Department of Psychology, University of Leipzig, Leipzig 04109, Germany.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2023 Jun 6;120(23):e2212154120. doi: 10.1073/pnas.2212154120. Epub 2023 May 30.
The personality trait neuroticism is tightly linked to mental health, and neurotic people experience stronger negative emotions in everyday life. But, do their negative emotions also show greater fluctuation? This commonsensical notion was recently questioned by [Kalokerinos 112, 15838-15843 (2020)], who suggested that the associations found in previous studies were spurious. Less neurotic people often report very low levels of negative emotion, which is usually measured with bounded rating scales. Therefore, they often pick the lowest possible response option, which severely constrains the amount of emotional variability that can be observed in principle. Applying a multistep statistical procedure that is supposed to correct for this dependency, [Kalokerinos 112, 15838-15843 (2020)] no longer found an association between neuroticism and emotional variability. However, like other common approaches for controlling for undesirable effects due to bounded scales, this method is opaque with respect to the assumed mechanism of data generation and might not result in a successful correction. We thus suggest an alternative approach that a) takes into account that emotional states outside of the scale bounds can occur and b) models associations between neuroticism and both the mean and variability of emotion in a single step with the help of Bayesian censored location-scale models. Simulations supported this model over alternative approaches. We analyzed 13 longitudinal datasets (2,518 individuals and 11,170 measurements in total) and found clear evidence that more neurotic people experience greater variability in negative emotion.
神经质是与心理健康密切相关的人格特质，神经质的人在日常生活中会体验到更强的负面情绪。但是，他们的负面情绪是否也表现出更大的波动呢？这种常识性的观点最近受到了质疑，[Kalokerinos 112, 15838-15843 (2020)]认为之前研究中发现的关联是虚假的。神经质程度较低的人通常报告非常低水平的负面情绪，而这种情绪通常是通过有界评分量表来测量的。因此，他们通常选择最低的可能反应选项，这严重限制了原则上可以观察到的情绪变化量。通过应用一种多步骤的统计程序来纠正这种依赖性，[Kalokerinos 112, 15838-15843 (2020)]发现神经质与情绪变化之间不再存在关联。然而，与其他用于控制因有界量表引起的不良影响的常见方法一样，这种方法对于数据生成的假设机制是不透明的，并且可能无法实现成功的校正。因此，我们建议一种替代方法，该方法 a）考虑到超出量表范围的情绪状态可能会发生，b）借助贝叶斯截尾位置-尺度模型，在单个步骤中对神经质与情绪的平均值和变化性之间的关联进行建模。模拟结果支持了这种模型，而不是其他替代方法。我们分析了 13 个纵向数据集（共有 2518 个人和 11170 个测量值），发现了明确的证据表明，神经质程度较高的人在负面情绪上的变化性更大。
