Hypomanic personality features and addictive tendencies

Hypomanic personality traits have been shown to predict manic episodes, substance abuse, and engagement with pleasurable but potentially harmful leisure activities. Because hypomania-proneness might be linked with an inherent hyper-responsiveness of the Behavioral Activation System (BAS), it is thought that hypomania-prone individuals are more likely to pursue any potentially pleasurable activities or substances with greater enthusiasm and vigor. These tendencies should also place hypomania-prone individuals at risk for general addictive problems, not just addiction to drugs or alcohol. 100 adults from the general community completed self-report measures of hypomania-proneness, addictive tendencies, and mood. Participants completed the hypomanic personality scale (Eckblad & Chapman, 1986), a 96-item questionnaire measuring addictive tendencies across twelve domains, and the positive and negative affect scales (Watson, Clark, & Tellegen, 1988). Even after controlling for positive and negative mood, age, and gender, hypomania-proneness correlated with general addictive tendencies, with a self-report scale of addictive personality features and with several addictive tendencies in specific domains. Hypomania-prone individuals may experience themselves as more likely to have an ‘addictive personality’ and to be intensely engaged in the pursuit of many pleasurable activities, from listening to music or consuming chocolate and caffeine to excessive devotion to work, exercise, and other activities. This intense pleasure-pursuit can potentially result in high achievement, mastery and resource acquisition, but the same addiction-like pleasure-pursuit can also result in the more harmful consequences associated with mania and related clinical syndromes.