Talk:Neuroticism

message: Under Physiology I changed "substantial" in "Behavioral genetics researchers have found that a substantial portion of the variability on measures of neuroticism can be attributed to genetic factors" to "significant" because the paper cited says "significant". Statistically significant means there is likely to be a correlation, though the effect size could be (and in this case is) minimal.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Anthonyhcole (talk • contribs) 16:14, 14 November 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Physiology

message: This article does not explain what internalizing means, it is a rare term and I have no idea of it's definition. Can anyone clear this up?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.145.198.172 (talk) 22:43, 9 November 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I've inserted a link. That should be better than nothing. --JorisvS (talk) 22:52, 9 November 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: "internalizing"

message: As the article points out toward the end, personality traits like neuroticism follow a normal distribution. Presumably, some degree of the trait is beneficial to the individual (or at least to the population), or selection pressure would move it rapidly out of existence. 
However, most of this article focuses on the negative aspects of neuroticism and uses words like "anxiety, moodiness, worry, envy and jealousy" that (to my ear) carry strong value judgments. This only reinforces the non-psychology concept of the word 'neurotic'.  To counterbalance that, I would like to know about the advantages of higher-than-average neuroticism and the disadvantages of extremely low neuroticism. Perhaps a sufficient amount helps in avoiding threats and errors, and too little results in unrealistic optimism?
If, on the other hand, if there is no such thing as "too little neuroticism" and the trait is disadvantageous in any amount in every human culture, that would also be interesting information.
http://www.psychologie.hu-berlin.de/prof/ent/entw_pers/pdf/2008/Denissen_Penke_2008_-_Neuroticism_and_Social_Inclusion.pdf
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/fulfillment-any-age/201010/the-neuroticism-paradox
99.118.9.187 (talk) 04:52, 25 March 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: There's a large section on the positive benefits, in the article on Negative affectivity, which corresponds very closely to neuroticism. IamNotU (talk) 16:29, 16 March 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Neutral point of view? 

message: Prior content in this article duplicated one or more previously published sources. The material was copied from: http://www.psych.utah.edu/people/people/williams/articles/hutchinson_williams.pdf. Copied or closely paraphrased material has been rewritten or removed and must not be restored, unless it is duly released under a compatible license. (For more information, please see "using copyrighted works from others" if you are not the copyright holder of this material, or "donating copyrighted materials" if you are.) For legal reasons, we cannot accept copyrighted text or images borrowed from other web sites or published material; such additions will be deleted. Contributors may use copyrighted publications as a source of information, but not as a source of sentences or phrases. Accordingly, the material may be rewritten, but only if it does not infringe on the copyright of the original or plagiarize from that source. Please see our guideline on non-free text for how to properly implement limited quotations of copyrighted text. Wikipedia takes copyright violations very seriously, and persistent violators will be blocked from editing. While we appreciate contributions, we must require all contributors to understand and comply with these policies. Thank you.  IamNotU (talk) 22:59, 14 March 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Copyright problem removed 

message: There were insurmountable problems with unverifiable content in the edit (original research, personal opinions, and speculation). I wasn't able to repair it, so I just removed it. If you want to add any of it back, please make sure it's verifiable and supported with citations, thanks. IamNotU (talk) 00:09, 15 March 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  reverted edit by 24.2.180.124 17:50, 4 December 2013 

message: The paragraph on sex differences in neuroticism has been tagged as it is missing a citation. After a quick online search I am assuming the article which is being referred is titled "Why can't a man be more like a woman? Sex differences in Big Five personality traits across 55 cultures" by Schmitt and colleagues. The citation is:
Why can't a man be more like a woman? Sex differences in Big Five personality traits across 55 cultures.
Schmitt, David P.; Realo, Anu; Voracek, Martin; Allik, Jüri
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol 94(1), Jan 2008, 168-182. doi: 10.1037/0022-3514.94.1.168
It is available for download here http://www.academia.edu/166186/ISDP_Big_Five_Sex_Differences. As I am new to Wikipedia editing I'm not familiar with the editing tools. Someone can just remove the tags and add the article to the reference list.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by AbuZabi (talk • contribs) 04:32, 7 April 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for pointing out the overkill in tagging this paragraph. The tags added to this paragraph by another editor were excessive in number and unnecessary. There is already a citation to the article you refer to in the paragraph. I think it is very clear that the words "this study" are referring to the citation given, since it is the sole reference present. Hence there is no need for tags saying "which study" in every sentence when it is obvious which one is being referred to. My understanding of referencing conventions is that it is not necessary to cite the same source in every sentence in the same paragraph, as one citation per paragraph is sufficient, as long as there is no ambiguity. Furthermore, because the reference is properly cited, it already appears in the reference list (the software takes care of this when the proper template is used).--Smcg8374 (talk) 05:46, 9 April 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Citation for the paragraph on sex differences 

message: They respond more poorly to stressors...
I suggest replacing "more poorly" in the 1<SUP>st</SUP> ¶ with "worse."
:<B>☺</B> Dick Kimball (talk) 12:30, 21 October 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  more poorly? 

