Chocolate Craving When Depressed: A Personality Marker

Main Category: Depression
Also Included In: Nutrition / Diet;  Psychology / Psychiatry
Article Date: 03 Oct 2007 - 6:00 PDT

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People who crave chocolate when they are depressed are more likely to have a 'neurotic' than an 'introverted' type of personality, a new study from Australia has found. Over half of the depressed people surveyed reported food cravings, nearly all of them specifically craving chocolate. More women than men craved chocolate when depressed.

Published in the October 2007 issue of the British Journal of Psychiatry, the study examined links between chocolate craving in people who are depressed and both personality style and 'atypical' depressive symptoms. Atypical depression is a depressive syndrome combining symptom and personality criteria.

This study investigated the self-reported benefits of chocolate during a depressive episode, and looked to see whether there was any particular type of personality that tended to crave chocolate to alleviate symptoms.

A web-based questionnaire was completed by nearly 3000 people reporting clinical depression (experiencing depressive symptoms for more than 2 weeks and requiring treatment). Their average age was 40, and over 70% were female. Over 73% had previously received antidepressant medication, and over 78% counselling or psychotherapy for depressive episodes.

It was found that when depressed, over 54% of respondents reported food cravings, with nearly 45% specifically craving chocolate (nearly 51% of the women and almost 31% of the men).

Of the chocolate craving group, nearly 61% of those who rated chocolate's capacity to improve their depressed mood as moderately to very important were more likely to rate it as making them feel significantly less anxious and less irritated.

Temperament and personality questionnaire scores showed the chocolate craving group to have significantly higher average scores on the irritability, rejection sensitivity, anxious worrying, self-criticism, and self-focused scales -measures of neuroticism. Differences were not found on scales measuring introversion, such as personal reserve, social avoidance and perfectionism.

Further analysis showed that irritability and rejection sensitivity were the only two significant predictors of chocolate craving. Those identified as chocolate cravers had higher scores for appetite increase, weight gain, sensitivity to rejection, oversleeping, and limbs feeling 'heavy like lead'.

The simple question of depression-associated chocolate craving appeared to be associated with atypical depression symptoms.

The researchers comment that their most intriguing finding was the specific link between chocolate craving and personality style. Their results suggest that personality style dictates the craving for chocolate when people are in states of 'emotional dysregulation' (anxious and irritable, and not only depressed).

As individuals with certain personality styles find comfort eating chocolate improves their mood, such behaviour may reflect biological mechanisms which 'soothe' their personality-based capacity to experience emotional dysregulation.

"Chocolate craving when depressed: a personality marker"
Parker G and Crawford J (2007)
British Journal of Psychiatry, 191, 351-352.
http://bjp.rcpsych.org