Chocolate Cravings are Signs of Neurosis, Study Shows

Depressed? Mad? Unhappy? If you consider a nice chunk of milk chocolate to take away the pain and stress, a new study shows that you may have a neurotic personality.

Performed in Australia, over half of the people who took a survey reported that they craved chocolate when depressed. And in this case, women craved chocolate more than men. The study was published in the October 2007 issue of the British Journal of Psychiatry, and it's purpose was to explore three things: the connection between chocolate cravings amongst those who were depressed, general personality style, and general depressive symptoms.

Done on the Web, about 3,000 subjects communicated that they had clinical depression. Clinical depression was defined as having experienced depressive symptoms for more than two weeks and needing some kind of medical treatment. More than 70 percent of the subjects were female, and the average age for the subjects was 40 years old.

At times of depression more than 54 percent of people responding to the Web survey reported craving food. And close to 45 percent named chocolate specifically. Sixty-one percent of those respondents were more likely to believe chocolate had the ability to make them feel significantly less anxious and irritated.

But what's the connection between chocolate and neurotic personality? Well, the thing is that the subjects also took a temperament and personality questionnaire. The results revealed that those who craved chocolate had very high scores on rejection sensitivity, self-criticism, anxious worry, irritability, and self-focused scales measures of neuroticism. There were only two significant predictors of chocolate craving. Those were irritability and rejection sensitivity.

What was so surprising to the scientists was the evidence that there was a link between personality style and the feeling that eating chocolate could soothe a mood.

And it shouldn't be too surprising that the people who craved chocolate scored higher on the questionnaire in terms of appetite increase, oversleeping, and weight gain.

The bottom line: If you find that you crave chocolate or comfort foods in general to relieve stress, you may have the kind of personality that feels that "food soothes," and you could be neurotic.