Talk:Neuroticism

Physiology
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)

"internalizing"
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)
 * I've inserted a link. That should be better than nothing. --JorisvS (talk) 22:52, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

Neutral point of view?
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)
 * 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)
 * That is not the same as neuroticism. Neuroticism specifically defines itself as sensitivity to negative emotion, not simply the ability to adhere to and determine negative emotion itself. No one here is trying to say that negative emotions are a bad thing in and of themselves, but the phenomenon of being increasingly sensitive to them has been deliberated in the scientific community for some time now. Personally, I think it should be obvious that neuroticism is a ultimately a net negative that (once again, my personal belief) will evolved out eventually... assuming we don't go extinct before that happens, of course. Dissadent (talk) 16:01, 28 June 2024 (UTC)

Copyright problem removed
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)

reverted edit by 24.2.180.124 17:50, 4 December 2013
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)

Citation for the paragraph on sex differences
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. 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)


 * 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)

Yoga????
Why is Yoga tacked on at the end of this article as a cure for neuroticism? Shouldn't that be part of a Yoga article?

If this article is to be properly written it should have a list of potentially positive and negative influences. Because one study said that in an Indian population that Yoga showed some benefits does not make it a sweeping general conclusion about Yoga being the solution.

Also who is "Acharya Balkrishna" and why should we care about him and his team? Article needs some cleanup.

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

Sourcing
This is an article about health; refs need to be OK per WP:MEDRS. There is a bunch of fairly loaded content sourced to very old, primary refs. We use recent (less than 5 years old) reviews in good quality journals and textbooks. Jytdog (talk) 06:09, 9 August 2017 (UTC)


 * For the most part, neuroticism is a concern of psychology and hence not a medical concern.
 * I would agree if there were any part of the article dealing with treatment of neuroticism (say, psychiatrically), this would count as Biomedical_information. However I can't see how high neuroticism is considered a "disease" any more than, say, low IQ is a disease.
 * Do you think that's a fair classification? --Nanite (talk) 08:12, 9 August 2017 (UTC)


 * To be specific, I suspect that WP:MEDRS rules probably should indeed be applied to the section Neuroticism. What do you think? --Nanite (talk) 08:19, 9 August 2017 (UTC)
 * We should base articles on secondary sources - there's a lot of questionably primary stuff been used in this article. Alexbrn (talk) 08:41, 9 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Your edit comment says "Sorry, why all these garbage sources?" --- WP:PRIMARY sources are not garbage by nature. Secondary sources are only needed "to establish the topic's notability and to avoid novel interpretations of primary sources." and I don't see any novel interpretations. Why are *you* removing peer-reviewed sources? --Nanite (talk) 09:15, 9 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Because we need to base articles on secondary sources. You mis-state policy. And you're now edit-warring. Alexbrn (talk) 09:50, 9 August 2017 (UTC)
 * agree w/ Alexbrn--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 13:55, 9 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Mental health is part of health. Content about epidemiology, risk factors, etc need MEDRS sourcing. Jytdog (talk) 16:17, 9 August 2017 (UTC)

Guys, I am trying to edit constructively and in good faith, all you're doing is ripping things out wantonly. It is getting to be very annoying.

If you keep misapplying medicine policy to science articles, misreading wikipedia source requirements, insinuating that I'm editing while logged out, I think it would be advisable to report this to Administrators'_noticeboard/Edit_warring.

(Also a note for Alexbrn: there is a discussion I found happening over at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Medicine that you may be interested in. I was not notified of it and maybe you weren't either.) --Nanite (talk) 17:04, 9 August 2017 (UTC)

I'd like to also notify you three that I have also opened a discussion at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Psychology. --Nanite (talk) 17:15, 9 August 2017 (UTC)


 * I'm confused as to why a Wall Street Journal article from 2008 reporting on the connection between neuroticism, heart disease, and life expectancy was removed. It's a secondary source. Is the suggestion that all articles related to medicine/health in any way can only use sources that are five years old or newer? That seems a bit extreme to me. —Torchiest talkedits
 * I think they are referring to WP:MEDDATE (which, as you say, isn't a restriction on source age, just a suggestion to lean on newer sources where available). My more fundamental disagreement here is that I don't think this is a medical or health article at all, anymore than the other traits openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion and agreeableness would be health issues. --Nanite (talk) 17:31, 9 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Agree. Personality traits don't seem to be clearly something that would fall under the purview of medical article source restrictions. —Torchiest talkedits 17:35, 9 August 2017 (UTC)
 * I am starting to suspect that the other editors are confusing this article with the archaic mental disorder Neurosis, a conflation which I would find rather sloppy given that the first line of this article is a disambiguation hatnote for this exact purpose. --Nanite (talk) 17:57, 9 August 2017 (UTC)
 * We discuss troubled articles in the fields of health and medicine all the time; there are several experts in pysch/mental health who watch that page and participate there.
 * MEDRS was generated exactly to help the community better manage content (and disputes over content) about health by raising source quality and defining source quality using well-understood qualities of how the biomedical literature is structured and regarded in the field. And all this risk factor / epidemiology stuff is exactly such a dispute. Jytdog (talk) 18:19, 9 August 2017 (UTC)

