While extreme, this type of maladaptive response can lead to difficulty in relationships, problems keeping jobs, an overall decreased satisfaction with life, depression and anxiety disorders, and a decreased life expectancy.
Persons with elevated levels of neuroticism respond poorly to environmental stress, interpret ordinary situations as threatening, and can experience minor frustrations as hopelessly overwhelming.
Neuroticism is associated with distress and dissatisfaction. Neurotic individuals (that is, 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.
While neuroticism has its benefits—such as intelligence, humor, more realistic if “cynical” expectations, greater self-awareness, drivenness and conscientiousness, lower risk-taking, and a strong need to provide for others—it is also associated with self-criticism, sensitivity to others and social anxiety, moodiness ...
When you're neurotic, you may be more susceptible to stress. Overtime, unmanaged stress can debilitate your general health, lead to dysregulated emotions, and worsen your neuroticism. For this reason, it's crucial to effectively manage stress.
A 2017 review suggests that neuroticism is often associated with poorer mental and physical health outcomes. But a 2019 study suggests that genetic variants of neurotic behaviors may have protective functions such as high intelligence and longer lifespan.
A person who is neurotic acts and feels anxious. They also commonly feel negative about themself, having many feelings of self-doubt. If someone is neurotic will commonly rehash worst-case scenarios in their minds without being able to control these thought patterns.
Studies have shown that individuals with higher levels of neuroticism are associated with a shortened life span, a greater likelihood of divorce, and a lack of education. To cope with the negative emotionality, these individuals may engage in maladaptive forms of coping, such as procrastination, dissociation, etc.
Neuroticism, one of the Big 5 personality traits, is typically defined as a tendency toward anxiety, depression, self-doubt, and other negative feelings. All personality traits, including neuroticism, exist on a spectrum—some people are just much more neurotic than others.
Those who score high on Neuroticism are not strangers to anxiety, anger, or depression, and are likely to experience several of these emotions regularly. In the simplest terms, those who score highly for Neuroticism tend to be more emotionally reactive, while those who score lower tend to be less emotionally reactive.
A lack of emotional support or exposure to traumatic events during childhood can contribute to the development of neuroticism. Children who grow up in unstable, neglectful, or abusive* environments may be more prone to developing negative thought patterns and emotions that persist into adulthood.
While extreme, this type of maladaptive response can lead to difficulty in relationships, problems keeping jobs, an overall decreased satisfaction with life, depression and anxiety disorders, and a decreased life expectancy.
There is typically a biological component to neuroticism, meaning that some people are just physiologically more sensitive to stress, so it's important not to think of neuroticism as a weakness or personal failing.
Compared to individuals with low levels of neuroticism, those with high levels of neuroticism are more prone to being depressed because they experience more stressful events. In real life, teenagers with high levels of neuroticism are likely to have psychological problems, such as loneliness and social anxiety.
Albert Einstein, Isaac Newton, Winston Churchill... Steve Jobs' obsessive micromanagement didn't come from an excess of agreeableness, did it? 'Neuroticism gets a bad press, but the self-same traits that cause people distress and disability with neuroticism can also, when harnessed properly, predict great success.
Neuroticism and Creative Jobs
Creative jobs, such as graphic designers, event planning, and public relations, may be a good fit for people with neuroticism. These jobs often require frequent changes and new experiences, which can be stimulating for people with high levels of neuroticism.
Individuals tend to increase their levels of Neuroticism, especially in young adult life, between 20 and 40 years of age, and older people tend to obtain lower scores (Roberts et al., 2006).
And while we're used to couching ageing in terms of deterioration and decline, the gradual modification of our personalities has some surprising upsides. We become more conscientious and agreeable, and less neurotic.
Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is a debilitating illness characterized by severe emotional dysregulation, tumultuous interpersonal relationships, and self-harming and suicidal behavior5. According to meta-analytic review, BPD is the personality disorder most strongly associated with neuroticism6,7.
People with neuroticism tend to have more depressed moods and suffer from feelings of guilt, envy, anger, and anxiety more frequently and more severely than other individuals. They can be particularly sensitive to environmental stress. People with neuroticism may see everyday situations as menacing and major.
In addition, individuals with higher levels in neuroticism tend to harbor negative attributions about their partner's behavior and their relationship in general (Karney & Bradbury, 2000; Karney et al., 1994), interpret ambiguous situations and partner behaviors in a pessimistic and negative fashion, and anticipate that ...
Interestingly, the anti-neuroticism cult is often justified in terms of productivity: stop worrying, being negative, or feeling anxious, and your productivity goes up. In line, decades of scientific research show that there is generally a negative relationship between neuroticism and career success.