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. 2020 Apr 28;117(17):9270-9276.
doi: 10.1073/pnas.1919934117. Epub 2020 Apr 15.

Neuroticism may not reflect emotional variability

Elise K Kalokerinos  1 , Sean C Murphy  2 , Peter Koval  2   3 , Natasha H Bailen  4 , Geert Crombez  5 , Tom Hollenstein  6 , John Gleeson  7 , Renee J Thompson  4 , Dimitri M L Van Ryckeghem  5   8 , Peter Kuppens  3 , Brock Bastian  2
Affiliations

Neuroticism may not reflect emotional variability

Elise K Kalokerinos et al. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. .

Abstract

Neuroticism is one of the major traits describing human personality, and a predictor of mental and physical disorders with profound public health significance. Individual differences in emotional variability are thought to reflect the core of neuroticism. However, the empirical relation between emotional variability and neuroticism may be partially the result of a measurement artifact reflecting neuroticism's relation with higher mean levels-rather than greater variability-of negative emotion. When emotional intensity is measured using bounded scales, there is a dependency between variability and mean levels: at low (or high) intensity, it is impossible to demonstrate high variability. As neuroticism is positively associated with mean levels of negative emotion, this may account for the relation between neuroticism and emotional variability. In a metaanalysis of 11 studies (N = 1,205 participants; 83,411 observations), we tested whether the association between neuroticism and negative emotional variability was clouded by a dependency between variability and the mean. We found a medium-sized positive association between neuroticism and negative emotional variability, but, when using a relative variability index to correct for mean negative emotion, this association disappeared. This indicated that neuroticism was associated with experiencing more intense, but not more variable, negative emotions. Our findings call into question theory, measurement scales, and data suggesting that emotional variability is central to neuroticism. In doing so, they provide a revisionary perspective for understanding how this individual difference may predispose to mental and physical disorders.

Keywords: emotional variability; experience sampling; negative emotion; neuroticism; personality.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no competing interest.

Figures

Fig. 1.
Fig. 1.
Histograms depicting the frequency of momentary negative emotion for each dataset. The y axis represents the frequency of observations and is different for each dataset because they have a different total number of observations. DD, daily diary; ESM, experience sampling method.
Fig. 2.
Fig. 2.
Forest plots of the relationships between mean negative emotions and neuroticism (A) and negative emotional variability (B), demonstrating the potential for mean levels to cloud the relationship between neuroticism and negative emotional variability. For each dataset, we provide a correlation bounded by a 95% CI. The area of each square is proportional to the weight of the study in the metaanalysis. The results of the random-effects metaanalysis are depicted at the bottom of the figure (RE model), with the width of the rhombus representing the 95% CI. The dotted line represents no effect. DD, daily diary; ESM, experience sampling method.
Fig. 3.
Fig. 3.
Forest plots of the relationship between neuroticism and negative emotional variability (the within-person SD; A), variability in maximum daily negative emotion (for ESM datasets with multiple daily measures only; B), and relative variability in negative emotion (C). For each dataset, we provide a correlation bounded by a 95% CI. The area of each square is proportional to the weight of the study in the metaanalysis. The results of the random-effects metaanalysis are depicted at the bottom of the figure (RE model), with the width of the rhombus representing the 95% CI. The dotted line represents no effect. DD, daily diary; ESM, experience sampling method.
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