Why Do Neurotic People Have So Many Negative Feelings?
Research explores how neuroticism affects the perception of negative events.
Posted February 11, 2026 | Reviewed by Lybi Ma
One of the most fascinating personality characteristics is neuroticism . It is one of the Big Five characteristics and is associated with high levels of worry, anxiety , and negative feelings. Indeed, people high in neuroticism generally experience more negative feelings and fewer positive feelings each day.
A key question: Why does this happen? What is it about people high in neuroticism that influences their levels of positive and negative feelings (or what psychologists call affect )?
This question was explored by Mario Wenzel, Aleksandra Kaurin, Whitney Ringwald, Oliver Tuscher, Thomas Kubiak, and Aidan Wright in a 2026 paper in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology .
They analyzed data from several different studies involving over a thousand participants and nearly 100,000 observations that asked people to report on their feelings and on recent events periodically throughout the day. At random times, people would get a signal and would report their levels of positive and negative feelings. They would report on whether they experienced any positive or negative events and the emotional strength of those events. Personality measures were also taken for all of the participants, so their degree of neuroticism was known.
The results illuminate the pathway by which people high in neuroticism experience a lot of negative feelings. Compared to people low in neuroticism, they:
All three of these characteristics mean that neuroticism creates a seeming barrage of negative events that compound and help to maintain negative feelings.
One fascinating finding involves the observation that people high in neuroticism experience less positive feelings than those low in neuroticism. You might think that reflects an opposite tendency for positive events. That is, perhaps people high in neuroticism don’t experience positive feelings that strongly. Interestingly, the results from these studies are consistent with other work suggesting that people high in neuroticism feel things in general quite intensely. When people high in neuroticism experience a positive event, they actually experience it more positively than people low in neuroticism.
Why do people high in neuroticism experience more negative feelings and fewer positive feelings than those low in neuroticism? Shouldn’t the greater intensity of feeling for positive events make them experience more feelings in general? The results of these studies suggest that because people high in neuroticism experience negative events so strongly, it elevates their negative feelings and also drags down their positive feelings. When you combine that with the difficulty that people high in neuroticism have in recovering from those negative events, you can see how this cycle of negative feelings is maintained.
People high in negative feelings and anxiety are at risk for clinical depression and anxiety disorders. Helping people to alleviate these negative feelings requires knowing the mechanisms that lead to them. For example, clinical work can target the way that people evaluate or appraise the events they experience in the hope that they may become better at lowering the severity of their reactions to bad things that happen.
Wenzel, M., Kaurin, A., Ringwald, W. R., Tüscher, O., Kubiak, T., & Wright, A. G. C. (2026). Unraveling the link between neuroticism and well-being in daily life : The role of event occurrence, event appraisals, affective reactivity, and affective recovery. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 130 (1), 93–108.
Share this post Facebook Bluesky Linkedin Email
There was a problem adding your email address. Please try again.
By submitting your information you agree to the Psychology Today Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy
Art Markman, Ph.D. , is a cognitive scientist at the University of Texas whose research spans a range of topics in the way people think.
Get the help you need from a therapist near you–a FREE service from Psychology Today.
This article is part of the Bringwise Psychology Journal — daily insights on human behavior, mental health, and personal growth.