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Lay conceptions of neuroticism
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Vol. 5. No. I. pp. 95-103. Britain. All rights reserwd
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LAY CONCEPTIONS
ol91-8869
84 53.00 + 0.00 Ltd
I 1984Pergamon Press
OF NEUROTICISM
ADRIAN FURNHAM Department of Psychology. University College London, Gower Street. London WCIH, England (Receiced 9 March 1983)
Summary-This paper is concerned with various aspects of a lay-person’s conceptualization of neuroticism. Threeexperiments are reported which aim to investigate various determinants of the commonsense conception of neuroticism. In the first experiment subjects completed various standardized psychological tests measuring neuroticism and anxiety, while also estimating the extent of their own anxiety and neuroticism. In the second experiment subjects attempted to detect items measuring neuroticism in a standard personality questionnaire and secondly estimate the extent of their own and the ‘average’ person’s neuroticism. Finally. in the third experiment subjects rated the typicality of various neurotic traits and behaviour which had been supplied by subjects in the previous two experiments. The results suggested some similarity in expert e.uplicirtheories and lay-person implicirtheories, though there appeared to be systematic biases in the subjects’ perception of their own neuroticism. The results are discussed in terms of the correspondence between implicit theories and explicit theories. and the functions of each theory in everyday life are considered. Problems associated with these studies and this research in general are discussed.
INTRODUCTION
A number of psychological concepts are well known to, and often used by. lay people in their everyday thoughts and conversations (e.g. personality, intelligence, depression). Most of the psychological research in these and other areas has been aimed at providing explicit coherent theories for the existence of these phenomena and then devising reliable and valid instruments for measuring them. As a consequence, a great deal of academic interest and debate has been concerned with the correctness, usefulness or parsimoniousness of different theories accounting for the same phenomena and the psychometric properties of various test instruments. However, considerably less work has gone into implicit lay theories of psychological phenomena which often differ considerably from the explicit theories of academic psychologists. More recently some studies have investigated specifically lay concepts of well-known psychological concepts. although other related studies have looked at lay theories of economic and criminological concepts (Furnham, 1982a, b; Furnham and Henderson, 1983). Semin, Rosch and Chassen (1981) for instance attempted to compare ‘common-sense’ (lay) and ‘scientific’ (psychological) conceptions of introversion-extraversion. They asked subjects to list attributes of typical extraverts and introverts and found 58 which a second group rated for importance. The remaining most important 24 items (12 for introverts. 12 for extraverts) constituted a ‘Common Sense’ scale which was administered to yet another experimental group, along with an Eysenck Personality Inventory (EPI). A correlation of I’ = 0.51 (P < 0.001) was recorded between the 2 scales, which the authors took as evidence for overlap between lay and scientific concepts and further that these two categories are cognitively represented and processed dimensionally. Earlier Canter and Mischel (1977) had demonstrated, within an informationprocessing model, the existence and operation of the prototypic traits of extraverts and introverts and the way in which subjects organize and remember prototypes. In a more thorough study, Sternberg, Conway, Ketran and Bernstein (1981) set about investigating another well-used psychological concept-intelligence-in a series of three studies. They found that lay people have clear, well-formed prototypes of various kinds of intelligence which are quite similar to those of ‘experts’ and closely related to certain better-known psychological theories of intelligence. Further, these prototypes were used in evaluating both one’s own and others’ intelligence. The common factors of the belief systems concerning intelligence include a problem-solving factor, a verbal-ability factor and a social-competence factor. The authors concluded that because of the different functions of implicit and explicit theories of P A.1 0. S’l-0
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intelligence this sort of prototypic analysis “seems to be a useful complement to the kind of componential analysis or other forms of analysis that have been conducted in laboratory analyses of intellectual functioning.” (p. 54) Various studies have also looked at lay or popular conceptions of aspects of mental health. Nunnally (1961) did a content analysis of television, radio and newspaper references to mental illness and found that even people afflicted with mild disorders (phobias, obsessions) were presented as having bizarre facial expressions, beliefs and behaviours. In later experimental work he found some differences between average ratings given to a ‘neurotic man’ and ‘neurotic woman’ on the one hand, and ‘insane man’ and ‘insane woman’ on the other (the latter being rated very highly on unpredictability, dangerousness and dirtiness). All abnormal (neurotic/insane) target persons received higher than average ratings on the following dimensions: Tense, Sick, Sad, Passive, Weak, Delicate, Cold, Foolish, Ignorant and Insincere. Thus neurotics were given a very unfavourable overall rating and a low rating on the dimension ‘Understandability’. More recently Rippere (1980a, b, 1981) investigated both consensus in professionals’ beliefs about depression, and the dimensions of common-sense knowledge about depression and antidepressive behaviour. Rippere (1980a, b) investigated various historical dimensions of commonsense knowledge about depression and found that people have clear and shared ideas about how often they and others report depression, what to do about, the feelings experienced when depressed, and how long people tend to go on feeling depressed. More recently Rippere (1981) has found that people in our culture possess generally accurate, socially-shared, ideas about the likely impact of 15 events on people who were depressed. Rippere’s experiments represent a very thorough attempt to investigate the lay-person’s understanding of a commonly-experienced and discussed psychological phenomenon. This study concerns lay theories or conceptions of neuroticism-a concept well known and often used by lay persons. Etymologically the term means ‘weakness of the nerves’ and is derived from the Greek word for nerves. In fact, until the nineteenth century all forms of mental illness were included in the class neutotica, so much that the diagnosis was abandoned as too general until the end of the nineteenth century (Kisker, 1964). Beard (1880) introduced the term neurasthenia, whose symptoms included lack of energy, fatigue, physical complaints and general disability. Kraepelin (1915), however, distinguished between neurasthenia, psychasthenia and hysteria, which remained the basis for the description of the neurotic conditions from the 1890s until the appearance of the American Psychiatric Association’s publication of their Diagnostic and Statistical Manual in 1952. However, the latest edition (1980) has no reference to neurosis at all. Most textbooks have difficulty in arriving at a clear definition of neuroticism, though most are agreed on categorizing neurotic symptoms into various groups-anxiety, phobic, obsessivecompulsive, conversion, dissociative and depressive reactions (Buss, 1966; Kisker, 1964). Although he admits a number of ambiguities in the concept of neurosis, Eysenck (1978) offered a simple definition for his lay readers: “Neurosis is a term we often use for behaviour which is associated with strong emotion, which is maladaptive, and which the person giving rise to it realises is nonsensical, absurd or irrelevant, but which he is powerless to change.” (p. 15) Similarly in their EPQ Manual, Eysenck and Eysenck (1975) define a typical neurotic as a person being “an anxious, worrying individual, moody and frequently depressed. He is likely to sleep badly, and to suffer from various psychosomatic disorders. He is overly emotional, reacting too strongly to all sorts of stimuli, and finds it difficult to get back on an even keel after each emotionally arousing experience. His strong emotional reactions interfere with his proper adjustment, making him react in irrational, sometimes rigid ways . . . If the highly neurotic individual has to be described in one word, one might say that he was a worrier; his main characteristic is a constant preoccupation with things that might go wrong, and a strong emotional reaction of anxiety to these thoughts.” (pp. 9-10)
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Predictably
there exist a number of theories which cover the aetiology and cure of neurosis: which suggest that neurotic behaviour is an external manifestation of an underlying emotional disturbance; learning theories which see neurotic behaviour as the product of an inappropriate contingency of behaviour learning or conditioning; and cognitive theories which suggest that the neurotic condition is characterized by particular patterns of selective information processing (Young and Martin, 1981). This study set out to investigate some of the characteristics and determinants of lay-people’s implicit theories of neuroticism and contrast them with explicit psychological theories. It was hypothesized, following the experimental results of Semin et al. (1981) and Sternberg et al. (1981) that people would have similar estimates of their neurosis to scores derived from tests; that they would be moderately accurate at detecting personality questionnaire items measuring neuroticism; that they would believe themselves to be less neurotic than the average person, and finally that they have well-formed prototypes corresponding to various kinds of neuroticism.
dynamic theories
EXPERIMENT
1
The experiment was designed to measure people’s ability to predict their Neuroticism and Social Anxiety scores as measured on standardized psychometrized tests, and secondly to look at the relationship of various self-reported traits to test-measured personality traits. Method Subjects
In all, 70 Ss took part in this experiment. They were all female occupational students with very little training in psychology. They were all British, primarily from middle-class homes and between 18 and 24 yr. Materials
Subjects were given the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (EPQ; Eysenck and Eysenck, 1975) and the Social Anxiety Scale (SA; Watson and Friend, 1969), along with other tests that were a standard procedure at the institution they were attending. Both tests purport to have satisfactory reliability figures. The test-retest reliability on the N scale of the EPQ is reported as 0.86, while the internal consistency reliability is 0.84 (Eysenck and Eysenck, 1975). Similarly the SA scale has a test-retest reliability of 0.78 and had been shown to be internally consistent. A month later they were asked to estimate how neurotic and anxious they were. They were first given the definition of neuroticism by Eysenck and Eysenck (1975) as well as the range, mean and SD of the scores of a normal population (Furnham and Henderson, 1983) and asked how they thought they should (not did) score, given their knowledge of their own personality on this particular scale. They were also asked to rate themselves on 6 other scales (see Table 1). They had had 8 lectures in psychology over this period, none of which concerned personality theory, clinical or abnormal psychology. They had covered the biological basis of behaviour in this period. Procedure
The experimenter asked Ss to rate themselves on the 8 7-point &ales which included Neuroticism (IV) and Anxiety (A). They were also asked to write down all the attributes they believed to be Table 1. Correlations EN
AN Actual N (AN) Estimated N (EN) Actual A (AA) E&mated A (EA) Actual P (AP) Dapr==d (D) Unhappy WI) Unstable (US) Normal (N) Disturbed (DIS) Mad (M)
0.40*** 0.44*** 0.54”’ 0.13 -0.37*** -0.27” -0.31*+ 0.14 -0.15 -0.06
AA
-0.26. 04”’ 0.62**’ -0.21. 0.02 0.66*** -0.24. 0.47*** -0.08 0.46*** -0.07 -0.52*** 0.05 0.38*** -0.10 0.29’. -0.09
‘P < 0.05; l*P < 0.01; l**P < 0.001.