message: This content appears to be misplaced in the article, and comes across as WP:COATRACK as a result. The finding that the prevalence of neuroticism varies across the United States is interesting, but perhaps not worth an entire section (perhaps a subsection under "Epidemiology", if more information is added?). The follow-on claim isn't actually related to geography, except for the use of geography as a proxy for prevalence of neuroticism in correlating neuroticism with health effects. This is low-quality evidence at any rate, but if it merits inclusion, it should be in a section that's actually about physiological effects of neuroticism.
AFAICT, it doesn't fit anywhere else right now, so I'd support removing it for now unless someone can produce evidence of other physiological effects.
Thoughts? 69.159.83.14 (talk) 23:09, 9 August 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Geography - Heart disease and life expectancy 

message: The claim that men have lower levels of neuroticism in "countries with higher levels of human development" seems to posit that there is some objective, viewpoint-neutral way to measure "human development". Different cultures disagree about what constitutes human development, because they have different value systems. I'm not disputing that there seems to be some interesting data here, but the characterization of what makes some countries different should be phrased in a way that does not implicitly impose a value system.
-- Andrew Myers (talk) 00:06, 10 August 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Higher levels of human development" does not seem VPN 

message: Ormel 2013 is a referenced article being used to make statements about gender differences in levels of neuroticism. The article in question is this public access article. A reading of this article shows that it makes no statements on gender differences, and furthermore some of the quotes attributed to the article do not actually exist. I suspect that this article is being confused with another that I do not know of. However, currently statements attributed to this article are inaccurate.--Tosiaki! (talk) 17:37, 10 August 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: Again my apologies! Jytdog (talk) 18:05, 10 August 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Concerning Ormel 2013 

message: Everyone, I laughed when I saw this : https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/bjj8jz/an-edit-war-is-brewing-on-the-neuroticism-wikipedia-page-after-being-cited-in-google-employees-memo
Our Wikipedia drama details are newsworthy now. :D
Just to make it extra fun, can we reference that source in this article somehow? --Nanite (talk) 20:51, 10 August 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: I would not know of how "extra fun" should factor into the inclusion of any particular source, but recent events could potentially be of mentioned on the condition that the usage of such news sources is restricted only to the events themselves. However, given how recentism can be a factor into mentioning of such current events, I would prefer to wait and see if such events are of lasting significance or just an episode, seeing how such things can usually only be seen in clear light a while after it has happened.--Tosiaki! (talk) 21:00, 10 August 2017 (UTC)

text: No, that is navel-gazing. Jytdog (talk) 21:04, 10 August 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: Remove portions of the article and summarize the VICE piece instead. Let's concentrate on the important parts of life. Not on the mundane. Jazi  Zilber (talk) 21:13, 10 August 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: NO. The Vice article is not about "neuroticism" which is the subject of this article.   People come here to read about the topic not gossip about us. Jytdog (talk) 21:19, 10 August 2017 (UTC)
replies: text:  I was JOKING! Jazi  Zilber (talk) 21:22, 10 August 2017 (UTC)
replies: text:   We invented ascii smileys for a reason --- Poe's law: there's alwas someone who's gonna take you seriously no matter how obvious the joke is to you. --Nanite (talk) 21:28, 10 August 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  In the news (Vice Motherboard article) ! 

message: There is now an article Google memo. Roberttherambler (talk) 23:41, 10 August 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: I thought it might help to sort out the POV dispute but perhaps I was over-optimistic. Roberttherambler (talk) 00:13, 11 August 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Google memo 

message: The sentence:
Three cross-cultural studies have revealed higher levels of female neuroticism across almost all nations: 25 out of 26 in Costa et al.'s study, 53 out of 55 in Schmitt's study, and 52 out of 53 in Lippa's study.
is weird, because it cites none of the three studies, and the reader is none the wiser about which studies of Costa, Schmitt or Lippa are being talked about. Either remove the second half of the sentence or cite the studies. For the moment, I have removed the second half of the sentence. Feel free to revert/edit/discuss. Kingsindian ♝ ♚ 10:12, 15 August 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: Removal is right anyhow. Overloaded sentences are a malice. "almost all" is the concise way, regardless of what the reader knows. I am just annoyed on how many such sentences people add in wiki. This is an encyclopedia, not a master thesis with small overloaded details. Jazi  Zilber (talk) 11:12, 15 August 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: I am happy with the current version of the article . Roberttherambler (talk) 19:01, 15 August 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: It's pretty good. If anything is to be added, it might be the description of how sex diffs are larger in more gender-egalitarian countries (see Schmitt book source above). But maybe this gets too deep into things. --Nanite (talk) 21:42, 16 August 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sentence about three cross-cultural studies 

