Neuroticism: Definition, Causes, and Examples

By Charlie Huntington, M. A., Ph. D. Candidate
​Reviewed by Tchiki Davis, M.A., Ph.D.
Neuroticism is the psychological trait of tending to experience negative emotions. What does this look like, and what makes some people more neurotic than others? Read on to find out.
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People love to make sweeping generalizations when comparing one generation to another, and I am no exception. If there is one broad statement I can make about the people younger than me, it is that they are, as a group, experiencing more anxiety than people in my generation. In fact, research has shown that the average rates of anxiety and depression have grown for several decades now, particularly among children and adolescents with an even steeper increase than usual since the introduction of smartphones in the early 2010s (Twenge, 2000; Twenge et al., 2019).
Scholars have suggested several explanations for why rates of depression and anxiety continually rise among young people: among other factors, they point to increasing divorce rates, climate change, the influence of social media, and being less socially connected to others (Twenge et al., 2019). Another way to put this is that, regardless of the exact reasons, the younger generations are becoming progressively more neurotic. If you haven’t heard that word before, get ready for an introduction to the concept of neuroticism; it is an important psychological trait, and learning about neuroticism may help you better understand yourself and others.
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What Is Neuroticism? (A Definition)

Neuroticism is the personality trait of tending to frequently experience intense negative emotions (Barlow et al., 2014). In addition, these feelings are usually accompanied by the thought that one will not be able to control or handle the situation in which the negative emotions are occurring.
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Since neuroticism is defined as a personality trait, this means that each of us demonstrates a particular degree of neuroticism in our own lives. In fact, people vary enormously in how neurotic they are, ranging from having intense reactions to very minor challenges to showing little negative emotion in even the most challenging situations (Lahey, 2009).

Neuroticism Example
Suppose a person high in neuroticism and a person low in neuroticism were both excited to have a friend come into town for a visit next weekend. When that friend calls each of them to say they are canceling the trip because of a family matter, the two people would likely react in very different ways. The person low in neuroticism might feel temporarily disappointed, but would then say something supportive to their friend and start making plans with other people for the weekend. By contrast, the person high in neuroticism might immediately feel a high level of anger or sadness and start to worry about how they will possibly entertain themselves this weekend.

People high in neuroticism are more likely to engage in certain behaviors as a response to their emotions and the sense of lack of control that accompanies those emotions (Barlow et al., 2014). They may worry more, spend more time ruminating on their fear or sadness, or try to avoid their emotions. Each of these behaviors can actually make things worse, by reinforcing the negative emotions and increasing the likelihood that those emotions will happen again (Barlow et al., 2014).
 
Research shows again and again that the trait of neuroticism is higher on average among people with many psychiatric and physical illnesses (Lahey, 2009). In the realm of mental health, these disorders range from depression and anxiety to schizophrenia to eating disorders to substance use (Malouff et al., 2005), while in the realm of physical issues, heart problems, irritable bowel syndrome, skin conditions, and asthma are all related to one’s neuroticism levels (Widiger, 2017). In fact, mental and physical health challenges are so strongly correlated with neuroticism that measures of neuroticism can be thought of as predicting how long and healthy our lives will be (Lahey, 2009; Malouff et al., 2005).
 
Unsurprisingly, all of these factors impact the quality of life for people high in neuroticism – they tend to perform worse at school and in work, to have less satisfying relationships, and to generally just feel worse than other people do much of the time (Ozer & Benet-Martinez, 2006).

Neuroticism is also considered one of the five main traits in the most widely accepted model of personality in psychology research today, known as the Five Factor Model of Personality. As one of the “Big Five”, neuroticism has been widely studied (Widiger, 2017). For more information about this model and how neuroticism fits into it, I recommend watching the following video:​

Video: What is Neuroticism? (Five Factor Model of Personality)

Opposite of Neuroticism

The opposite of neuroticism is difficult to define, since in the world of psychology, we talk about how everybody exists on a range of neuroticism levels. You can think of neuroticism as being a trait in the same way that height is – some people are shorter or taller than others, and this does impact their lives, but everybody has a height. In the same way, we all fall on the spectrum from emotionally stable to highly neurotic—where we fall is referred to as our level of neuroticism. 
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At the same time, it is possible to think of the opposite of being neurotic as being someone who is emotionally blunted, or who experiences very minimal negative emotions. People who are taking antidepressant or antipsychotic medications, who have schizophrenia, have neurodegenerative disorders like Parkinson’s, and who have experienced traumatic brain injuries, may all experience emotional blunting (Arnould et al., 2015; Goodwin et al., 2017; Henry et al., 2007; Lee et al., 2014).

Causes of Neuroticism

Dr. David Barlow, a clinical psychologist and one of the foremost experts on anxiety, says that our levels of neuroticism are caused by three different inputs (Barlow, 2000). In what he calls the triple vulnerability theory, he outlines how the following three factors interact to cause neurotic responses in us:
 
1. Biological vulnerability. Simply put, some of us are born with a more reactive system – some people are just programmed to react more strongly to events than others are. This vulnerability is inherited – it results from the unique combination of genes we inherited from our parents. (For example, both of my parents have experienced depression and anxiety, and so I know I am likely at greater risk, relative to the average person and by nature of my genes, of experiencing negative emotions.)

