Neuroticism, Effects on Relationships

What is Neuroticism?

The broad personality dimension of neuroticism captures individual differences in the tendency to experience negative emotions such as anxiety, anger, and sadness. Individuals who are relatively high in neuroticism are easily distressed. Neuroticism also involves a negative self-image and chronic patterns of thinking associated with distressing emotions. People relatively high on this dimension have a negative outlook on life, themselves, and the people in their social worlds.

Neuroticism is considered a fundamental personality trait because it appears in nearly all models psychologists use to classify personality characteristics. For example, many psychologists currently argue that five broad domains can be used to organize the most important personality characteristics. These so-called Big Five are Neuroticism, Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, and Openness to Experience. Likewise, neuroticism is one of the three major traits in the personality model developed by Hans J. Eysenck, and traits that are synonymous with neuroticism appear in other popular models of personality created by Raymond Cattell and Auke Tellegen. In short, neuroticism is one of the most discussed and studied adult personality traits in psychology.

Neuroticism is a fairly stable individual characteristic by adulthood. Individuals who are high (or low) in neuroticism in their 30s tend to be high (or low) in neuroticism in their 40s. This does not mean that some people do not change in their levels of neuroticism, nor that individuals do not become more emotionally stable as they mature; it simply means that there is a good deal of consistency in this trait for most adults. In other words, if a person is high in neuroticism at one point in [Page 1153]time, then it is likely she or he will be high in neu-roticism in the future.

Aspects of neuroticism are evident in even very young children. Some infants and young children are easily upset, whereas others are calmer and harder to distress. In both young children and adults, it appears that the same neurobiological system underlies the general tendency to become emotionally distressed. This system is called the behavioral inhibition system, or the behavioral avoidance system, and appears to govern one's overall sensitivity to a potentially punishing stimuli. Individuals with a strong behavioral inhibition system are more sensitive to threat and therefore are more likely to experience anxiety and other negative emotions.

Researchers are beginning to map the neurological pathways, brain structures, and genes that underlie neuroticism. Indeed, evidence from twin studies indicates that individual differences in neu-roticism are partially genetic in origin. For example, identical twins are much more similar in their levels of neuroticism than are fraternal twins. All in all, neuroticism is an important personality trait that has a significant biological basis.

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