Neuroticism
Also known as: Emotional stability, Negative emotionality
The trait of proneness to anxiety, moodiness, and negative emotion.
What it means
Neuroticism is the Big Five dimension capturing the tendency to experience negative emotions — anxiety, sadness, irritability, self-consciousness, and emotional volatility — and to perceive the world as threatening or distressing. Its opposite pole is emotional stability. High scorers react more strongly to stress, recover more slowly, and are at elevated risk for anxiety and mood disorders; the trait is among the strongest personality predictors of psychopathology and lower subjective well-being. Mechanistically it is linked to heightened threat sensitivity and reactivity in systems involving the amygdala. It matters for decision-making because neurotic individuals show stronger loss aversion, risk avoidance, and affect-driven judgment, and because reducing its impact is a target of clinical and well-being interventions.
Examples
Before a flight, a person high in neuroticism rehearses every disaster scenario and can't relax; a stable person shrugs and reads a book.
Two colleagues get the same terse email from their boss. One shrugs it off as a bad mood; the other updates her CV that evening and sleeps badly all week.
Offered a role that pays more but might not last, a high scorer dwells on how being let go would feel and stays in the safer job.
First described in A Big Five dimension; roots in Eysenck.