Neuroticism is associated with greater affective variability at high levels of momentary affective well-being, but with lower affective variability at low levels of momentary affective well-being

Abstract

Objective: Research challenged the notion that neuroticism correlates with affective variability, suggesting that it may result from statistical artifacts due to the non-normal distribution of negative affect. We aim to advance this line of research by (a) introducing affect balance as a normally distributed measure of affective well-being and (b) examining current affect balance as a moderator of the relationship between neuroticism and affect balance variability.

Method: We meta-analyzed the results of 14 ambulatory assessment datasets (N = 2389 participants, N = 174,423 observations).

Results: We found that while the associations between the mean and affective variability were large for negative affect, they were much smaller for affect balance. Moreover, the association between neuroticism and variability in negative affect was very small, yet medium-sized for affect balance. Importantly, the latter association depended on current affect levels: Participants high relative to low in neuroticism showed stronger subsequent fluctuations in affect balance when currently feeling better than usual, but weaker subsequent fluctuations in (and thus more persistent) affect balance when currently feeling worse than usual.

Conclusion: Increased variability should not be seen as a bad sign but may be a sign that an affective system is changing, which may be adaptive or maladaptive for an individual, depending on the initial state of the system.