The portrait of a hedonist: The personality and ethics behind the value and maladaptive pursuit of pleasure

• We differentiate hedonism as the value of pleasure from its maladaptive pursuit.
• Unlike value-based hedonism, maladaptive hedonism negatively predicts well-being.
• People who value pleasure have a distinct, socially liberal moral profile.
• In contrast, the tendency to pursue pleasure to excess is reflected in personality.
• Thus the portrait of a hedonist is more complex than depicted in popular culture.

Hedonism is the prioritizing of pleasure over other life values and is theorized to be independent of well-being. However, popular culture depicts hedonists as unhappy, as well as selfishly unconcerned with others’ well-being. Because the current literature has not differentiated between people’s value of pleasure and their maladaptive pursuit of it, we examined if these related, but not equivalent, dispositions had different personality and morality profiles. We found that value-based hedonists have a distinct moral profile (i.e., they are less likely to endorse moral foundations associated with social conservatism) and, yet, they differ little from others in regard to personality traits. We also found that people’s maladaptive hedonism (i.e., excessive pleasure-seeking) was best predicted by their personality traits (i.e., being less agreeable, less conscientious, and more neurotic) rather than by their conceptions of right and wrong. We discuss how these results contribute to our understanding of hedonism and why some people pursue their value of pleasure into over-indulgence.