                 

  • Unusual Experiences (belief in paranormal activity);
  • Cognitive Disorganisation (difficulty in focussing on thoughts);
  • Introvertive Anhedonia (an inability to form emotional bonds with people; or avoidance of intimacy);
  • Impulsive Non-Conformity (risk taking or antisocial behavior)

The control group in the study was a set of 364 actors who also answered the questionnaire. Additionally, researchers got another group of over 800 people associated with non-creative occupations to answer the same questionnaire.

The study team then compared responses from all participants and found that comedians displayed higher levels of psychotic traits.

Interestingly, comedians had high scores on both Impulsive Non-Conformity scale (measured for extroversion) and Introvertive Anhedonia scale (measured for introversion traits).

Actors scored high in three personality traits but did not have high scores in introverted personality traits.

"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," Professor Claridge added in a statement.

The study also included researchers at the Berkshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust and is published in the British Journal of Psychiatry.