If there are newer sources for content, I'm all for adding them. However the MEDRS guideline should not be used to remove information of a "dated" age, if there is nothing newer to replace it. Arkon (talk) 18:31, 9 August 2017 (UTC)
 * All of this stinks of political overtones regarding timing of edits and the edits themselves. The text has been around a long time.  The article was clear that a "large" difference is 0.8 SD.  Attempts to water down what the scientific community considers large is not encyclopedic. I've reverted to the last consensus version before this kerfuffle.  --DHeyward (talk) 18:41, 9 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Indeed I myself came to this article after reading about the Google memo, which links to this wikipedia page directly (see ). I added several sources to reflect the typical literature claim that the usual sex difference is 'moderate' at around half of SD --- did you intend to remove those cites also? --Nanite (talk) 18:55, 9 August 2017 (UTC)
 * I just reverted to a version prior to this kerfuffle. Consensus to add sources and language would be better.  The Google guy was an engineer not a psychologist or psychiatrist.  Personally, I think his link here doesn't support his argument and he should have stuck to STEM post-graduate demographics and how they reflect on hiring, but knee-jerk changes to this article because he thought it was significant is misguided.  --DHeyward (talk) 23:30, 9 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Your comments here are offbase, DHeyward, and your restoration violates policy. I entered this article for one reason only - I saw a bunch of bad sources being added.  I reverted that, like I always do, and looked harder and saw more bad sourcing, and removed that, as I always do.  I only learned about the Google memo garbage when a reporter emailed me. Whatever else is going on, it is generally poor practice to parachute into an article and restore bad content.
 * I have gone ahead and found good MEDRS refs and worked over most of article using high quality secondary sources. (not the causal theories - those still need work)  Shoulda done that the first time but I had no idea about the furore in blogosphere, which has nothing to do with us. Jytdog (talk) 06:42, 10 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Don't blanket revert, please. It's normal for an article to attract attention when it has been mentioned or cited somewhere high-profile, or when it's become part of a high-profile controversy; and editing it to fix any problems becomes more pressing in that situation (since many more people will be reading it).  If you have issues with specific edits, bring them up here and we can hash them out; but blindly reverting the entire section with so little explanation doesn't really seem acceptable to me.  Additionally, please remember to WP:AGF; saying that edits "stink of political overtones" or accusing editors of "knee-jerk changes" purely "because he thought it was significant" isn't really kosher. --Aquillion (talk) 09:56, 10 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Just to note my support for not blindly removing articles over 5 years old. This isn't current medical advice, it's science about a normally-varying basic trait of personality, and several of the most widely cited and core articles are > 5 years old: Deleting them is simply a loss to people wanting to study and learn about this trait. Sex differences are certainly not a medical topic. The key for group differences is papers that test measurement invariance, and have representative samples. The latter in particular. We should focus on getting the best of those in here (to that end, I added a citation to the Booth paper, which is cited over 100 times, and had an excellent sample and attention to correct measurement Tim bates (talk) 11:37, 10 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Wikipedia does not give "medical advice". Articles must be based on secondary sources - esp. for science. If a work is really influential it should be easy to find secondary literature that cites it, and quote that. We wikipedia editors are not in a position to set ourselves up as judges of which primary sources are correct/influential. Wikipedia is a tertiary publication that must reflect accepted knowledge. Alexbrn (talk) 12:25, 10 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Wikipedia uses a mixture of data articles and reviews, and that's important both to avoid having arbitrary reviews over-ride important data and to illustrate particular points: in this case to give a precise estimate, based on a normative sample. Its not an either-or situation: The data articles contain key details, which secondary sources may aggregate or lose sight of. The medical advice comment was the main point under this topic: It's a mistake restrict knowledge to things stated in the last 5-years just because, and the only justification given was that apparently medical articles have decided to adopt this rule. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Tim bates (talk • contribs) 15:05, 10 August 2017  (UTC)
 * MEDRS has broad and deep consensus in the community. It actually evolved in the context of horrific battles over our articles about Autism, where people tried to add all kinds of invalid snake oil content to those articles based on primary sources  - some out of cynical snake oil selling and some desperate parent grasping for straws. MEDRS was developed in the course of that by the community and as I said, there is broad and deep consensus for it.   We use high quality secondary sources for content about health, especially on contentious subject matter.  Per the helpful essay WP:Controversial articles we raise source quality on controversial articles in any case, not lower them.
 * Not a single person here has said that mental health is not a kind of health.  It is.  And epidemiology is the rubric under which we study how common health issues are and who is at risk for them.  Jytdog (talk) 16:13, 10 August 2017 (UTC) (missing "not" Jytdog (talk) 17:07, 10 August 2017 (UTC)}
 * The question is whether or not this is mental health in the first place. It would appear that the article in question is not a matter of health, but rather a personality trait, and personality traits are not a direct concern of health. The reason for this is that neuroticism is not a disorder.--Tosiaki! (talk) 16:21, 10 August 2017 (UTC)
 * That flies in the face of common sense. You are saying that the field of psychology is not aimed at helping with mental issues and improving mental health?  You are saying that neuroticism is not singled out as the trait that causes the most dysfunction, social expense, and problems that are the entire reason it was singled out in the Google memo that has drawn all this interest?   You saying that the literature about this is not part of the biomedical literature, indexed in pubmed, etc?  That is not a sustainable argument. Jytdog (talk) 16:31, 10 August 2017 (UTC)


 * Personality traits (Big Five personality traits here, Myers–Briggs Type Indicator, etc.) are just psychological science and thus non-medical. They are not psychiatric mental health measures like, say, Bipolar Spectrum Diagnostic Scale. That said I agree that in the few places where medical and mental health links *are* mentioned in this article, we must follow WP:MEDRS instead of WP:RS.
 * There is a very good reason why health and medicine articles need to *only* mention current knowledge, because as stated at the beginning of WP:MEDRS it would be morally irresponsible to do otherwise (people self-medicating, etc.): Wikipedia's articles are not medical advice, but are a widely used source of health information.[1] For this reason, all biomedical information must be based on reliable, third-party published secondary sources, and must accurately reflect current knowledge. However, this science article is not a medicine article, and instead it follows standard WP:RS, i.e., Wikipedia articles should be based on reliable, published sources, making sure that all majority and significant minority views that have appeared in those sources are covered (see Wikipedia:Neutral point of view). I'm someone who regularly edits on non-medical science articles, and I can tell you that primary sources get included all the time in acceptable ways. The usual issues with primary sources I have come across are 1) avoid basing an article/section on entirely primary sources, and 2) when primary/secondary sources conflict, the primaries have less value. See also WP:PRIMARY. Secondary sources are only needed to establish the topic's notability and to avoid novel interpretations of primary sources. All analyses and interpretive or synthetic claims about primary sources must be referenced to a secondary or tertiary source, and must not be an original analysis of the primary-source material by Wikipedia editors. Nothing forbids primary sources outright.
 * It's my understanding Alexbrn and Jytdog, from looking at your edit history that you guys frequently remove sources according to MEDRS, but it's easy after a long time to forget what each policy actually says. I'd like to suggest you both *re-read* the WP:MEDRS policy to understand its limited scope; then, read WP:RS to understand the policy that applies to to the rest of wikipedia --- including the majority of this article. You will see that primary sources are treated very differently between the two. --Nanite (talk) 16:51, 10 August 2017 (UTC)
 * I haven't mentioned MEDRS. The need to reflect accepted knowledge is a basic characteristic of encyclopedic content, and core policy. Also check WP:SCIRS for further useful thoughts. We cannot set ourselves up as brokers of primary sources as that would make us an ersatz secondary publication. Alexbrn (talk) 16:58, 10 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Oh, thanks; I didn't realise there was an RS page for science. Did you actually read Identifying_reliable_sources_(natural_sciences) --- again, nothing forbids primary sources. --Nanite (talk) 17:06, 10 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Pretty much nothing is "forbidden" in Wikipedia, but there is guidance on what we should be doing to create decent articles. Trying to use primary sources to construct an article is against the grain of all the guidance in Wikipedia. It's bad. Don't do it. Alexbrn (talk) 17:10, 10 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Good think I didn't do that, then. I will say good relevant guidance I got from WP:SCIRS is that when fact X cited by primary A, then if secondary B mentions fact X and cites A, it's only necessary to cite B (citing A,B would be redundant). I like that.
 * If you guys really think it is controversial that there are sex differences in neuroticism (despite all reports showing this), I am fine to elevate the quality. However that's not what we're arguing over. We're arguing over wikipedia policies whether 1) psychology is medicine and 2) whether primary sources are 'bad'. To 1) I say no, and to 2) I quote A good article may appropriately cite primary, secondary, and tertiary sources. --Nanite (talk) 17:24, 10 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Yes, "appropriately" - but articles must be based on secondary sources. Primaries are sometimes useful for filling in the gaps; as sources for main themes or surprising content they are a no-no. Alexbrn (talk) 17:47, 10 August 2017 (UTC)
 * I review MEDRS all the time. Every single policy in WP says we should base articles on secondary sources and generally when people get hyper about using primary sources there is something not-about-Wikipedia at play.  Primary sources are especially unreliable in the field of psychology which everybody (including people in the field) are realizing has a huge replication crisis.  This is even being discussed in high quality main stream media -- see this piece from the Atlantic last summer.  See also this piece from  the Nature  news section and this study published in Science.  Primary sources in this field are especially unreliable.  Nanite please have a look at WP:Why MEDRS?, at least the first part.  It is an essay I originally drafted and has been moved to mainspace and improved on by others.  All that stuff applies here. --Jytdog (talk) 17:03, 10 August 2017 (UTC)

