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Neuroticism

Definition

Neuroticism refers to a broad personality trait dimension representing the degree to which a person experiences the world as distressing, threatening, and unsafe. Each individual can be positioned somewhere on this personality dimension between extreme poles: perfect emotional stability versus complete emotional chaos. Highly neurotic individuals tend to be labile (which means they have plenty of emotional reactions), anxious, tense, and withdrawn. Individuals who are low in neuroticism tend to be content, confident, and stable. The latter report fewer physical and psychological problems and less stress than do highly neurotic individuals.

Neuroticism is associated with distress and dissatisfaction. Neurotic individuals (i.e., those who are high on the neuroticism dimension) tend to feel dissatisfied with themselves and their lives. They are more likely to report minor health problems and to feel general discomfort in a wide range of situations. Neurotic individuals are more prone to negative emotions (e.g., anxiety, depression, anger, guilt). Empirical studies suggest that extremely high levels of neuroticism are associated with prolonged and pervasive misery in both the neurotic individuals and those close to them.

History

The concept of neuroticism can be traced back to ancient Greece and the Hippocratic model of four basic temperaments (choleric, sanguine, phlegmatic, and melancholic, the latter most closely approximating neuroticism). In modern psychometric studies of personality and psychopathology, neuroticism tends to be identified as a first general factor (i.e., the variable with the broadest power in explaining individual differences). For example, as much as 50% of the variability in “internalizing” forms of psychopathology (mental illness) such as depression, anxiety, obsessivecompulsion, phobia, and hysteria can be explained by a general dimension of neuroticism. For this reason, neuroticism almost always appears in modern trait models of personality, though sometimes with slightly different theoretical formulations or names (e.g., trait anxiety, repression-sensitization, ego-resiliency, negative emotionality). Hans Eysenck popularized the term neuroticism in the 1950s by including it as a key scale in his popular personality inventory. Neuroticism figures prominently in the influential Big Five model of personality disposition and in tests designed to measure the Big Five, such as the NEO Personality Inventory. Neuroticism is even reflected in inventories designed for clinical psychological use, such as the recently developed “Demoralization” scale on the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory–2.

Growing but still limited evidence suggests that most major personality traits (including Neuroticism) identified by Western psychology manifest universally. Evidence of the importance of neuroticism in individuals from diverse cultures (and who use different languages) can be found in large-scale crosscultural studies of personality.

Biological Basis

Accruing research data show persuasively that individual differences in neuroticism are substantially heritable (which means they are passed from parent to child). Heritability estimates based on twin studies generally fall in the 40% to 60% range. The remaining individual differences in neuroticism are attributed primarily to unique (nonfamilial) environmental differences; the shared familial environment appears to exert virtually no reliable influence on individual differences in neuroticism. Researchers speculate that overreactivity of the limbic system in the brain is associated with high levels of neuroticism, but specific neurochemical mechanisms or neuroanatomical loci have not yet been identified.

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