Neuroticism (Emotional Stability) is one of five dimensions of personality according to the Big Five model (McCrae & Costa, 1987). It describes a person's tendency to show emotions in an extremely controlled manner rather than to let emotions run wild more often.
Neuroticism (Emotional Stability) includes, on the one hand, qualities such as emotionality and anxiety and on the other hand, features such as emotional coldness (Costa & McCrae, 1985).
Whereas it was previously assumed that emotion-driven and emotion-controlled expression form a pair of opposites, allowing a person to be clearly assigned to one of the two categories, today emotion-driven and emotion-controlled are considered as two poles of a continuum within this dimension. The value of each person can therefore be located at one point on the following scale:
Emotion-driven
People who show more emotion-driven behavior and often let their emotions run wild can be described by the following characteristics:
- passionately
- timid
- sorrowful
Through their natural skepticism, emotion-driven people are downright planning geniuses, because they anticipate potential difficulties in advance. This can come into its own, for example, in bookkeeping or similar administrative activities (Denissen et al., 2017).
Emotion-controlled
For people who show more emotion-controlled behavior and keep an extremely strong grip on their emotions, the following characteristics are typical:
- self-assured
- sturdy
- unflappable
They are in perfect control of their emotions. This makes them a rock of stability for jobs with high levels of stress (Hough et al., 1990). Strong emotion-controlled behavior is therefore beneficial, for example, for physicians, at the fire department, or as a judge (Denissen et al., 2017).
Benefits in a professional context
It is not only the person's personality that is decisive, but above all the fit between the person and the characteristics of the vacancy.
The level of stress in particular is decisive here. People who are highly emotionally driven are often unable to exploit their full potential in very stressful situations (Dobson, 2000). They thrive in safe, stable environments, while the robustness of emotion-controlled individuals comes into its own in stressful, varied environments.
Therefore, it is important to address individual characteristics of people in order to achieve maximum performance.
How do you record neuroticism?
Do you want to record the emotional control of your applicants? Aivy is happy to help you with this!
Our mini-game “Self-Knowledge” offers users the opportunity to complete a brief self-assessment and find out their individual value. This not only covers emotion control, but also the four other areas of the Big Five:
Sources
- Costa, P.T., & McCrae, R.R. (1985). The NEO personality inventory. Odessa, FL: Psychological Assessment Resources.
- Denissen, J.J., Bleidorn, W., Hennecke, M., Luhmann, M., Orth, U., Specht, J., & Zimmermann, J. (2018). Uncovering the power of personality to shape income. Psychological Science, 29 (1), 3-13.
- Dobson, P. (2000). An investigation into the relationship between neuroticism, extraversion and cognitive test performance in selection. International Journal of Selection and Assessment, 8 (3), 99-109.
- Hough, L.M., Eaton, N.K., Dunnette, M.D., Kamp, J.D., & McCloy, R.A. (1990). Criterion-related validities of personality constructs and the effect of response distortion on those validities. Journal of Applied Psychology, 75 (5), 581.
- McCrae, R.R., & Costa, P.T. (1987). Validation of the five-factor model of personality across instruments and observers. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 52 (1), 81.
Neuroticism is one of the traits Aivy captures in its personality assessment.
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