The entrepreneurs were the least hypomanic people in the room
A team went looking for the manic edge in entrepreneurs and found the opposite. The students who had ever founded a business scored lowest on hypomanic traits, and among 210 working founders those traits predicted no measure of success.
The claim
“Hypomanic people are natural entrepreneurs.”
Contradicted On a hypomanic-trait scale, the students who had ever founded something scored lowest of three groups, and among 210 founders the traits predicted no measure of success, only a small rise in reported losses. A bipolar diagnosis itself was a null in 22 people, not a deficit.
- Study
- Two cross-sectional surveys
- Sample
- 225 students and staff, 210 founders
- Peer review
- Yes
- Funding
- UC Berkeley
Johnson SL, Freeman MA, Staudenmaier PJ. Manic tendencies are not related to being an entrepreneur, intending to become an entrepreneur, or succeeding as an entrepreneur. Journal of Affective Disorders 2015;173:154–158. doi:10.1016/j.jad.2014.10.049.Supported by the University of California, Berkeley. No conflicts declared.
Who makes the claim
John Gartner’s 2005 book The Hypomanic Edge argued that hypomanic temperament, the energetic, restless, risk-taking end of the bipolar spectrum, is what drives American entrepreneurs. The idea has travelled widely since, and it is a flattering one for many readers of this site. This paper set out to test it, and its authors expected to confirm it. They bet hardest on the milder end: family history and subsyndromal traits, they predicted, would matter more than a diagnosis.
What kind of paper this is
Two online surveys. Study One: 225 people from a psychology undergraduate pool and an MBA programme pool (students, faculty and staff), sorted by whether they had ever been self-employed or founded a business (32), planned to (101), or neither (92). Study Two: 210 founders and co-founders, the 32 from Study One plus more recruited through entrepreneurship websites, journals, conferences and meetups. To include enough people with mood problems, the team also deliberately reached out to clients of a counselling practice for entrepreneurs with mood problems and gave public talks on mental health and entrepreneurship. Everyone was measured three ways for mania risk: the Hypomanic Personality Scale (traits), a family-history index, and whether they reported a bipolar diagnosis. The entrepreneurs also reported success: businesses founded, patents or licences, growth or loss in their company, and personal earnings.
What it found
“Contrary to hypotheses,” in the authors’ words, the students who had ever founded a business scored lowest on hypomanic traits, and those with no plans scored highest. Among students planning a business, higher scores went with weaker intent to start one. Among the 210 working entrepreneurs, hypomanic traits did not predict how many businesses they had founded, their patents or their earnings; the one link was small: higher scores went with more reported loss over three years in sales, staff, customers and company value. Family history predicted nothing. The 22 entrepreneurs who reported a bipolar diagnosis did no better or worse on any measure of success than those who said they had none; another 22 declined to say.
Table view
| Group | Mean score |
|---|---|
| No plans to start one | 28.33 |
| Planning to start one | 24.42 |
| Has founded one | 21.31 |
The strongest case against this reading
Look at who got counted. The headline rests on 32 people, from a sample mostly aged 18 to 21, who said yes to a question that lumps a founder in with anyone who has ever been self-employed. The working entrepreneurs were recruited partly through a counselling practice for founders with mood problems, which stacks the sample with the people most likely to be struggling. Extreme counts of businesses and patents were trimmed to the next-highest value, so the outlier success story is cut out by design. Success was three years of self-reported change, which cannot tell a crash from a big bet still in play. And the authors allow that manic traits might help at particular moments, such as launching a venture. Nothing here tests that.
But the paper did test the plain version of the claim three ways, in two samples, and every result that reached significance ran against it. The right-moment version survives only because it was never tested; it is a question for the next study, not a reading of this one.
What it did not find
It did not find that people with bipolar disorder make worse entrepreneurs. Only 4 of the 225 students reported a diagnosis, too few to test, and the 22 diagnosed entrepreneurs in Study Two are a small group whose result is a null, not a deficit. Everything is self-reported, including diagnosis and success; both samples are volunteers; and 22 people declined to say whether they had a diagnosis, which the authors note shows the limits of relying on self-report. The authors say they cannot tell whether manic traits are simply unrelated to entrepreneurship or help particular people at particular moments, such as the early stage of a venture.
What you would change on Monday
Don’t plan a business around the edge. When researchers who expected to find it went looking, it did not show up. The decision habits any careful founder uses still apply: a second signature on big commitments, and a night’s sleep between deciding and signing.
Where it sits in the tools
Corrections
None. To challenge a claim, email [email protected] with the specific line.
One paper, read for what it can carry. Not clinical advice; the editorial policy and medical disclaimer apply.