between self- and actual ratinra (N = 70) EA
-0.20’ 0.69*** 0.51*** 0.50*** -0.32.. 0.35*** 0.09
AP
-0.08 -0.15 -0.17 -0.19 -0.07 0.31**
D
UH
0.62*** 0.47*** 0.4s** -0.22. -0.39*** 0.36*** 0.31” 0.17 0.22.
us
-0.35*** 0.50*** 0.11
N
-0.37’99 -0.40***
DIS
0.27.
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ADRIAN FURNHAM
typical of a neurotic person. They were tested in their class time. The first part of the experiment took approx. 45 min, and the second 15 min. Ss were later debriefed as to the nature of the experiment. Results
Pearson product-moment correlations were computed between the S’s actual N, P and A scale scores and her estimates on 8 other scales. Table 1 presents the results of the correlational analyses. Not surprisingly many of the correlations are high, and over 60% significant. Indeed one would expect moderate correlations between the measured trait and one’s estimate of it. Both actual+zstimated correlations are significant (N, 0.40, P < 0.001; A, 0.43, P < 0.001) which confirms the results of a study by Furnham and Henderson (1983) who found a similar group of Ss best able to judge their own N and A score. Many of the high positive correlations make perfect sense: estimated A and actual N (0.54, P < 0.001); estimated A and estimated N (0.62, P < 0.001); estimated A and Depression (0.69, P < 0.001); estimated N and Depression (0.66, P < 0.001); and Depression and Unhappiness (0.62, P < 0.001). Predictably all the significant correlations with self-estimates of normality are negative yet there are a few curious significant negative correlations. For instance the Ss’ actual N score correlated negatively with self-estimates of Depression, Unhappiness and Instability. Similarly, actual A and Depression correlated negatively, (-0.24, P < 0.05). The P scale only just correlated negatively significantly with estimated N (-0.21, P c 0.05) but positively with Madness (0.32, P < 0.01). However it is apparent from these results that people are not very accurate in a discriminant validity sense. For example, the estimated A-actual N correlation is higher than the common trait correlations. If the data are recast in a quasi multitrait-multimethod matrix, it is apparent that the monomethod correlations are greater than the convergent correlations and that one of the divergent correlations is greater than the convergent correlations. Thus while the actual/estimated correlations for both Anxiety and Neuroticism are significant, the data do not provide very strong support for the convergence of S estimates and standardized test scores. EXPERIMENT
2
This experiment was designed to test people’s ability to detect items measuring neuroticism on a standard personality inventory, and secondly to assess their beliefs about neurotic traits in themselves as opposed to the average person. Method Subjects
One hundred and thirty Ss took part in this experiment. They were first-year non-psychology university and nursing students who ranged in age from 18 to 27 yr. Approx. 87 were females and 43 males. Materials
One hundred Ss were given the EPQ (Eysenck and Eysenck, 1975) and asked to identify all of the items in the go-item scale that were measuring neuroticism. They were not told how many items there were in all on the N scale (just over 25%) or how they were scored (YES/NO), but merely to list, by number, all the items they thought measured neuroticism. However because of the problem of ‘false positives’ a second group of 30 Ss were asked to identify items measuring neuroticism. They were restricted to 23 choices (the actual number of items measuring neuroticism). Thereafter they were required to rate themselves and the ‘average person’ on 8 7-point trait scales, as used in Experiment 1. Prior to both tasks all Ss were asked to write down all the attributes they believed to be typical of a neurotic person. Procedure
Subjects were tested in their class time, while waiting for feedback from a laboratory class. They took approx. 15 min to complete the task, and were debriefed immediately on completing it.