I am drawn to discuss this controversy, which seems unnecessarily polarized, about the desirability of using secondary sources more recent than 5 years of age, vs, including some primary sources that were instrumental in the development of a field of study. First, I must point out a logical consequence of restricting the content of an article to information that can be sourced in the last five years. If the complete content to write a balanced article could in fact be found among such recent sources, and the article is then written, then within a very few years those sources will be more than five years old. That won't make them inferior to more recent publications. It might be likely that a highly respected source will be accepted as the best source, for much longer than five years.

Of course, the older sources, which established the parameters of the topic of the article, ought to be discussed. It is not academically wise to discuss older basic research without citing it. Some of us like to observe how concepts were originated, how they evolved in response to other primary research and to commentary. In many fields, an early consensus was contradicted by subsequent publications, and devalued. (I refer the readers here to definitive work of Thomas Kuhn.)

Historical processes of this sort should be discussed as part of a high quality article. It is not unheard of for viewpoints to vacillate in popularity, or respectability, or fashionability, over time. I observe that in the current version of this article, it seems to be acceptable to talk about personality traits being largely inherited! That would not have been likely a couple of decades ago.

A field of study should be described, in its present state, but its development should also be discussed.

In reading this article, I had hoped to find information about the empirical research by Cattell and by Eysenck, whereby the trait here called Neuroticism, was established as having empirical reliability. Eysenck discussed with amazement how this concept, posited by Hippocrates and Galen, turned out to have verifiable predictive usefulness. I guess I will have to read him in the original. Janice Vian, Ph.D. (talk) 01:38, 14 July 2018 (UTC)

Geography - Heart disease and life expectancy
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)

"Higher levels of human development" does not seem VPN
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)

The Human Development Index of the UN is based on such things as life expectancy, literacy and per capita income. While income might have a point under you`re argument, that poor countries are happier is a common layman saying after all, although I would argue that having to give away your children because you cannot feed them doesn't lead to happiness. Life expectancy is a universal value, although again you could argue for culture valuing dying young. And the vast majority of nations value literacy, obviously. Some tribes who are all illiterate might not value it however because they don`t even know what it is. I must admit I cannot well hide my contempt at this typical "X is a social construct" argument. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 207.134.102.142 (talk) 15:03, 1 February 2019 (UTC)

Concerning Ormel 2013
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)

Additionally, I do not see any statements about young adults having a higher risk for high neuroticism.--Tosiaki! (talk) 17:44, 10 August 2017 (UTC)

Thank you for the correction. I have seen that the referenced content has no problem.--Tosiaki! (talk) 17:50, 10 August 2017 (UTC)
 * i owe folks an apology here - Ormel published two refs in 2013 (PMID 23068306 and PMID 23702592) and i conflated them. The quote was indeed NOT in the ref - it was in the other one.  I fixed that here and acknowledged my mistake in the edit note.  Again, my apologies, especially to Tosiaki! Jytdog (talk) 17:52, 10 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Again my apologies! Jytdog (talk) 18:05, 10 August 2017 (UTC)

Secondary sources for sex differences
Wow! I did not look at the actual article for a day... and it now looks totally different. I just want to say a thank you for reformatting, as the article looks much better new.

Putting aside the issue of primary sources for now, I think a lot of people are coming here (due to Google memo) looking to see info about sex differences and I think we should at the very least establish the secondary literature immediately. I would like to summarize some relevant statements from relevant secondaries, which we may or may not want to include:


 * Emphasized in abstract: Results show that gender differences in Big Five personality traits are ‘small’ to ‘moderate,’ with the largest differences occurring for agreeableness and neuroticism (respective ds = 0.40 and 0.34; women higher than men).
 * Neuroticism diffs are 'moderate' : The mean effect sizes in Table 1 show that agreeableness and neuroticism were the Big Five traits showing the largest gender differences (mean ds = 0.40 and 0.34, respectively), with women moderately higher than men on both traits. Gender differences in the other Big Five traits were smaller in magnitude, with women tending to be higher than men on all traits. Thus, in terms of gender differences, agreeableness and neuroticism appear to be the ‘big two’ of the Big Five.
 * Cross-cultural indices vs biological -- The other traits (extraversion, neuroticism, and people-versus-thing orientation) showed gender differences that were stable across countries and unrelated to national indices of gender equality and economic development. and The strong cross-cultural consistency of gender differences in extraversion, neuroticism, and people-versus-thing orientation reported by Lippa (2010) is also consistent with the possible influence of biologic factors.
 * Although Costa et al. and Schmitt et al. reported systematic cross-cultural variation in gender differences in personality, they also reported a great deal of consistency in the direction of gender differences across cultures, at least for some traits. For example, Costa et al. reported higher female than male agreeableness in 25 of 26 nations; Schmitt reported higher female agreeableness in 47 of 55 nations; and Lippa reported higher female agreeableness in 53 of 53 nations. Similarly, Costa et al. reported higher female than male neuroticism in 25 of 26 nations; Schmitt reported higher female neuroticism in 53 of 55 nations; and Lippa reported higher female neuroticism in 52 of 53 nations. These sorts of patterns – highly consistent gender differences that vary somewhat in magnitude across countries – may reflect multiple influences – e.g., sociocultural influences superimposed on biologically based sex differences (see Lippa, 2009, for a discussion of how different patterns of biologic and social-structural influences may generate different cross-cultural patterns of gender differences).
 * Some speculation -- Future research should also probe links between gender differences in personality and gender differences in mental illness (see Williams & Gunn, 2006). It is probably no accident that (i) women score higher than men on neuroticism and (ii) women suffer more from depression and anxiety disorders than men do.
 * mentions other reviews; statements on gender diff are similar to Lippa's, but not quantitative.
 * Extensive section on "Evaluating Social Role Theory’s Ability to Explain the Size of Sex Differences Across Cultures", a meta-analysis of other studies. In particular, Neuroticism is also higher in women than men across cultures. Increasing levels of egalitarian sex role socialization and greater sociopolitical gender equity are generally associated with lower neuroticism among both men and women, but the decrease is greater among men, leading to wider neuroticism sex differences in nations with higher gender equity. Schmitt notes that, like other personality traits, this finding contradicts social role theory which predicts sex difference to be smaller in nations with more egalitarian sex role socialization and greater sociopolitical gender equity.
 * cites Feingold 1994 "Gender differences in personality: a meta-analysis." as an early meta analysis but I don't see clear mentions of neuroticism sex diffs; only mentions one study in one table. Anyway, Feingold is included in Lippa's analysis above.
 * cites Archer 2014 under review "The reality and evolutionary significance of psychological sex differences." --- I can't find the published article.
 * cites Feingold 1994 "Gender differences in personality: a meta-analysis." as an early meta analysis but I don't see clear mentions of neuroticism sex diffs; only mentions one study in one table. Anyway, Feingold is included in Lippa's analysis above.
 * cites Archer 2014 under review "The reality and evolutionary significance of psychological sex differences." --- I can't find the published article.

--Nanite (talk) 18:28, 10 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Glad you are pleased with the shape. You don't mention Ormel2013b which has a section specifically on gender which is now completely summarized in the article thx to Tosiaki!.
 * My main concerns here are 1) the sourcing on which content is based, and that what gets written summarizes what they say, and 2) WEIGHT overall in the article given to various topics within this article.  (the re-structuring was focused on that for the most part)
 * I'm confident that once everybody is agreed on the reference base we can arrive at agreement on content. I ask everybody to keep WEIGHT in mind; the bit on gender is already straining at becoming too big, WEIGHT-wise in the article overall, and we shouldn't expand it further.  But refining in that space makes sense, sure! Jytdog (talk) 18:45, 10 August 2017 (UTC)
 * I myself will not say with certainty which portions should deserve more weight, but I believe that as a first measure, one should attempt to expand on other sections if one section is currently getting undue weight. Therefore, I will do more research and expand on other portions of the article.--Tosiaki! (talk) 18:47, 10 August 2017 (UTC)

Shouldn't the sex differences part have at list a heading for itself? I know the various arguments. But it looks way too bad if one does not dig extremely into the details of the editing history.

To be clear, I am absolutely NOT arguing any foul play. And edits do not seem absurd (without digging deeply) However, as folks come here and look for the famous links etc. and the sex differences material feels unseen / buried / deleted. It isn't good IMHO.

Look at it gang and find a way to make it more visible, possible to find etc. Not banished to nested paragraph. Jazi Zilber (talk) 19:02, 10 August 2017 (UTC)


 * I would like to ask you what you think is the basis for having such an increased emphasis. Emphasis should be given as secondary sources on the subject matter itself give emphasis on it, and rather than what "folks come here and look for."--Tosiaki! (talk) 19:11, 10 August 2017 (UTC)
 * What Toisaki! said. Nope. that would be classic RECENTISM.  We are not part of the blogosphere.  Gender differences are a common-as-dirt thing in epidemiology and we will give it WEIGHT as the relevant literature gives it WEIGHT - not as the blogosphere does.   Jytdog (talk) 19:13, 10 August 2017 (UTC)
 * And I will add that the stuff that Toisaki! about risk factors is super important. It appears that neuroticism has a strong genetic component that is also influenced by environment, and the latter increases, the older people get.  That context is essential for the findings that women generally have higher N scores.  What about the environment drives that?   There is a tendency with these personality things to essentialize (to think that women somehow are, by biology-is-destiny, more neurotic) -- these kinds of claims are not science, but something else - something people fling around in the blogosphere. We just don't do that in WP.  We contextualize and give appropriate WEIGHT summarizing high quality secondary sources, that themselves express what we (humanity) knows and doesn't know.   Jytdog (talk) 19:21, 10 August 2017 (UTC)


 * The literature on N etc. via identical twin studies is pretty robust. It shows roughly 50% to be genetic. when this is the situation within gender, the between gender differences are probably as highly influenced by genes. Especially when the genetic differences between genders are obvious. Jazi Zilber (talk) 20:32, 10 August 2017 (UTC)


 * Hi guys, I just want to point out that the phrase 'risk of neuroticism' currently in the article sounds very weird to me, because neuroticism itself is not a disorder. Yes it is correlated to some actual disorders, but it's not even known to be causative. Analogies: 'risk of height', 'risk of IQ', 'risk of weight'. --Nanite (talk) 20:07, 10 August 2017 (UTC)


 * Perhaps I should clarify : the studies show that ordinary levels of neuroticism only correlate with disorders (though with no idea which way the causation goes), but that unusually high neuroticism is associated with high probability of disorder. It may be appropriate to talk about 'risk of high neuroticism' (analogous to "risk of being overweight"), though I can't find this sort of phrasing in the literature. For all I know there may even be a very high neuroticism threshold level which is a bona-fide medical condition (analogous to obesity), though I haven't seen any literature talking about that.
 * All that said, discussions of the variations in neuroticism within the normal range (such as sex and national differences) should not be regarded as problems or disorders, and they don't deserve to go under "epidemiology". This article should follow the notions that we use when we discuss other metrics like Human body weight, Blood lead level, intelligence quotient etc. How about we create a section called "Demographic and geographic patterns" like we see on the Blood lead level article, or alternatively, "Group differences" like we see on intelligence quotient? --Nanite (talk) 20:36, 10 August 2017 (UTC)
 * You may have missed this comment --- do you agree? --Nanite (talk) 21:35, 10 August 2017 (UTC)

Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt just posted an interesting meta-meta-analysis of the claims in Google memo here. If you ctrl-F for 'neuroticism' you can see it highlights a few interesting tidbits from various papers. It seems he picked up more or less the same ones, minus the Schmitt chapter in "The Evolution of Sexuality" that I noted above. --Nanite (talk) 21:14, 10 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Not MEDRS. Jytdog (talk) 21:21, 10 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Oh, I'm not saying we should include it. It makes me more confident that we've covering a decent portion of the literature. --Nanite (talk) 21:35, 10 August 2017 (UTC)

Hiding the sex differences section
What used to be a section, is now very carefully hidden below a masking lead sentence, and without any heading.

Notability is central to this. Sex differences in a trait are interesting to most people, much more than say the ACC role in it.

Using the recent controversy to remove wikipedia content does not seem right to me.

Jazi Zilber (talk) 20:48, 10 August 2017 (UTC)


 * I created a section "Demographic and geographic patterns" (see also my comments in previous talk section), WDYT? I don't think we need a whole section for sex differences but you're right that it shouldn't be smushed in with 'causes'. --Nanite (talk) 21:01, 10 August 2017 (UTC)


 * Cool. Better now. the structure still can be bettered. I would put the young adults separately, and re-arrange the whole gender into a first and much clearer paragraph. now it is hard to read, almost like a section in an academic paper.... I can give it a shot and we can find what works best Jazi Zilber (talk) 21:11, 10 August 2017 (UTC)
 * No. Jytdog (talk) 21:19, 10 August 2017 (UTC)

For those interested in this article the context of the Google memo, I just want to point out that this was the state of the article when it was first released (and more or less what James Damore would have been reading). If you compare it to what we have now, the discussion of sex differences is already much improved (and to me, more convincing than just 'one study said X'). --Nanite (talk) 21:26, 10 August 2017 (UTC)

did you see this comment? I think you'll agree at least that the article has improved a lot, in all ways, since the editing started. I agree that Jytdog should not be removing your POV tag (he is apparently well known for latching on and WP:OWNing articles, so I'm not surprised), but do you still have a remaining POV issue? --Nanite (talk) 21:53, 10 August 2017 (UTC)
 * The question is whether there is a valid POV issue. Tagging an article because you don't like it is not valid and actually DISRUPTIVE. See instructions at Template:POV Jytdog (talk) 22:10, 10 August 2017 (UTC)

Some edits are of good value. Absolutely. I have not dwelled much into details, so I am using vague language ;) My point was that the sex difference element has been veiled and hidden. Nothing bad in finding the recent sources etc. Also, the aggression is annoying. See how he refuses to even engage in my issue with the order etc.

Here is how I would have written the section. roughly and very superficially.

heading: Gender, age and geographic patterns

The risk for high levels of neuroticism is found in a 2013 review to be higher in young adults who are at high risk for mood disorders and women.[22]

Women are found to have shown that levels of neuroticism than men. This is a robust finding that is consistent across cultures. Especially the case during the reproductive years, but is also visible in children and elderly. According to the same 2013 meta analysis. In brain scans, EEG responses showed clear differences between the genders in individuals with high N levels. While no fMRI studies were done on Neuroticism directly, there is a reason to suspect physiological differences to play a role because of previous studies that showed for example, a correlation between the size of the subgenual anterior cingulate cortex and N in female teenagers, so "the issue of sex differences in N and the implications for understanding N’s neurobiological basis deserve more detailed and systematic investigation."[22]

Have not gone yet to the next half of it..... Jazi Zilber (talk) 22:20, 10 August 2017 (UTC)
 * I am still looking for you to make an argument based on sources and policies and guidelines, and not just RECENTISM. I am very open to hearing. Jytdog (talk) 22:26, 10 August 2017 (UTC)

Not recentism. But centrality. Recall that the section heading was there for a very long time before your recent edits. So your edits are the recentism if this is the criteria. Centrality means that gender differences are more interesting for most readers (REGARDLESS THE RECENT SCANDAL!) than minor state or young adult issues. Of course, interests vary. But this is what most people will deem more central. Jazi Zilber (talk) 22:30, 10 August 2017 (UTC)
 * The only argument you have made, is that this issue is in the news. Why should gender come before development? that is just wierd, based on what the literature actually says. Jytdog (talk) 23:08, 10 August 2017 (UTC)


 * Gender is more central than a single aspect of young adult frequency. Please read my text before distorting and repeating what you said. Jazi Zilber (talk) 23:13, 10 August 2017 (UTC)


 * It sounds like you just want to rearrange a bit what's in the section --- if so, what's stopping you? Be WP:BOLD! :-) --Nanite (talk) 23:21, 10 August 2017 (UTC)
 * The reason why Jytdog made such edits was due to finding inadequate sourcing of statements made in the article, and this was in response to Nanite adding primary sources to the article even though the preference is secondary resources. While Nanite may have arrived due to recent events, I would think it too hasty a conclusion to think that Jytdog therefore came for the same reasons. Therefore, I do not believe that the lack of a specific section for gender differences in newer revisions is motivated or informed by any kind of current events even if such things had caused it. Now to use your word, "centrality," by which of course you probably mean weight. The weight and naming of each of the sections is not motivated by any wish to hide any particular section, but rather simply to organize the information found in secondary sources in that remains faithful to the information and amount of information found therein. If you think anything is in error, I would suggest that you do research yourself by looking into secondary resources in the field and see what is "central" i. e. to be given weight, since without being informed by such secondary resources there can be no basis for any content or organization of content in the article. In other words, please be constructive by using secondary sources.--Tosiaki! (talk) 03:24, 11 August 2017 (UTC)
 * In my defense I just want to point out -- before I got here there was only 1 primary source, and I added the secondary source (Lippa 2010) that is currently in use for sex differences. I did also add a few more primary sources, however after more careful reading I can see now that the original primary source, and a few of the ones I added are subsumed by citing Lippa 2010 and hence (per WP:SCIRS) are not needed. That said, since 2010 there are a few more primaries dealing with sex differences, which have not been captured in a review, AFAIK.
 * I still maintain that MEDRS only applies to the portions dealing with medical / mental health issues --- that these small portions do not 'infect' the entire article with MEDRS restrictions.
 * Regarding the centrality of sex differences and the recent interest therein, I am not super worried as long as people can Ctrl-F for 'sex differences' and/or 'gender differences' and find a hit in a sensibly-related section, and so I find the current situation satisfactory. --Nanite (talk) 09:12, 11 August 2017 (UTC)

In the news (Vice Motherboard article) !
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)
 * 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)
 * No, that is navel-gazing. Jytdog (talk) 21:04, 10 August 2017 (UTC)


 * 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)
 * 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)


 * I was JOKING! Jazi Zilber (talk) 21:22, 10 August 2017 (UTC)
 * 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)

POV tag
The recent editing and edit wars mean something.

