Neuroticism Is Prospectively Associated With 30-Month Changes in Broadband Internalizing Symptoms, but Not Narrowband Positive Affect or Anxious Arousal, in Emerging Adulthood.

Abstract

Elevated levels of Neuroticism/Negative Emotionality (N/NE) and, less consistently, lower levels of Extraversion/Positive Emotionality (E/PE) confer risk for pathological depression and anxiety. To date, most prospective-longitudinal research has narrowly focused on traditional diagnostic categories, creating uncertainty about the precise nature of these prospective associations. Adopting an explicitly hierarchical-dimensional approach, we examined the association between baseline variation in personality and longitudinal changes in broad and narrow internalizing-symptom dimensions in 234 emerging adults followed for 2.5 years, during the transition from older adolescence to early adulthood. N/NE was uniquely associated with increases in broadband internalizing-the core cognitive and affective symptoms that cut across the emotional disorders-and unrelated to the narrower dimensions of positive affect and anxious arousal that differentiate specific internalizing presentations. Variation in E/PE and several other Big Five traits was cross-sectionally, but not prospectively, related to longitudinal changes in specific internalizing symptoms. Exploratory personality-facet-level analyses provided preliminary evidence of more granular associations between personality and longitudinal changes in internalizing symptoms. These observations enhance the precision of models linking personality to internalizing illness; highlight the centrality of N/NE to increases in transdiagnostic internalizing symptoms during a key developmental chapter; and set the stage for developing more effective prevention and treatment strategies.