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Table 2. The Percentage of Ss correctly identifying the items in the EPQ which supposedly measure neuroticism Items from the EPQ 3. 7. 12. IS. 19. 23. 27. 31. 34. 38. 41. 47. 54. 58. 62. 66. 68. 12. IS. 77. 80. 84. 88.
%
45.8
Does your mood often go up and down? Do you ever feel ‘just miserable’ for no mason? Do you often worry about things you should not have done or said? Are you an irritable person? Are your feelings easily hurt? Do you often feel ‘fed-up? Are you often troubled about feelings of guilt? Would you call yourself a nervous person? Are you a worrier7 Do you worry about awful things that might happen? Would you call yourself tense or ‘highly strung‘? Do you worry about your health? Do you suffer from sleeplessness? Have you often felt listless and tired for no reason? Do you often feel life is very dull? Do you worry a lot about your looks? Have you ever wished that you were dead? Do you worry too long after an embarrassing experience? Do you suffer from nerves? Do you often feel lonely? Are you sometimes bubbling over with energy and sometimes very sluggish? Are you easily hurt when people find fault with you or the work you do? Are you touchy about some things?
41.6 81.5 25.0 41.6 2s.o 15.0 58.3 62.5 91.6 79.1 19.1 66.6 16.6 8.3 54.1 33.3 19. I
Mean y0 SD
z s4:1 4.1 37.5 53.9 28.1
Results IdentifVing Neuroticism items Because of the ‘signal detection problem’ in the first study the results were not analysed in depth. The average number of items identified was 29.1 of which 12.78 were correct. The percentage of Ss identifying the N items can be seen in Table 2. The mean number of items selected by the Ss was 21.3 (SD = 3.41). Overall Ss’ correct identification for the 23 ‘neurotic’ items ranged from under 10% to over 90%, the mean correct identifications being 53.9%. Six items (12,27,38,41,47,72) were identified by over 70% of the Ss and they related primarily to worrying, while 6 items (15,23,58,62,77,84) were identified by less than 30% of the Ss and they related primarily to feeling bored and listless. On the whole, the Ss appear to be reasonably accurate in their ability to detect items in a questionnaire that are measuring neuroticism. This confirms other studies that suggest that such questionnaires can be ‘faked’ by Ss wishing to present either a good or bad picture of themselves (Furnham and Henderson, 1982). Beliefs about neurotic traits in themselves and others The means and F-levels for estimates of neuroticism and other traits in oneself and others can be seen in Table 3. Of the 8 scales, 6 were significant at the P < 0.05 level or higher. Ss believed themselves to be significantly less neurotic, disturbed, depressed and mad than the ‘average’ person and more happy and stable. However there was no difference in estimated A or normality scores-Ss believed themselves and others to be moderately anxious and fairly normal. Therefore on the whole these Ss tended to see themselves as less disturbed than the average person. It could be argued that these results simply reflect a social desirability bias but they are also in accordance with the work of Calhoun, Johnson and Boardman (1975) and others on attributions for mental illness, which Table 3. Means and F-levels for estimates of neuroticism and other mlated traits for self and others Self-rated traits (‘l-point scale) Neuroticnon-neurotic Anxious-non-anxious Depressed-not depressed Unhappy-happy Unstable-stable ;~~rN~e-undisturbed
lf
Yourself
Average person
F-kvels
5.44 4.19 4.98 5.51 s.51 S.92 6.03
4.94 4.3s 4.48 4.92 5.07 s.22 5.66
4.939 0.58 6.SO** 12sg*** 4.67. I2.20*** 3.62.