Lots has been removed and re-arranged.

Deserves POV tag.

Unless the edits are consensual, which they did not seem to have been.

Also, removing POV tags just because an editor thinks he is right is not acceptable. Must at least discuss Jazi Zilber (talk) 21:24, 10 August 2017 (UTC)


 * POV can include framing and arranging sections according to a POV. CHoosing the prefered sources etc. etc.
 * putting young adults in front of a sentence to make gender differences unseen for the casual reader is also POV Jazi Zilber (talk) 21:27, 10 August 2017 (UTC)\


 * Please read WP:NPOV. WEIGHT is based on what reliable secondary sources say, not editor interest and RECENTISM. Please make a valid argument and get consensus for it and then things can change. Tag-bombing because you make an invalid argument and get no consensus is  not appropriate Jytdog (talk) 21:45, 10 August 2017 (UTC)
 * I don't see why the POV tag should be controversial. It is a fact that the neutrality of this article is disputed. Roberttherambler (talk) 22:00, 10 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Obviously. Also, removing POV tag violates WIKIpedia policy. Jazi Zilber (talk) 22:06, 10 August 2017 (UTC)
 * You need a valid reason in policy to claim POV, and you haven't made one. If you had made one we would be changing the content and there would still be no need  for the tag.  Jytdog (talk) 22:07, 10 August 2017 (UTC)


 * Totalitarian of you "we would have fix if you had complained". POV comes because consensus is not easy.
 * Your high handedness demonstrates how hard it is to get consensus Jazi Zilber (talk) 22:22, 10 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Please contribute to the article if you perceive an issue related to it. Furthermore, please contribute in a constructive manner. Adding tags without suggesting any specific changes that you believe would contribute to the quality of the article is not a constructive type of contribution. Furthermore, please focus on the topic at hand. Personal qualities of contributors such as how "totalitarian" or "high handed" they are is of no relevance to this article unless you believe that such behavior interferes with work to improve the quality of the article. If you believe that such behavior is of negative influence to the quality of the article, I would advise you to understand the relevant policies before making any statement of complaints in that regards, and furthermore I recommend that you be sure that such complaints of good merit and that such behaviors reported actually are to the detriment of the quality of the article, since in my personal observation so far, I do not find any detrimentally harmful behaviors from Jytdog.--Tosiaki! (talk) 03:09, 11 August 2017 (UTC)
 * The opposing points of view here are about political correctness. Jazi Zilber is arguing that we should have a heading for "Sex differences" while his/her opponents are arguing against this because it is not politically correct. Roberttherambler (talk) 08:43, 11 August 2017 (UTC)
 * That is inaccurate. Jytdog (talk) 10:00, 11 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Please refrain from introducing non-relevant matters. This is a matter of science, not politics.--Tosiaki! (talk) 12:49, 11 August 2017 (UTC)

Alert: Removing POV tag due to personal opinion is against WP policy. Using constant revert to impose your POV edit = edit warring. NOT the original edit. Jazi Zilber (talk) 09:10, 11 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Hello Jazi. Your view is a personal opinion but Jytdog's view is the law :-) Roberttherambler (talk) 11:03, 11 August 2017 (UTC)
 * The issue here is that you appear to misunderstand the purpose of the POV tag. The tag is there to facilitate changes that you yourself propose―it is not for telling others to "get to work to fix stuff" without doing any work of your own, nor is it for simply expressing approval or disapproval of the article itself.--Tosiaki! (talk) 12:49, 11 August 2017 (UTC)


 * I suggested multiple changes in the section hiding sex differences.
 * Please read the talk page fully, and you will see.
 * POV tags can only be removed after a consensus is achieved as per WP rules. I'm well aware on how this system works. Please don't think that I'm a novice and you can silence me by pretending to "know better Wikipedia rules" Jazi Zilber (talk) 13:06, 11 August 2017 (UTC)


 * This is now being discussed at Administrators' noticeboard/Edit warring. I am surprised this is not noted here. Roberttherambler (talk) 13:14, 11 August 2017 (UTC)

Google memo
There is now an article Google memo. Roberttherambler (talk) 23:41, 10 August 2017 (UTC)

Already has been for a few days --Nanite (talk) 00:02, 11 August 2017 (UTC)


 * 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)

MedRS heading and the big five personality traits
I saw the recent edit war(well rather a skirmish) over some of the sources in this article, and the elevation of trait neuroticism to MEDRS standards. So, I would like to start a discussion about the status of this article and possibly other big five personality traits. Having highest quality sources possible is the goal for all articles, regardless of their relation to medicine, and the work done on this article in a short time is commendable. But we should reflect on the ramifications of this surge of attention(which also turned out highly beneficial for the article.) Why is it that this article now requires to adhere to MEDRS and the other personality traits do not? And is it actually necessary for this article, and other natural science articles which are related to medical conditions to be solely governed by MEDRS? I believe if we examine the recent dispute as a case study, we may have some insight on that:

The disputed section was indeed weakly sourced, only one primary source for the whole section,(although that primary source was a widely cited study) and the article was in that state for a long time. Then the google memo thing happened and people held a magnifying glass on this section. Editors who are used to editing articles that are governed by MEDRS came and summarily removed the section as being too weak for the standards of MEDRS. After a little bit of minor drama, now we have more or less the same information on "Demographic and geographic patterns" section, but much better sourced now, which is great! But this little drama could have been prevented if the editors who came here did not expect the MEDRS standards from the article, they would perhaps be more lenient, and instead of removing the section as a precaution, they could have tried to improve it by adding sources and expanding it.

