We’ve been looking at the individual traits that make up the most popular framework for understanding personality, the Big Five Model. OCEAN is the acronym that summarizes the factors. Briefly, these are the traits, with links to the My Favorite Things essays that explore them:
- Openness to Experience (inventive/curious vs. consistent/cautious)
- Conscientiousness (efficient/organized vs. extravagant/careless)
- Extraversion (outgoing/energetic vs. solitary/reserved)
- Agreeableness (friendly/compassionate vs. critical/combative)
- And now, Neuroticism (sensitive/nervous vs. resilient/confident).
I think of N as an unfortunately named trait because the word “neurotic” brings to mind images of unpleasant people, like the above of one of the most iconic examples of that word in modern popular culture: Woody Allen. Allen’s made a career of portraying himself as a “bundle of nerves,” living in a distressing world. Allen’s persona is filled with what might be a possible N substitute for the word Neuroticism: Negative emotionality. “Emotional stability” is another way of describing the N trait.
Negative emotionality is each individual’s characteristic “emotional temperature.” We all know someone who is (sometimes maddeningly!) unfailingly positive and upbeat. No matter what the circumstances, these low N scorers never fail to embody the Monty Python admonition; they “Always Look On The Bright Side of Life.” These are people who’d score very low on N trait scale in the Big Five Personality Test. Those who score very high (as Allen’s character presumably would) are likely to experience the following negative emotions more frequently, intensely, and persistently than those who score low.
Those “negative emotions” are:
Anxiety: A feeling of dread or uneasiness, often without an identifiable cause of source.
Anger/Hostility: Easily becomes frustrated and emotionally reactive.Fear: Intense, unpleasant reactions to specific objects, situations, or activities, sometimes out of proportion to actual danger.
Sadness: Frequent feelings of unhappiness, sorrow, or low mood, even when things are going well.
Irritability: Easily annoyed or frustrated, often over minor issues. Instability.
Guilt: Persistent feelings of sorrow, remorse, or self-blame, even if unwarranted.
Envy: Feeling resentful or unhappy about other people’s successes, possessions, or happiness.
Loneliness: Feeling isolated or disconnected from others.
Stress sensitivity: Highly reactive to modern life’s everyday difficulties.
Perceived threats: Experiencing everyday situations as more dangerous and/or threatening than they actually are.
Maladaptive coping: Uses ways of dealing with emotional distress that may provide temporary relief but are ultimately unproductive, such as avoidance or excessive worrying.
All of us have experienced all of these emotional reactions to situations in our lives. The key to understanding any of the Big Five traits is determining our normal “set point” on a five-level continuum that varies from very low to (- -) to very high (+ +). In the example of the N trait, a + + person is likely finds themselves often intensely experiencing the kinds of negative feelings described above.
But, what can we do about it?
As is so often the case with life advice, we can start with the Greeks. The exterior of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi, built in the 4th century BCE, has three bits of sage wisdom carved into its facade. The first of these was KNOW THYSELF.
If you know that you are characteristically given to experiences and expressions of negative emotionality, you can take that set point into account in your daily life. And, if you’re unhappy with that tendency, you’ll need to do something different. That means you already know that saying, “I’m just reacting,” or “I’m just being myself,” or “I’m only doing what comes naturally” will likely lead to these of negative experiences.
Once we realize that this is the way we typically react, it’s hard to ignore. Many of us know the sound of that little voice in our head saying: “Ah, there I go again!” Therapists trained in Alfred Adler’s approach say that when they enable this kind of patient insight, it’s like “spitting in their soup”; somehow, doing the same things after knowing about their origins and likely outcomes is never quite “tastes” the same.
It’s akin to driving a car that with low air pressure in the left front tire: you know the car is going to pull to the left, so you have to overcorrect by slightly steering to the right. Actively adopting a positive outlook (like the Python troupe suggests) is the key. Simple? Sure. Easy? Not so much.
Each of us is an ongoing contextual, dynamic, complex constellation of the Big Five Personality Factors. Knowing ourselves means appreciating our characteristic ways of being-in-the-world and the consequences of those ways. Our lives are products of that constellation-in-action, interacting with all kinds of other people, in various situations, every day.
But, we are not completely malleable beings. Many of the ways I feel, think, and act are the result of evolution, genetics, and the environments in which I was born and have lived. That means some significant elements of our beings are immutable. Paraphrasing another another wise statement, our lives are ongoing explorations of the ways that we can accept the things about ourselves we cannot change, courageously change the things we can, and develop the wisdom to know the difference.
(P.S. – The other two wise admonitions on the Temple of Apollo: NOTHING IN EXCESS, and SURETY BRINGS RUIN.)
Tom Guarriello is a psychologist, consultant, and founding faculty member of the Masters in Branding program at New York’s School of Visual Arts. He’s spent over a decade teaching psychology-based courses like The Meaning of Branded Objects, as well as leading Honors and Thesis projects. He’s spearheaded two podcasts, BrandBox and RoboPsych, the accompanying podcast for his eponymous website on the psychology of human-robot interaction. This essay was originally posted on Guarriello’s Substack, My Favorite Things.
Photo by Diane Picchiottino on Unsplash.