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suggests that one tends to attribute mental illness in others to dispositional or trait factors, but to situational and environmental factors in oneself. That is, one is more likely to attribute permanent mental illness to others rather than oneself. EXPERIMENT
3
This experiment was designed to determine what lay people believe are the typical characteristics of neurotics. That is, it set out to compile a master list of neurotic behaviours and investigate the perceived relationship between these typical behaviours. Method Subjects
One hundred and eighty Ss took part in this experiment, They were drawn from two groups-approx. 213 were first-year non-psychology university students, while 213 were 16- to 17-yr-old pupils from schools in the London area. There were approximately equal numbers of males and females, and they ranged in age from 17 to 22 yr. Materials
At the beginning of both of the previous two experiments Ss had been given a lined blank page and asked to list all the behaviours and traits they associated with the term ‘neurotic’. Over 400 listed behaviours/traits were produced and these were reduced to 100 by selecting those which were mentioned 3 or more times by the Ss. A questionnaire was then devised which required the above 180 Ss in this experiment to rate each of the 100 behaviours/traits on a 7-point scale of typicality (Sternberg et al., 1981). That is they were asked to rate how typical each behaviour was of a neurotic person. Procedure
Subjects were tested out of their class time while engaged in other psychological tests. They were informed that each task was distinct and that there were no correct or incorrect answers. They took approx. 15 min to complete the task, which was done anonymously. Results The most characteristic neurotic traits
This experiment made it possible to rank those behaviours/trairs that lay people thought to be most and least characteristic of neurotics. The 10 most typical characteristics appear to fit well with explicit theories of neuroticism. Here the neurotic is seen as both highly anxious and emotionally labile. The 10 least characteristics are however mixed, with some being typical, others atypical and others still irrelevant to the construct of neuroticism. Although none are seen as totally untypical of a neurotic (most are in the range 4.3-4.8 on a 7-point scale) few characteristics appear in explicit theories. These items refer mainly to the introverted nature of neurotics, their inability to enjoy themselves or their poor ability to make friends. Presumably they were initially tested by Ss with a somewhat idiosyncratic view of neuroticism. Factor analysis
Despite the possible instability of the factor solution obtained from the analyses of only 180 Ss, a factor analysis (Varimax) was computed on the data. (It should be pointed out that Sternberg et al. (198 1) did a similar factor analysis using only 122 people which, though it revealed meaningful results, was also unstable.) Table 5 shows the factor-analytic results. Four clear interpretable factors emerged which accounted for over 35% of the variance. The first factor involved a neurotic person’s inability to communicate and initiate friendships, which is perhaps a characteristic of the socially-unskilled person as a neurotic. The second factor relates to the neurotic person’s instability and variations in day-to-day behaviour though the mean typicality ratings suggest that the Ss did not find these behaviours typical of neurotics. The mean ratings of the third and fourth factors suggest that the Ss found these behaviours-obsessionality and phobic-like behaviours-more
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Table 4. The means and SDS of the behaviours or trahs rated as most and least characteristic of the neurotic Number
I 4 16 17 :‘: :; 90 88 Number 46
2 22 37 65 78 83 79 41
MOST CHARACTERISTIC Bchaviourflrait Tends often to be very anxious Tends to ba highly strung Finds it hard to relax Often escalates the problem out of proportion Has nervous habits Is unstable under pressure Generally a worrying person Easily gets upset Is never at peace with himpherself Is very aware of what others might think LEAST CHARACTERISTIC Behaviour’Trait Holds strong religious beliefs Goes to extreme lengths to be noticed Often has facial tics Pretends to be a strong character Is pessimistic about the future Is extraverted Has a disorganized life style Is not considerate H-hen listening to others Has little time for pleasure Is no good at making friends
Mean’
SD
1.62 I .a4 2.10 2.44 2.45 2.56 2.19 2.80 2.81 2.71
0.97 1.31 1.14 1.44 1.36 1.29 1.36 1.37 1.56 1.61
Mean’
SD
5.14 5.06 4.87 4.82 4.71 4.70 4.55 4.31 4.33 4.32
I.41 I.31 1.76 I.51 1.44 I .49 1.32 1.56 I.61 I .63
‘Score on a ‘l-point scale. where I = typical: 7 = not typical.
characteristic of the typical neurotic. The third factor concerns primarily the neurotic person’s obsessionality-compulsive ritualized behaviours-while the fourth factor concerns primarily phobic behaviours though there are numerous obsessional-type items loading on this factor as well. Overall the factor-analytic results seem to indicate that the lay person has a clear conception of various types of neurotic behaviour. DISCUSSION From the above three experiments it seems that the lay person has a well-developed implicit theory of neuroticism and the typical behaviours of a neurotic. There seems to be consensually held beliefs that neuroticism has a number of different characteristics including anxiety, emotional lability, depression and obsessive behaviours. Furthermore, subjects appear to have no difficulty in specifying these prototypes. This suggests that everyday usage of terms such as ‘neuroticism’ allows individuals to relatively accurately communicate information about perceived behaviours and traits of themselves and others. Thus they appear to hold a shared implicit personality theory Table 5. Factor-analytic
-
(Varimax) results for the 100 neurotic items’
Items
Factor
Loading
Mean
Eigenvalue
Variance (%)
Communication Problems
7. 30. 42. 60. 62. 63. 82. 98.
Has difficulty getting on with strangers Geta angry over trifling matters Does not like to be centre of attention Often feel that they have no friends Finds it difficult to communicate Is an anti-social sort of person Is a shy sort of person Embarrasses friends and family in public
0.54 0.85 0.51 0.58 0.82 0.54 0.42 0.71
3.33 3.57 4.49 3.82 3.11 3.98 3.06 3.39
14.05
19.3
Unstable
IS. 18. 27. 28. 66.
