Are Politicians Wired for Addictive Behavior?

Newt Gingrich is just one in a long line of politicians who end up fielding almost as many questions about sexual partners as they do about political positions. That raises some interesting questions: Are politicians unusually prone to compulsive sexual behavior? Or are their indiscretions simply more visible?

The answer is probably yes and yes. Certainly, political figures have chosen a career that puts their private lives in the public domain. But there’s also reason to believe that politicians as a group might be particularly prone to risky friskiness.

The likely link is a personality trait called sensation seeking, which boils down to a tendency to seek out sensory stimulation. People high in this trait are driven to look for new, varied, complex, and intense experiences. They’re willing to take physical, social, financial, and legal risks to satisfy that need. And yes, some even risk political careers.

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The Quest for Sensation

In the 1960s, Marvin Zuckerman, PhD, a psychology professor at the University of Delaware, first developed the concept of sensation seeking. Zuckerman found that some sensation seekers thrive on meeting new people, having diverse experiences, and dealing with mental complexity. That sounds a lot like a job description for a successful political figure, business leader, or mega-church minister.

However, other sensation seekers feed their hungry senses in more self-destructive ways. They may have risky sex, abuse alcohol or other drugs, or gamble to get their sensory fix. And they’re driven to satisfy these cravings even at great person risk. In short, they’re primed to develop addictions.

What happens when you combine both forms of sensation seeking in the same individual? You could wind up with a public figure in a powerful position who risks it all, seemingly inexplicably, for a sexual dalliance (or two or three or four).

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A Kick from Novelty

Research suggests that about 60 percent of individual variation in sensation seeking is rooted in genetics. One way that genes may act is through dopamine, the primary neurotransmitter involved in the brain’s processing of reward. Scientists have found that new and exciting experiences activate the brain’s dopamine circuits much as drugs of abuse do.

Novelty seeking—the tendency to react to new situations with excitement and exploration—is a close cousin of sensation seeking. Using PET scans, researchers from Vanderbilt University found that people who favor novelty tend to have low availability of a receptor that blocks the release of dopamine by brain cells. This may lead to heightened dopamine release in response to anything that activates the brain’s reward system, be it a new experience or a drug.

So maybe politics and addiction aren’t strange bedfellows after all. Certain individuals are genetically and biochemically prone to seek newness and thrills. Some channel that drive into careers that reward a wide-ranging intellect and mental risk taking. Some channel it into a compulsion to seek risky sex or abused drugs. And some, it seems, do both at once.

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