When Robin Williams died, it was tragic and hit fans hard, but it brought to light how mental illness can not only potentially contribute to personality traits and tendencies that lead to comedic significance, it can also lead to an early death.
This is observable, according to some research from the Australian Catholic University (ACU), led by Dr Simon Stewart and Dr David Thompson, particularly when comparing comedy duos – who is the funnier one and who dies first?
Their research, published in the International Journal of Cardiology, found that the funniest comedians are most at risk of premature death, compared to their ‘straight man’ counterparts.
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Of the 23 ‘very funny’ comedians, 78% had died, versus 40% of the rest. Average age at death for the comedians adjudged as ‘very funny’ was 63.3 years old versus 72.3 for the rest. Those working in comedy duos (e.g. Morecambe and Wise) or teams (e.g. Monty Python) were also designated, for the purposes of this research, as the “funny” or “straight” man in that comedy team. Within comedy teams, those identified as the funnier member(s) of the partnership were more than three times more likely to die prematurely when compared to their more serious comedy partners.
According to the research, there seems to be a connection between being particularly funny and the type of personality and psychology for an individual, which also links to mortality rate. In previous research, comedians score high on measures of psychotic traits and personality structures described as ‘introverted anhedonia’ combined with ‘extraverted impulsiveness.’ And this isn’t entirely surprising when we consider how many comedians have come out publicly as being depressed or manic.
It’s not just suicide that puts these comedians at risk, though. In the findings they also found that some of the comedians died from natural or medical causes, like heart attacks, or in other cases it could have resulted from smoking, alcohol abuse and drug use.
In a separate study, psychologists Gil Greengross and Geoffrey Miller from the University of New Mexico, United States, compared the personalities of 31 professional stand-up comedians with those of nine amateur comedians, 10 humour writers and 400 college students.
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The study entitled, ‘The Big Five personality traits of professional comedians compared to amateur comedians, comedy writers, and college students’ found that, surprisingly, comedians are more introverted than other people.
An interesting result from this research shows that comedians generally do not seek fame in the same way that actors do.
The authors speculate that ‘impulsive dis-inhibition’ is at the core of the comedic personality, and is necessary to come up constantly with weird new ideas that are funny. Comedians also need this to violate social rules by publicly declaring unconventional sentiments. But does this ‘impulsive dis-inhibition’ end up killing them, because they then don’t look after themselves properly?