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.