My suggestion for this article is that we should remove the heading in the talkpage which designates the article as MEDRS, as it is the case for other four major personality traits. This does not mean that MEDRS do not apply to certain sections of this article. Any article which deals with medical claims should be held to MEDRS standards for those claims. But I don't think personality traits are in and of themselves are in medical status. As a relevant example: if our article claims that trait neuroticism is higher in women, that's not a medical claim. However, if our article claims trait neuroticism is responsible for such and such disorders, then it is a medical claim and should be held to the standards of MEDRS.

However, if you think my analysis of this situation is incorrect, and this article does require to be held to the standards of MEDRS in its entirety, I think we should discuss the status of similar articles that are closely related to Medicine. (Perhaps the whole field of psychology, evolutionary psychology, some other areas of biology etc.) Because as it stands, it seems we are making an exception for this article. Especially in contrast to other personality traits which are equally related to medical conditions but are not, in and of themselves, medical conditions.

What are your thoughts?

''Note: I don't know if this is the correct venue for a meta discussion such as this, but since the whole thing started here I decided to start the discussion here too. If there is a better venue for it, point me to it, or feel free to move the discussion there. Pinging the editors relevant to the discussion:''      Darwinian Ape talk 23:36, 11 August 2017 (UTC)
 * The "heading" is just a tool that allows editors to easily find MEDRS sources. Content about health needs to be sourced per MEDRS; nobody here is actually debating this anymore. The only real "dispute" here is that some editors want to give more WEIGHT to the content about gender due to the recent news about the google memo; i take the position that we give WEIGHT per sources, not per hoopla.  But that has nothing to do with the sourcing.  Jytdog (talk) 23:38, 11 August 2017 (UTC)
 * I am aware no one debates that "content about health needs to be sourced per MEDRS." Neither do I,(which I thought I made clear in my first post) what I am trying to establish is whether the whole article of Neuroticism, and the other big five personality traits for that matter, should be held to MEDRS standards or not. We wouldn't have this discussion in a physics article for example, because it is further away from health issues. I believe applying MEDRS to the disputed section was a bit of an overkill. I assumed the heading in the talk page is some sort of formal way of designating an article as MEDRS, if that's not the case, I don't have any objections to having it. But still would like a clarification as to whether this article should be treated as health article or not, as well as other articles like it. Darwinian Ape talk 00:33, 12 August 2017 (UTC)
 * It appears you and me are on the same wavelength here (though I think you explained it more clearly than me). I am also curious to hear, more generally, what is the scope of MEDRS. I dug around a bit and saw some archived debates over at Wikipedia_talk:Identifying_reliable_sources_(medicine):  . Also, I only noticed now that WP:SCIRS isn't policy, just suggestion --- and that it only meant to apply to natural sciences. But in an additional bizzare twist, psychiatry and mental health are somehow not mentioned at all on WP:MEDRS nor on the essay Biomedical_information! Surprising! A recent discussion  on MEDRS talk also got into psychiatry, and, I think rather bizzarely, they seemed to settle on excluding things like bipolar disorder!?! I find it absurd that the entire DSM-5 is somehow not subject to MEDRS restrictions, given why MEDRS exists in the first place.
 * So somehow both psychiatry and social sciences (incl psychology) are in a limbo now where neither WP:SCIRS is intended, nor WP:MEDRS is meant to apply. --Nanite (talk) 02:40, 12 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Jytdog says: "The only real "dispute" here is that some editors want to give more WEIGHT to the content about gender due to the recent news about the google memo". This simply is not true. The content about gender differences (under the heading "Sex differences") was in the article long before the Google memo incident happened. Roberttherambler (talk) 08:25, 12 August 2017 (UTC)
 * We can go back a year, to August 2016, and the "Sex differences" section is there. What has actually happened is that, since the Google memo incident, Jytdog has been trying to give less weight to gender differences. I think it is up to Jytdog to explain why he/she wants to do this. Roberttherambler (talk) 08:53, 12 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Yeah and that section had one crap source. So we've come on considerably. Alexbrn (talk) 09:20, 12 August 2017 (UTC)
 * The source was Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. What is your objection to this source? Roberttherambler (talk) 13:38, 12 August 2017 (UTC)

Generally, "MEDRS" + "primary sources" has long been abused rules via WikiLawyering to get rid of material sole editors don't like. Of course, it means: 1) very wide application of MEDRS / PRIMARY 2) avoiding any search for secondary sources. 3) Delete first, discuss later policy. 4) major editing of articles, so the politically motivated edits are drown in many justified edits Jazi Zilber (talk) 13:45, 12 August 2017 (UTC)
 * the source is not the entire serial publication, it is a single piece of primary research. Wikipedia editors are not in a position to judge primary research (much of which is simply wrong) - we need expert secondary sources to know if it has merit/influence/due weight. If it's not mentioned in secondary sources, then Wikipedia shouldn't be the only publication on the planet giving it prominence. This is basic. Alexbrn (talk) 15:59, 12 August 2017 (UTC)
 * It looks to me as though most of the references are primary research. Why single out this one? Roberttherambler (talk) 16:28, 12 August 2017 (UTC)


 * Psychology is not under primary research rules. Selective application of the rule, which is not included in the original rule (applied to medicine etc). opens the door to abuse Jazi Zilber (talk) 19:47, 12 August 2017 (UTC)
 * I agree with . When a good, widely agreed meta-analysis or review paper exists, we should cite it in preference the a list of me-too papers, and, as almost anything can be published somewhere, countering strong evidence with lists of weak counter-examples must be avoided. Crucially, however, misusing this to strip out sections of well referenced material on the pretext of references being more than x years old or that a particular non-expert wikipedian can't find a secondary source is very damaging to articles. Likewise failing to understand that primary sources are the only directly verifiable citation for primary data (when, for instance, a specific  estimate is referred to, or the article needs to note how an idea was originated, etc. is also damaging. Most good wikipedia articles have reference sections that look a lot like the introductions in good scientific articles: some big reviews, some seminal pieces, some recent work, noted as such, and several citations of primary data. I think mostly this rule seems to be either allowing deletionists a new modus-operandi, or to support biased edits.   Tim bates (talk) 15:34, 13 August 2017 (UTC)


 * Jazi Zilber, what changes do you actually want to make to the article? Is it just the restoration of the "Sex differences" heading or is there more? Roberttherambler (talk) 09:05, 13 August 2017 (UTC)


 * Roberttherambler

First part suggestion:

Here is how I would have written the section. roughly and very superficially.

