The Eccentrics Club of London

Here's a test to determine if you are Eccentric, from the Eccentric Club of London, most of whose members insist that they are not eccentric.

This test comes from the study ‘of sanity and strangeness’ conducted by Dr David Weeks and Jamie James and published in 1995, the only sound attempt (as far as we are aware) to evaluate the roots and causes of eccentricity by modern scientific methodological standards. Here is what these researchers discovered:

“In order to gather as much data as possible, we also gave the subjects standard personality evaluations, IQ tests, and examinations used by psychiatrists to diagnose schizophrenia and other mental illnesses. We weren’t quite sure initially what we would actually do with all that information, but as the database grew, it created a full descriptive psychological portrait of the subjects. We tape-recorded all the interviews so that we could analyze the subjects’ speech patterns, and that, too, gave us some important insights.

The study became a group portrait of people as varied as society at large, yet with many common traits. A profile emerged with fifteen characteristics that applied to most eccentrics, ranging from the obvious to the trivial. We found that an eccentric may be described in the following ways, more or less in descending order of frequency:

1. nonconforming;
2. creative;
3. strongly motivated by curiosity;
4. idealistic; he wants to make the world a better place and the people in it happier;
5. happily obsessed with one or more hobbyhorses (usually, five or six);
6. aware from early childhood that he is different;
7. intelligent;
8. opinionated and outspoken; convinced that he is right and that the rest of the world is out of step;
9. noncompetitive, not in need of reassurance or reinforcement from society;
10. unusual in his eating habits and living arrangements;
11. not particularly interested in the opinions or company of other people, except in order to persuade them to his – the correct – point of view;
12. possessed of a mischievous sense of humour;
13. single;
14. usually the eldest or an only child; and
15. a bad speller*



The first five characteristics listed here are the most important and apply to virtually every eccentric. Nonconformity is, of course, the principal defining trait of the breed…”

(Dr D.Weeks, J.James “Eccentrics: A Study of Sanity and Strangeness”, 1995)



The * is because most of the members of the Eccentric Club are unusually good spellers.

melodiccolor wrote:

Besides, I'd be curious to know if any member of this board is not eccentric...

BlueTopaz wrote:I always heard you were "crazy" unless you had lots of money...
then you were eccentric.
LOL