2. General psychological vulnerability. Thanks to the experiences we have growing up, we may develop a perspective on the world that increases our neuroticism. If we come to see the world as out of our control, unpredictable, and dangerous, we will over time grow to respond more neurotically to the world.

3. Specific psychological vulnerability. While our overall experience can make us more neurotic, the precise flavor of our neuroticism will depend on specific experiences we have. For example, some people may learn to cope with negative emotions by self-medicating, such as through drugs or alcohol, while others may cope by developing obsessive-compulsive rituals.
 
This theory can make it sound like our levels of neuroticism are determined by our childhoods and then are permanent, but this is not the case: we continue throughout our lives to have experiences that influence both our biological and psychological vulnerability (a phenomenon known as epigenetics), and these experiences can both increase and decrease our neuroticism (Barlow et al., 2014). For example, a person who leaves an abusive marriage and finds a loving and gentle partner may eventually become less neurotic as they acclimate to a safer living environment. Also, it has been observed that people are at their most neurotic during adolescence, and levels of neuroticism decline gradually from this point on (Costa & McCrae, 1992).​

Examples of Neuroticism

The following are a few examples of neuroticism in action. Keep in mind that people high in neuroticism may have multiple of these reactions at once (Weiss & Costa, 2005). Suppose your housemate walks into the kitchen, makes themselves a sandwich, and leaves without saying hi to you or making eye contact. If you are high in neuroticism, you may…

1. become very anxious. You obsess over what you must have done to upset them and have trouble getting back to the task you were working on.

2. say something passive-aggressive under your breath as they leave. You can’t believe they acted like you don’t even exist. You refuse to acknowledge their existence for the next two days.

3. spiral into a funk of sadness. This is the final confirmation you were afraid of that they’re not interested at all in being your friend.​

Neuroticism Personality Traits

People high in neuroticism may be described by other people as hostile, irritable, a worrier, often sad, or very self-conscious and self-critical (Costa & McCrae, 1992). Somebody with this trait often seems to expect the worst and see the worst in every situation. They may have crippling negative thoughts about themselves and worry about whether they will ever be good enough.
 
Another way to think about people high in neuroticism – and this is my own observation – is that they often seem to take more energy than they give. In saying this, I draw on my self-reflections during times when I have had lots of negative emotions: in these periods, I need extra support, I struggle to connect with other people, and I have trouble getting excited about things. I turn to other people for a boost, but I don’t have much positivity to give them in turn.​

Test for Neuroticism

There are measures and scales developed by psychologists that we can use to test for people’s levels of neuroticism. These scales vary widely in how many questions they ask, and they typically measure other personality traits at the same time (Widiger, 2017). Most people do not vary too much on their scores on these measures if they take the same test at two different times. In this way, neuroticism scores are thought to be fairly stable, reflecting how much distress we experience in general (Ormel et al., 2004).​

Neuroticism vs Neurosis

Neuroticism, as we use the word today, derives from the idea of neurosis, which was made popular by Sigmund Freud. For Freud, neurosis was the response people had to psychologically traumatic events. In order to cope with the experience, people developed a defensive reaction that Freud called a neurosis (Freud, 1966). The trait of neuroticism was often present in neurosis, but today we use the word neurotic to mean frequent and intense negative emotions in general, not necessarily in relationship to a psychological trauma.​

Dealing With Neuroticism

People high in neuroticism are generally not very effective in dealing with their stress – after all, this is what perpetuates their elevated neuroticism levels (Barlow, 2000). For example, they report interpreting situations in their lives with more distress and more negativity than less neurotic individuals, and perhaps because of these reactions, they are more likely to use less effective coping strategies (Gunthert et al., 1999).
 
Interventions that help people deal with their neuroticism target their negative emotions and thoughts (Sauer-Zavala et al., 2017). Another technique is to help people change their environments to reduce the frequency and intensity of the events that trigger their neurotic reactions. A key step is to help them directly address their emotions, rather than avoid them, as this can help break the neurotic cycle of strong negative reactions creating the expectation of future strong negative reactions (Armstrong & Rimes, 2016).
 
A classic example of this is exposure therapy for people with obsessive-compulsive disorder, who usually score high on neuroticism measures (Samuels et al., 2000). Exposure therapy consists of having people encounter exactly the situations that cause them to feel distress and want to use compulsive coping strategies. By enduring those situations without using the coping strategies, people learn that the situations do not have to be as stressful as they were before. Eventually, their responses become less neurotic.​

Articles Related to Neuroticism

​Want to learn more? Check out these articles:

Books Related to Neuroticism

If you’d like to keep learning more, here are a few books that you might be interested in.

Final Thoughts on Neuroticism

I want to end by emphasizing that our baseline levels of neuroticism are not really in our control. We can’t control the genes we inherited, nor did we have much influence over the environments that we lived in growing up. Unfortunately, parents who are neurotic themselves often both pass on biological vulnerability and create psychological vulnerability through their parenting (Ellenbogen et al., 2010).
 
So if you have read this article and are thinking you might be high in neuroticism, please don’t blame yourself. Many psychotherapies are effective in changing neurotic patterns of emotions and thoughts (Barlow et al., 2014) – there are many places you can find help changing your ways or the ways of somebody close to you.​

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