Is dependent on speciSc other people Flits from one idea to another Constantly seeks attention Fluctuates from extremes of happiness and unhappiness Is easily agitated
0.70 0.55 0.58 0.77 0.55
4.27 3.99 4.44 3.97 3.44
7.17
9.4
Obsessional
34. Tends to do things repetitively 45. Tends to be superstitious SO. Keeps on having the same thoughts and feelings 89. Behaves in ritualixed ways
0.64 0.71 0.81 0.69
3.67 3.77 3.02 2.48
5.19
S.l
Phobic
26. 34. 37. 44.
0.51 0.61 0.74 0.82
3.16 3.14 3.84 3.71
4.11
4.9
Panics when confronted by a new situation Tends to do things repetitively Tends to be obsessed by people and things Has many phobias
‘Only items loading 0.5 or above were retained for interpretation.
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which, though it does not exclude the possibility of idiosyncratic constructions, suggests some commonly-shared frame of reference. However, this is not to suggest that the lay person and the ‘expert’ share precisely the same definition of neuroticism, or that there exists no bias in a person’s estimation of neuroticism. Though highly significant, the correlations between ‘estimated’ and ‘actual’ N and A only account for about 20% of the variance in Experiment 1. Furthermore the subjects’ ‘actual’ N score correlated significantly with ratings of depression, unhappiness and instability, suggesting perhaps a certain bias in perceiving or reporting their own neuroticism. This was confirmed in the second experiment, in which subjects tended to perceive themselves as significantly less neurotic and unhappy than the average person. It seems then that people are either fairly reticent or unable to report totally accurately on their own neuroticism (presupposing, of course, that the psychological tests are providing accurate measures). Indeed, Fumham and Henderson (1982) have pointed out that scores are also open to various biases and have various psychometric problems. Thus in Experiment 1, although the term ‘actual score’ was used, this might not itself be the only accurate measurement of the characteristic. After all, it is well known that, tests supposedly measuring the same thing do not always correlate highly. Moreover, one might expect those high in neuroticism to be particularly poor at estimating their own score. But recent research in attribution theory has shown that the expert is as likely to make attribution errors as the lay man. For instance, Johnson, Calhoun and Boardman (1975) found that clinical psychologists did not differ from non-clinicians in causal attribution of depression made from information about typicalness and temporal consistency of symptoms, though unique in their utilization of information that relates to the severity of the individual’s psychological difficulty. Furthermore, to the extent that clinicians may transmit their own theories or explanations to their clients, it is possible that clinicians may induce clients to perceive their own severe mood problems as resultant from external causes. In this sense, experts’ views change or influence the views of lay people. The experiments reported in this paper are not without their problems. For instance, there was a fairly homogeneous young. well-educated sample in each of the 3 experiments, which may be unrepresentative of the population as a whole. Nevertheless, these experiments do suggest many possibilities for further research along the lines of the research on depression by Rippere (1977, 1981). For instance, it would be of great interest to look at individual differences in the definition and estimation of N scores; lay-persons’ beliefs about the best way to cure neuroses and their estimates of neuroses in the population as a whole; cross-cultural differences in beliefs about neuroticism; social conditions which are likely to stimulate neuroticism etc. It might also be of interest to construct a Common-sense Neuroticism Scale (based on Table 4) and compare it with an already established scale measuring neuroticism (Semin el’ al., 1981). Furthermore, the historical dimensions of common-sense beliefs such as the survival of older medical ideas and treatments in lay medical beliefs and behaviours would also be of great interest (Rippere, 1980a). Implicit and explicit theories are different things. Implicit theories are related to such things as word meanings cultural jargon and media usage, while explicit theories attempt to define and measure complicated forms of behaviour thought to endure over time and across cultures. Yet few of the established theories of neuroticism appear to fully explore or measure the full scope of the concept (Young and Martin, 1981). In fact the very complexity of the concept in the psychological literature may account for its recent disappearance from the official nomenclature. But implicit and explicit theories are related and overlap. The implicit theories of researchers which may begin from astute observations and discussions with others, become explicit theories tested on objective behavioural data. REFERENCES Beard G. (1880) A Practical Treatise on Nerrous Exhaustion (Neurasthenia): Its Symptoms, Nature, Sequences and Treatment. Wood, New York. Buss A. (1966) Psychopathology. Wiley, New York. Calhoun L., Johnson R. and Boardman W. (1975) Attributions of depression to internal-xternal and stable-unstable causes. Psychol. Rep. 36, 463-466. Canter N. and Mischel W. (1977) Traits as prototypes: effects on recognition memory. J. Person. sot. Psycho/. 35, 38-48. Eysenck H. J. (1978) YOUand Neurosis. Collins, Glasgow. Eysenck H. J. and Eysenck S. B. G. (1975) Eysenck Personalify Questionnaire Manual. Hodder & Stoughton, London. Furnham A. (1982a) Why are the poor always with us? Explanations for poverty in Britain. Br. J. sot. Psycho/. 21.31 l-322.
