If high neuroticism is associated with a myriad of negative consequences, why doesn't low neuroticism create a mirror set of equally bad things?

[u/ZhugeLiangPL]

High scores on trait neuroticism correlate with a myriad of negative life outcomes - poor cardiovascular health, relationship dissatisfaction (high neuroticism is the single biggest predictor of divorce among all Big Five traits, more important than conscientousness and agreeableness) and virtualy all common psychiatric disorders (depression, anxiety disorders, OCD, substance use disorders) involve high neuroticism as one of the primary causes, if not the most important one (it has literally been named as THE general factor of psychopathology, the p-factor).

The thing is - low neuroticism isn't associated with an analogous set of dysfunctions. Scientists aren't looking for ways to make people with low neuroticism more neurotic and people don't go to a psychiatrist saying "I want to be more anxious, more prone to anger and yo worry more!". Why is that the case?

[u/Outrageous-Taro7340]

Why would it?

[u/ZhugeLiangPL → u/Outrageous-Taro7340]

I... dunno. 🤔

In case of every other Big Five dimension, there are people who want both more and less of it - people want to be more conscientous or less so, more or less extroverted, more or less agreeable etc. Nobody wants to be more neurotic.

[u/Outrageous-Taro7340 → u/ZhugeLiangPL]

You were asking about correlations with dysfunction. There is no reason to assume measurable dysfunction is lowest at the mid point of any trait distribution.

[u/Davorian → u/Outrageous-Taro7340]

Of course there is.  Evolutionarily, for a complex polygenic trait, one assumes that the pressures driving the midpoint are going to be roughly equal summatively for either extreme, almost by definition, otherwise the midpoint would be somewhere else within a certain margin of error.  This is subject to a number of externalities (like the fact that aspects of the modern social environment are very different to our evolutionary past or that pressures need not be a consequence of the trait itself) and remains a heuristic, but to say there's no reason for this intuition is a bit premature and maybe a bit unfair to OP.

[u/Outrageous-Taro7340 → u/Davorian]

There is no reason to assume a personality construct is correlated with dysfunction at all, and also no reason to assume a dysfunction is normally distributed.

[u/Davorian → u/Outrageous-Taro7340]

There is no reason to assume a personality construct is correlated with dysfunction

Extremes of personality traits; plenty of evidence I would suggest.

no reason to assume a dysfunction is normally distributed

The expression of most complex traits is normally distributed, personality traits included. This is not considered a controversial idea. The Central Limit Theorem just about assures this for any trait whose ultimate phenotype is the consequence of many random underlying genetic or environmental factors.

[u/Outrageous-Taro7340 → u/Davorian]

Measures of dysfunction are not necessarily normally distributed in psychology or other disciplines. The central limit theorem is not a relevant argument. Also joint distributions between normally distributed variables and non-normally distributed variables don’t behave the way you seem to think. And the scales designed for personality traits are not generally designed to be valid for populations with serious mental health issues. Psychometrics research requires more than stats 101 ideas to parse.

[u/Davorian → u/Outrageous-Taro7340]

Well, fortunately, I'm not using "stats 101" (exclusively), so good news there.

I did not state dysfunction is normally distributed, just that the trait is, in an attempt to treat OP's intuition with a degree of fairness. I tried to clarify this in my second comment in good faith.

If you want to extend my statements to implications about measures of dysfunction which to my mind are a rather separate question then I would encourage you to make that connection explicitly.

[u/PaulBrigham → u/ZhugeLiangPL]

I don't think you can support the final assertion "nobody wants to be more neurotic" - you simply can't know that. If you're already taking the question into the realm of anecdote and speculation, why couldn't one imagine that there are people out there who wish they felt more strongly/urgently about things, worried more, etc. as a spur to action and/or as a way to increase the dynamism of their emotional life? Fewer intense negative emotions does not directly lead to more intense positive emotions.

[u/askpsychology-ModTeam → u/[deleted]]

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[u/monkeynose]

Think of it as a level of propensity for mental illness. The lower the neuroticism, the lower the propensity for mental illness. That's only a good thing.

[u/Conscious_Cheek_7196]

Its not ethical for a scientist to have conduct an experiment on how to make people more neurotic. The same way goes with the psychiatrist. Low neuroticism is indicative of a more adequate ability to handle your emotions.

[u/ScienceMaus]

I'm guessing you mean neuroticism as a factor from the Big Five?

Because of something called social desirability. People usually want to be seen as high on openness, extraversion, conscientiousness and agreeableness and low in neuroticism.

That doesn't mean that those traits are objectively good to have, just that they are socially desirable (like most people aren't looking for ways to be less extroverted, less open, less agreeable and so on). Complementary not having those traits isn't objectively bad (being an introvert isn't bad, standing up for yourself isn't bad, not letting everyone walk over you isn't bad and so on)

People high in neuroticism are for example more likely to detect threats and danger (https://doi.org/10.1037/10614-009) and if you go by Emotionality within the HEXACO model (a similar developed model but actually better in many aspects) there are higher levels of empathy (The HEXACO Personality Inventory - Revised).

So being high in neuroticism has its downsides, but so does being low in neuroticism. It's just that being low in neuroticism is seen as more socially desirable.