Every week around the world, millions of people play lotteries, desperately hoping to win the jackpot that will bring them happiness… or so they think.
Others browse dream homes and imagine the contentment they’d find in them, or scan job listings or swipe dating apps, always craving that one change in life that will make everything better.
And yet what psychology research shows us is that all these external factors matter far less to our happiness or satisfaction than what’s inside us already.
This might risk sounding like a vacuous message from a fortune cookie, but it derives from legitimate, carefully controlled studies that have explored how much our personality traits influence our sense of wellbeing in life.
What the research has shown is that there’s one trait in particular that’s absolutely crucial. It’s one of the so-called ‘Big Five’ personality traits, from the most respected personality model in psychology.
The model’s five assessed traits include openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and, finally, neuroticism. This one matters the most for your happiness in life.
The good news? If happiness depends on our internal levels of neuroticism, then by intentionally dialling down this trait, we have a good chance of actually creating long-lasting happiness for ourselves.
The happiness killer
Like all the Big Five personality traits, neuroticism is a spectrum – and we all score on it somewhere.
Where you sit on this spectrum has to do with how often you experience difficult emotions, such as guilt or anger; how much time you spend in low moods; and how negatively you see the world and your relationships.
The flip side of neuroticism is emotional stability.
Someone who’s always up and down and very sensitive to perceived criticism or rejection is neurotic, whereas that friend who always seems to be in good spirits, and who quickly bounces back when they have a rough time – they likely have high emotional stability, or low neuroticism.
Of course, some level of neuroticism can be beneficial, keeping us alert to threats for instance. But in excess, neuroticism is a happiness killer.
A 2013 study led by Dr Christopher Boyce (then at the University of Manchester) demonstrates how much this matters.
The research team measured the personality traits, economic circumstances and life satisfaction of over 8,000 participants at the start and end of a four-year period.
Not only did the study find that people’s traits fluctuated as much as their economic circumstances, but also that these fluctuations ended up being crucial for their perceived happiness. And, of all the personality changes, it was neuroticism that mattered most.
The researchers’ methods even allowed them to put a monetary figure on it. They estimated that a one standard deviation drop in their neuroticism score had a positive impact on their life satisfaction equivalent to a whopping $314,000 (approx £232,000) annual pay bump.
This might sound hard to believe, but it has to do with just how deeply neuroticism can permeate our lives.
“Higher levels of neuroticism are associated with an increased likelihood of smoking, alcohol problems and mental health disorders, as well as adverse outcomes in key life domains such as relationships and work, including higher risks of divorce and unemployment,” says Prof Wiebke Bleidorn at the University of Zurich in Switzerland.
“Moreover, the societal costs are substantial,” she adds. “For example, [the clinical psychologist] Prof Pim Cuijpers and his colleagues found that high levels of neuroticism are associated with more than twice the per capita public health costs compared to the most common mental disorders combined.”
More recent research adds to the picture. In 2023, scientists at Tilburg University in the Netherlands assessed the personality and life satisfaction of over 9,000 participants (aged 16 to 95) multiple times over an eleven-year period.
They too found meaningful associations between personality traits and life satisfaction – and once again it was neuroticism that was the most important.
As people’s neuroticism went up or down, in turn their happiness levels rose or dropped. This was true for overall life satisfaction as well as satisfaction in work and relationships.
What’s more, the pattern was the same for teenagers, nonagenarians (individuals who are between 90 and 99 years old) and all ages in between.
Dr Gabriel Olaru, the psychologist who led the study, explains that neuroticism can have this effect on people’s happiness via two main routes.
The first is what he calls a “dispositional” or “top-down” pathway, which has to do with how we view the world and interpret our experiences. The second is an “instrumental” or “bottom-up” pathway, referring to how we behave and interact with others.
“By becoming less neurotic, people may re-evaluate their lives and relationships and see them in a more positive light, thereby becoming more satisfied with them,” he says.
“At the same time, reducing neuroticism may help people react less strongly to stress, regulate their emotions more effectively, and engage in fewer conflict-escalating behaviours. This can directly benefit close relationships.”
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How neurotic are you?
If you’ve always been prone to difficult emotions, you might already have a sense that you’re neurotic.
Many psychology studies tap into this by asking their participants to rate their agreement with a series of simple statements, such as “Worries a lot,” “Tends to feel depressed, blue” and “Feels insecure, uncomfortable with self”. The more of these you agree with, the higher your neuroticism score.
Yet neuroticism is on a spectrum and not always so obvious. In more moderate doses, it could still affect your happiness but might not always manifest in such extreme and apparent ways.
Instead of asking people about their feelings, some studies have looked at everyday behaviours that correlate with personality trait scores, including neuroticism.
Some of the behavioural signs are more obvious than others. If you swear at others frequently, take tranquilisers or antidepressants and lose your temper often, you may not be surprised to hear that you’re probably at the higher end of the scale.
Perhaps slightly less obvious: if you tend to speed while driving (for example, out of annoyance and impatience), eat lots of unhealthy food (which can be a sign of comfort eating), find social media especially frustrating (because you get into arguments and experience a ‘fear of missing out’) and seek escapism frequently in sad music or heavy metal, then you exhibit signs that you’re more neurotic than most.
What does neuroticism look like with others? Dr Manon van Scheppingen, who’s also based at Tilburg University, was a co-author on Olaru’s study. She says it can be hard to tell a person’s neuroticism levels when you first meet them, but as relationships develop some patterns can become more visible.