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Fumham A. (1982b) Explanations for unemployment in Britain. Eur. A, sec. Psycho/. 12, 335-352. Fumham A. and Henderson M. (1982) The good, the bad and the mad: response bias in self-report measures. Person. individ. Diff. _ 3. ~, 3. 1I-320. ---.
Fumham A. and Henderson M. (1983) The mote in thy brother’s eye and the beam in thine own: predicting one’s own and others’ personality scores. Br. J. Psychol. 14, 381-389. Johnson R., Calhoun L. and Boardman W. (1975) The effect of severity, consistency and typicalness information on clinicians’ causal attributions. 1. clin. Psychol. 31, 600404. Kisker G. (1964) The Disorgunized Person&y. McGraw-Hill, New York. Kraepelin E. (1915) Psychiatric: Ein Lehrbuch fur Studieriche und Artze. Barth. Leipzig. Nunnally J. (1961) Popular Conceptions of Menfal He&h. Holt, Rinehart & Winston, New York. Rippere V. (1977) Commonsense beliefs about depression and antidepressive behaviour. A study of social consensus. B&on. Res. Ther. 15. 465-473. Rippere V. (198Oa) Some historical dimensions ofcommonsense knowledge about depression and antidepressive behaviour. Behar. Res. Ther. 18, 373-385. Rippere V. (1980b) What makes depressed people feel worse? Behav. Res. Ther. 18, 87-97. Rippere V. (1981) How depressing: another cognitive dimension of commonsense knowledge. Behuv. Res. Ther. 19,169-l 8 I. Semin G., Rosch E. and Chassen J. (1981) A comparison of the common-sense and ‘scientific’ conceptions of extraversion-introversion. Eur. J. sot. Psychol. 11, 77-86. Stemberg R., Conway B., Ketran J. and Bernstein B. (1981) people’s conceptions of intelligence. J. Person. SOC. Psychol. 41, 37-55.
Young G. and Martin M. (1981) Processing of information about self by neurotics. Br. J. Psycho!. 20, 205-212. Watson 0. and Friend R. (1969) Measurement of social-evaluative anxiety. J. consulf. cfin. Psychol. 33, 448-457.
in&id.
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Vol. 5. No. I. pp. 95-103. Britain. All rights reserwd
LJilf,
1984 Copyright
LAY CONCEPTIONS
ol91-8869
84 53.00 + 0.00 Ltd
I 1984Pergamon Press
OF NEUROTICISM
ADRIAN FURNHAM Department of Psychology. University College London, Gower Street. London WCIH, England (Receiced 9 March 1983)
Summary-This paper is concerned with various aspects of a lay-person’s conceptualization of neuroticism. Threeexperiments are reported which aim to investigate various determinants of the commonsense conception of neuroticism. In the first experiment subjects completed various standardized psychological tests measuring neuroticism and anxiety, while also estimating the extent of their own anxiety and neuroticism. In the second experiment subjects attempted to detect items measuring neuroticism in a standard personality questionnaire and secondly estimate the extent of their own and the ‘average’ person’s neuroticism. Finally. in the third experiment subjects rated the typicality of various neurotic traits and behaviour which had been supplied by subjects in the previous two experiments. The results suggested some similarity in expert e.uplicirtheories and lay-person implicirtheories, though there appeared to be systematic biases in the subjects’ perception of their own neuroticism. The results are discussed in terms of the correspondence between implicit theories and explicit theories. and the functions of each theory in everyday life are considered. Problems associated with these studies and this research in general are discussed.