message: For some reason there is posted at the start of this article that neuroticism should not be confused with neurosis.  Yet I have seen neuroticism defined as the noun form of neurotic, which of course is an advective form related to neurosis. (A person who has neurosis acts neurotic.) I have done extensive study of abnormal psychology and the DSM-IV, studying in graduate school, university.  I have a copy of the DSM-5, but have not studied it much.  Has the DSM-5 recognized "neuroticism"?  I don't recall seeing the word in the DMS-IV, nor neurosis.  Here is an internet quote:
:"The concept of neurosis has been discredited as the trend toward descriptive clarity and reliability in diagnosis gains the upper hand, together with the push toward a theoretical, operational definitions of psychiatric disorders and biological explanations of pathogenesis. Derided as vague, unreliable, impossible to verify empirically, overinclusive, and tied to an obsolete theory, neurosis has been excluded from psychiatry's official diagnostic classifications." https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/medicine-and-dentistry/neurosis (PeacePeace (talk) 17:37, 27 February 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: PeacePeace [note: site-banned for apparently unrelated issues] has effectively expressed my own (more lay, medical-writerly) concerns. I can't help wondering whether this page should be presented from a more historical perspective, or at least clarified in some way (for example, versus "neurosis"). 86.186.155.169 (talk) 11:15, 14 March 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Is there such a thing as neuroticism per modern psychological consensus? 

message: I recently trimmed  an entire == History == section which seemed to me fundamentally OT / POV. 
RE any concerns about this removal (ping JPxG): The sourced portion of the content moves from Hippocrates and Galen to posit one of the 'four temperaments' (the melancholic; ping@Johnbod, fyi) as "the conceptual predecessor" of neuroticism. This claim  was sourced to a paper focused on "Melancholia and depression during the 19th century". Since the paper is paywalled, I haven't been able to check the content, although I suspect it may refer to Hans Eysenck's own POVs regarding the conceptual prehistory of neuroticism. As an unqualified statement of fact, it was a clear violation of WP:POV; and as the single basis for a == History == section here it was manifestly undue. The trimmed content concluded with a challenged, unsourced observation regarding the archaic status of black bile as a clinical concept: Galen of Pergamon popularized the idea that mixes of four bodily fluids or humours resulted in four personality types or temperaments. The melancholic personality type, which can be seen as the conceptual predecessor of neuroticism, was characterized by being mentally unbalanced, fearful, anxious, or sad. According to Hippocrates, it resulted from too much black bile. Modern scientific investigations have concluded that bile (or any dark fraction of blood) is not connected to temperament.
While this sort of content might be pertinent *somewhere* on the page, it would clearly need to be reframed and reweighted making clear whose pov it was.
86.161.190.100 (talk) 16:32, 16 March 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  trimmed content 

message: The last sentence of the first introduction paragraph is the un-referenced statement: "They are described as often being self-conscious and shy, and tending to have trouble controlling urges and delaying gratification."
I believe this sentence should be removed. First, the claim is un-referenced. Second, the statement is in the introduction of the article. The introduction purpose to provide an overview and important points, however, nowhere else are these topics discussed or referenced. Third, to my knowledge, the information is incorrect. According to the validated Big Five model (which IS referenced in this article), being "self-continuous and shy" are more descriptive of low scores on the "extroversion" scale, while "having trouble controlling urges and delaying gratification" are more descriptive of low scores on the "conscientiousness" scale, rather than either of the listed traits being described anywhere on the neuroticism scale. If there is a good reference for this statement, or if you otherwise believe the statement is correct and should be retained, please discuss here or reference a reliable source. Wikipedialuva (talk) 05:05, 6 September 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Removal of un referenced and arguably incorrect sentence in first paragraph  

message: To me it looks like the neuroticism term has become a collection of negative traits, both in this Wikipedia article and in society popular view.
I see two problems with that:
# Grouping multiple traits encourages a lazy judgement on the whole group instead of deep understanding of each individual trait, why it happens and what are the consequences.
# Human psychological traits have both a negative and positive range, which can lead to a constructive discussion about limits, distribution, pros and cons.
One good example of trait that I feel is neutrally defined is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensory_processing_sensitivity, that is linked in this article.
How do you feel? Is there any chance left for neuroticism to evolve into a neutral term or is it doomed to stay a stigma?  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2605:A601:A794:FB00:405:730F:EDD4:9882 (talk) 03:56, 8 September 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Is a neutral point of view possible for neuroticism anymore?