“For example,” she says, “someone higher in neuroticism might be more sensitive to potential rejection or criticism, seek reassurance from friends or partners more often and find it harder to let go of negative interactions or conflicts.”
These are the everyday signs, but over the longer term the difficult emotions that are a part of being neurotic can also begin to shape your decision-making and attitude to life in more meaningful ways.
This helps to explain the deep links with happiness and life satisfaction.
“Anxiety-proneness may prevent you from stepping outside your comfort zone in your career and personal life, or from making decisions,” says Dr Shannon Sauer-Zavala, a clinical psychologist at the University of Kentucky in the US.
She’s also a pioneer in the development of a therapeutic programme aimed at helping people to reduce their trait neuroticism.
“Sadness might drain your motivation, making it harder to follow through on plans,” she adds. “Guilt can keep you stuck overanalysing past decisions or prioritising other people’s needs at the expense of your own, whereas frustration might lead you to give up too quickly when things don’t go as planned, or react in ways that strain your relationships.”
Dialling down your neuroticism
What’s so hopeful about the research linking trait neuroticism with happiness is the growing evidence suggesting that personality is not set in stone.
Psychologists traditionally saw our traits as unchanging. Writing in the nineteenth century, for example, Harvard psychologist Prof William James famously said our character is fixed like plaster from age 30.
Today, however, the emerging consensus is that while they are relatively stable with significant consequences, traits can and do evolve over time. What’s more, through deliberate interventions, we can choose to change our traits, including neuroticism.
One context where this has become apparent is in research on the impacts of psychotherapy.
In 2017, a team of US researchers analysed over two hundred prior studies involving more than 20,000 participants and found that just a few weeks of psychotherapy tended to lead to lasting reductions in people’s levels of neuroticism.
This is probably because therapy often aims to alter the unhelpful habits of thought that can contribute to being a neurotic person.
Inspired by these and similar findings, Bleidorn and her colleagues have been testing a personality change app they’ve developed for research purposes.
Called CHILL (short for Changing How I Live Life), it’s intended to see if everyday technology can help ordinary people – not therapy clients – lower their neuroticism levels.
The team gave participants different versions of the app to use for six weeks. Before-and-after personality tests showed that the app can lower trait neuroticism, but some versions of the app were more effective than others.
The most effective form of the app – leading to the steepest declines in neuroticism – gave users background information about the trait alongside prompts for developing new mental and behavioural habits (the latter were especially important), as well as prompts and advice for being calmer in the moment.
Bleidorn is very careful to say that these are preliminary findings for now and longer-term studies are needed, but she adds that a useful approach for working on neuroticism is to combine short-term and long-term strategies.
She’s referring to state-level strategies for helping yourself feel more chilled in the here and now, combined with the habit-based strategies that are all about making longer-lasting changes to your thoughts and behaviour.
This is exactly what’s needed to enact genuine personality change.
“State-level strategies, such as brief relaxation exercises, physical exercise or reaching out to a friend for emotional support can be very helpful for quickly reducing stress and negative affect in the moment,” Bleidorn says. “These can provide immediate relief and make it easier to cope with challenging situations.”
But for the kind of habit change that can lead to lasting reductions in your neuroticism, she says: “This could involve consistently practicing small, concrete actions, such as approaching situations one would normally avoid, establishing new routines that reduce stress or developing more adaptive thought patterns that promote emotional stability."
To boost your chances of success, one of the most important things you can do is to start slow and aim for some early wins.
In further analysis of their data (which hasn’t yet been peer-reviewed), Bleidorn and her colleagues explored which participants in their research tended to benefit more from the CHILL app.
They found that it was those who scored higher in ‘self-efficacy’ – that is, believing in their own abilities to enact change. And this was a self-reinforcing process.
In other words, self-efficacy beliefs preceded greater reductions in neuroticism, and in turn, drops in neuroticism led to increases in self-efficacy.
One likely reason for this pattern, says Bleidorn, is “that these [self-efficacy] beliefs shape how people engage with the intervention. They may invest more effort, persist when change is difficult and be more willing to try new strategies, even if they don’t work immediately.”
This isn’t about tricking yourself into thinking that personality change is easy – as Bleidorn says, it’s going to take “sustained effort and does not happen overnight”.
But it does mean it’s important not to set yourself unrealistic goals early on that could risk dampening your confidence and motivation.
Bleidorn suggests thinking of it as being similar to healthy weight change: “Sustainable progress usually happens through small, consistent adjustments rather than rapid, dramatic shifts.”
So, if you’re looking for a better life – a boost to your happiness equivalent to a massive salary raise every year – don’t bother with the lottery.
You’re more likely to succeed by putting the effort into dialling down your neuroticism – and your relationships will probably be better off, too.
Four ways to boost emotional stability
For some concrete examples from the CHILL study, here are four specific activities that could lower your neuroticism:
1. Think of a person who is particularly good at dealing with stress. What behaviours do you observe in them? Describe how you could apply one of these behaviours in your everyday life. This can help you build new behavioural habits
2. Identify a negative thought or assumption, then challenge it and see if you can come up with a more positive interpretation. This can help you build less neurotic mental habits
3. Text a friend and tell them about your day or about something that’s moved you. This is a state-level strategy to help you feel better in the moment
4. Do something today that you usually avoid due to anxiety, and repeat this at least three times a week. This is also a state-level strategy designed to counteract your neuroticism in the moment
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