Personality

What it means to score high or low in neuroticism

3 min read

The short answer: neuroticism describes how strongly and how often you tend to feel negative emotions such as worry, stress, irritation and sadness. A high score means these feelings come more easily and last longer; a low score means you tend to stay calm and steady. It is one of the five traits of the Big Five, and many tests show it the other way round, as emotional stability. It is a normal personality trait, not an illness. Our page on emotional stability covers the same trait from that side.

The name is misleading

"Neurotic" sounds like an insult, which is why many tests, including ours, use the friendlier name emotional stability. The two are the same scale seen from opposite ends:

• high neuroticism = low emotional stability;
• low neuroticism = high emotional stability.

What a higher score looks like

People who score higher in neuroticism (lower in emotional stability) tend to:

• notice risks and problems quickly, and worry about them;
• feel stress more strongly, and take longer to calm down afterwards;
• be more affected by criticism or setbacks;
• have moods that shift more from day to day.

There is a positive side. Sensitivity to what could go wrong can make people careful, well-prepared and attentive to others' feelings. Many conscientious, thoughtful people score on the higher side.

What a lower score looks like

People who score lower in neuroticism (higher in emotional stability) tend to:

• stay calm under pressure;
• recover quickly from stress and disappointment;
• take criticism in their stride;
• have steadier moods.

There is a less helpful side too: very calm people can sometimes underestimate real risks, or seem unmoved when others need them to share a concern.

Why it matters

Research has linked higher neuroticism, on average, with more day-to-day stress and with a higher risk of anxiety and low mood over time. This is a tendency across large groups, not a prediction about any one person, and a high score is not a diagnosis of anything.

If you often feel overwhelmed, anxious or low, that is worth talking about with a doctor or a mental health professional, whatever any test says.

Can it change?

Yes, more than most traits.

• With age: on average, people become more emotionally stable from young adulthood through middle age.
• With deliberate effort: a large review of studies found that personality traits can shift in response to interventions such as therapy, and that emotional stability showed some of the largest changes, often within a few months.

Things that tend to help people who feel stress strongly:

• Notice the pattern. Writing down what triggered a worry, and what actually happened, can show that the worst case rarely arrives.
• Look after the basics. Sleep, regular exercise and time outdoors make stress easier to handle for most people.
• Practice calming skills. Slow breathing, mindfulness and breaking a worry into a concrete next step are simple and well studied.
• Talk it through. Friends help; for persistent worry, approaches such as cognitive behavioral therapy are effective.

Try it yourself

The Happy Me Personality assessment measures emotional stability along with the other four Big Five traits. It takes about 6 minutes, is free, and needs no account. It is for self-reflection, not a medical or psychological diagnosis.

Take the free Big Five personality test

Sources

• Lahey, B. B. (2009). Public health significance of neuroticism. American Psychologist, 64(4), 241–256.
• Roberts, B. W., Walton, K. E., & Viechtbauer, W. (2006). Patterns of mean-level change in personality traits across the life course. Psychological Bulletin, 132(1), 1–25.
• Roberts, B. W., Luo, J., Briley, D. A., Chow, P. I., Su, R., & Hill, P. L. (2017). A systematic review of personality trait change through intervention. Psychological Bulletin, 143(2), 117–141.
• John, O. P., Naumann, L. P., & Soto, C. J. (2008). Paradigm shift to the integrative Big Five trait taxonomy. In Handbook of Personality: Theory and Research (3rd ed.). Guilford Press.