Hypomanic Personality Scale (HPS)

Forty-eight true-or-false statements describe a temperament marked by high energy and elevated mood: feeling so good or so full of energy that one does not need sleep, often having many ideas at once, having had periods of being able to talk others into almost anything, being so excited that one cannot stop talking, and believing that one is destined to accomplish great things. The statements describe a stable disposition, not a current episode.

Eckblad and Chapman (1986) developed the scale in the Wisconsin tradition of research on psychosis proneness, in which questionnaires were written to identify people who might be at elevated risk of serious mental illness. In a later follow-up study, people with very high scores on this scale were more likely than others to have developed bipolar disorder (Kwapil et al., 2000).

The statements answered in the hypomanic direction are counted. Higher totals describe a more pronounced disposition toward energy, confidence and mood elevation; lower totals describe a more even temperament. A high score does not indicate a mood disorder, and many people with high scores are simply energetic, ambitious and sociable.

The scale is used in research on mood, creativity, ambition and risk for bipolar spectrum conditions, and in clinical assessment by professionals. On this site, the Mood Disorder Questionnaire (MDQ) screens for past episodes of elevated mood, the Hypomanic traits: Mood intensity/change and Exhibitionism scales describe related tendencies in personality-item form, and the IPIP Behavioral Inhibition and Activation Scales describe reward sensitivity.

The measure is clinician-administered here, and a high standing describes a self-reported disposition, not a mood-disorder diagnosis.

“I consider myself to be pretty much an average kind of person.”

Illustrative only. During administration items are presented one screen-set at a time; response-key direction is never shown to respondents.

Item responses are summed within each scale (reverse-keyed items recoded first) and expressed as a percent of the maximum possible score. No normative percentile is applied — there is no verbatim-matched published norm for this exact item set.