heading: Gender, age and geographic patterns The risk for high levels of neuroticism is found in a 2013 review to be higher in young adults who are at high risk for mood disorders and women.[22] Women are found to have shown higher levels of neuroticism than men, on average. This is a robust finding that is consistent across cultures. Especially the case during the reproductive years, but is also visible in children and elderly. According to the same 2013 meta analysis. In brain scans, EEG responses showed clear differences between the genders in individuals with high N levels. While no fMRI studies were done on Neuroticism directly, there is a reason to suspect physiological differences to play a role because of previous studies that showed for example, a correlation between the size of the subgenual anterior cingulate cortex and N in female teenagers, so "the issue of sex differences in N and the implications for understanding N’s neurobiological basis deserve more detailed and systematic investigation."[22] I'll try to have a go at the rest later. Subheadings for age gender and state might also help. Jazi Zilber (talk) 09:17, 13 August 2017 (UTC)
 * OK, I have added subheadings to the article. Roberttherambler (talk) 10:16, 13 August 2017 (UTC)
 * thanks. Most of the age section is about gender actually. Only first line is about age. If the rest goes to gender section, a connection word is needed. as The above 2013 review also shows ....... Jazi Zilber (talk) 10:45, 13 August 2017 (UTC)
 * It's difficult to separate because the age section includes "children and elderly" and "female teenagers". Roberttherambler (talk) 12:25, 13 August 2017 (UTC)


 * Thanks for engaging :) Jazi Zilber (talk) 12:50, 13 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Most of the content in "age" was about gender. The breaks were incompetent. Jytdog (talk) 06:10, 15 August 2017 (UTC)

Here is my point of view about MEDRS. It somewhat mirrors the points made by the OP, but is a lot shorter and emphasizes the main points. I have seen similar debates occur in the past about other topics.


 * WP:MEDRS exists because many people use Wikipedia for health information. They should not do this, but people do it anyway, so it's a sort of harm reduction strategy. This is present in the lead of WP:MEDRS.
 * Simply describing, say sex difference in personality traits, does not have any direct medical implications.
 * High quality sources should, of course be used in all articles. This, however, does not mean that MEDRS standards should apply to all articles.

Let's be concrete. Among the edits which was originally in dispute (I am aware that things have moved on; this is just an illustration), was this edit. It removed a bunch of primary sources and some old sources. This source (from 2008) was removed. Note that the paragraph (starting from "One study examined sex differences...") has no health implications. So why should MEDRS apply to that paragraph?

Again: this is not to say that higher quality sources should not be used. The way to fix that paragraph (if it needed fixing) would have been to bring some good (more recent) reviews of the evidence and add/replace what it is in there. What should not have been done is to remove that paragraph and a perfectly decent source, wholesale. Kingsindian &#9821; &#9818; 06:38, 15 August 2017 (UTC)
 * There is actually no dispute about sourcing and hasn't been for about 5 days. People seem to be reacting to fuckwit rags that are gossiping about the "backoffice" instead of dealing with what is happening on the ground here.  And if you actually pay attention to the editing, what you are "advising" I already did, 5 days ago, which - along with a lot of very strong editing from  Tosiaki!,  is what ended the dispute.  Your post here was uncharacteristically thoughtless.  Jytdog (talk) 07:22, 15 August 2017 (UTC)
 * No, you're way off base. I don't "seem to be reacting to" Breitbart. Do you think that I am so ignorant that I would need Breitbart to tell me what happens on Wikipedia? You might want to read a comment I wrote on the article to see where I'm coming from. I have been monitoring this article for many days. As I said explicitly, things have moved on. That is not the point at all. What I am talking about is the thinking behind the edit, which has still not been clarified. The edit and reverts occurred because of arguments about the MEDRS policy. And I said before, I have seen the same debate over MEDRS in other contexts; this is not my first rodeo. Therefore, it is worth clarifying whether the section (currently labeled "Demographic and geographic patterns") should be subject to MEDRS. Kingsindian &#9821; &#9818; 07:42, 15 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Different editors have different views on what the dispute is about. My complaint is that gender differences are being played down (by the removal of any reference to gender in headings) in the interests of political correctness. This looks like a knee-jerk reaction to the Google memo. Roberttherambler (talk) 09:20, 15 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Perhaps you can complain about political correctness in some other section, since that is not what this section is about. Kingsindian &#9821; &#9818; 09:54, 15 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Something like this, which is really epidemiology, should definitely be using reviews. You said you have been following this discussion closely and if so then you will have seen my comment above about how the replication crisis is especially acute in the field of psychology.  GIven that, and and given the somewhat loaded content and context, there is so way that people should be cherry picking primary sources or getting into the OR/SYN around setting up duelling primary sources. Jytdog (talk) 14:30, 15 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Again, this is missing the point. The edit removed the summary of a perfectly good source (which is now known to be broadly corroborated by two other sources, but let's leave that aside). I don't see any dueling primary sources there. The reason for the removal was given as MEDRS. So which of the following scenarios is preferable: information which is cited to a perfectly decent source (it's actually cited in the review by Lippa), or no information at all, because the source doesn't meet a criterion which isn't meant to apply here anyway? In articles which have direct health implications, one can have a presumption in favor of the latter. Why does such a presumption hold here? Kingsindian &#9821; &#9818; 15:05, 15 August 2017 (UTC)


 * The replication crisis has noting to bear on those large scale studies. Replication issues mostly arise in small sized experiments, that were not replicated and so on. The type of studies cited here are usually quite robust. Jazi Zilber (talk) 14:46, 15 August 2017 (UTC)
 * There is no point in arguing about whether to use an old primary source that nobody actually wants to use. Generally raising source quality makes everybody happy.  If you want to have a general discussion about sourcing, happy to do that at some more general discussion page, but this is not about improving this article.  Jytdog (talk) 07:37, 16 August 2017 (UTC)

Sentence about three cross-cultural studies
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 &#9821; &#9818; 10:12, 15 August 2017 (UTC)


 * 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)


 * I am happy with the current version of the article . Roberttherambler (talk) 19:01, 15 August 2017 (UTC)


 * 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)

Is there such a thing as neuroticism per modern psychological consensus?
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))


 * 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)

trimmed content
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)

Removal of un referenced and arguably incorrect sentence in first paragraph
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)

Is a neutral point of view possible for neuroticism anymore?
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: 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.
 * 1) 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.
 * 2) Human psychological traits have both a negative and positive range, which can lead to a constructive discussion about limits, distribution, pros and cons.

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)