Psychology 101
Neuroticism: Meaning, High vs Low Scores
The CQ Team · 5 min read · Oct 16, 2026
Neuroticism is the Big Five trait that describes how often and how strongly you feel negative emotions such as worry, sadness and irritation. Its three facets are anxiety, depression and emotional volatility.
Neuroticism is the Big Five trait that describes how often and how strongly you feel negative emotions such as worry, sadness and irritation. Its three facets are anxiety, depression and emotional volatility. The low end is emotional stability, and the newest version of a leading questionnaire calls it negative emotionality, partly to separate it from psychiatric illness. CQ's Big Five test calls it emotional sensitivity.
Each facet is a range. Neither end is the good one, and most people sit somewhere in between.
| Facet | High scorers | Low scorers |
|---|---|---|
| Anxiety | Worries often and feels tense. | Relaxed, and rarely worries. |
| Depression | Often feels sad or down. | Rarely feels blue. |
| Emotional volatility | Moods shift quickly; easily irritated. | Even-tempered and slow to anger. |
Facet names from the BFI-2 (Soto & John, 2017); descriptions are our summaries.
It is the trait most tied to how people feel day to day. In a meta-analysis of personality and wellbeing, neuroticism correlated .64 with negative mood. People diagnosed with anxiety or depression score much higher on average (Kotov et al., 2010), but a high score is a common, normal-range trait level and not a diagnosis. If worry or low mood is getting in the way of your life, talk to a doctor or a mental health professional.
| More negative mood | .64 |
| Lower life satisfaction | .44 |
| Higher divorce risk | .17 |
Correlations, sign removed. Mood and life satisfaction from Steel et al. (2008); divorce from Roberts et al. (2007).7.
Emotional stability tends to rise, so neuroticism tends to fall, especially between 20 and 40. Women score somewhat higher on average, and the overlap between men and women is large. (Roberts et al., 2006)
No Myers-Briggs letter measures it. The -A and -T on a 16Personalities result is the closest thing; here is how that works. (Furnham et al., 2003, replicating McCrae & Costa, 1989)
No. It is a normal personality trait that everyone has to some degree. High scores are linked to a higher risk of anxiety and depression, but they are not a diagnosis.
They are the same scale, scored in opposite directions. High emotional stability means low neuroticism.
It tends to fall naturally through adulthood, especially between 20 and 40.
On average, somewhat. The difference is small to moderate and most men and women overlap.
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