INTRODUCTION
A number of psychological concepts are well known to, and often used by. lay people in their everyday thoughts and conversations (e.g. personality, intelligence, depression). Most of the psychological research in these and other areas has been aimed at providing explicit coherent theories for the existence of these phenomena and then devising reliable and valid instruments for measuring them. As a consequence, a great deal of academic interest and debate has been concerned with the correctness, usefulness or parsimoniousness of different theories accounting for the same phenomena and the psychometric properties of various test instruments. However, considerably less work has gone into implicit lay theories of psychological phenomena which often differ considerably from the explicit theories of academic psychologists. More recently some studies have investigated specifically lay concepts of well-known psychological concepts. although other related studies have looked at lay theories of economic and criminological concepts (Furnham, 1982a, b; Furnham and Henderson, 1983). Semin, Rosch and Chassen (1981) for instance attempted to compare ‘common-sense’ (lay) and ‘scientific’ (psychological) conceptions of introversion-extraversion. They asked subjects to list attributes of typical extraverts and introverts and found 58 which a second group rated for importance. The remaining most important 24 items (12 for introverts. 12 for extraverts) constituted a ‘Common Sense’ scale which was administered to yet another experimental group, along with an Eysenck Personality Inventory (EPI). A correlation of I’ = 0.51 (P < 0.001) was recorded between the 2 scales, which the authors took as evidence for overlap between lay and scientific concepts and further that these two categories are cognitively represented and processed dimensionally. Earlier Canter and Mischel (1977) had demonstrated, within an informationprocessing model, the existence and operation of the prototypic traits of extraverts and introverts and the way in which subjects organize and remember prototypes. In a more thorough study, Sternberg, Conway, Ketran and Bernstein (1981) set about investigating another well-used psychological concept-intelligence-in a series of three studies. They found that lay people have clear, well-formed prototypes of various kinds of intelligence which are quite similar to those of ‘experts’ and closely related to certain better-known psychological theories of intelligence. Further, these prototypes were used in evaluating both one’s own and others’ intelligence. The common factors of the belief systems concerning intelligence include a problem-solving factor, a verbal-ability factor and a social-competence factor. The authors concluded that because of the different functions of implicit and explicit theories of P A.1 0. S’l-0
95
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ADRIAN FUKNHAM
intelligence this sort of prototypic analysis “seems to be a useful complement to the kind of componential analysis or other forms of analysis that have been conducted in laboratory analyses of intellectual functioning.” (p. 54) Various studies have also looked at lay or popular conceptions of aspects of mental health. Nunnally (1961) did a content analysis of television, radio and newspaper references to mental illness and found that even people afflicted with mild disorders (phobias, obsessions) were presented as having bizarre facial expressions, beliefs and behaviours. In later experimental work he found some differences between average ratings given to a ‘neurotic man’ and ‘neurotic woman’ on the one hand, and ‘insane man’ and ‘insane woman’ on the other (the latter being rated very highly on unpredictability, dangerousness and dirtiness). All abnormal (neurotic/insane) target persons received higher than average ratings on the following dimensions: Tense, Sick, Sad, Passive, Weak, Delicate, Cold, Foolish, Ignorant and Insincere. Thus neurotics were given a very unfavourable overall rating and a low rating on the dimension ‘Understandability’. More recently Rippere (1980a, b, 1981) investigated both consensus in professionals’ beliefs about depression, and the dimensions of common-sense knowledge about depression and antidepressive behaviour. Rippere (1980a, b) investigated various historical dimensions of commonsense knowledge about depression and found that people have clear and shared ideas about how often they and others report depression, what to do about, the feelings experienced when depressed, and how long people tend to go on feeling depressed. More recently Rippere (1981) has found that people in our culture possess generally accurate, socially-shared, ideas about the likely impact of 15 events on people who were depressed. Rippere’s experiments represent a very thorough attempt to investigate the lay-person’s understanding of a commonly-experienced and discussed psychological phenomenon. This study concerns lay theories or conceptions of neuroticism-a concept well known and often used by lay persons. Etymologically the term means ‘weakness of the nerves’ and is derived from the Greek word for nerves. In fact, until the nineteenth century all forms of mental illness were included in the class neutotica, so much that the diagnosis was abandoned as too general until the end of the nineteenth century (Kisker, 1964). Beard (1880) introduced the term neurasthenia, whose symptoms included lack of energy, fatigue, physical complaints and general disability. Kraepelin (1915), however, distinguished between neurasthenia, psychasthenia and hysteria, which remained the basis for the description of the neurotic conditions from the 1890s until the appearance of the American Psychiatric Association’s publication of their Diagnostic and Statistical Manual in 1952. However, the latest edition (1980) has no reference to neurosis at all. Most textbooks have difficulty in arriving at a clear definition of neuroticism, though most are agreed on categorizing neurotic symptoms into various groups-anxiety, phobic, obsessivecompulsive, conversion, dissociative and depressive reactions (Buss, 1966; Kisker, 1964). Although he admits a number of ambiguities in the concept of neurosis, Eysenck (1978) offered a simple definition for his lay readers: “Neurosis is a term we often use for behaviour which is associated with strong emotion, which is maladaptive, and which the person giving rise to it realises is nonsensical, absurd or irrelevant, but which he is powerless to change.” (p. 15) Similarly in their EPQ Manual, Eysenck and Eysenck (1975) define a typical neurotic as a person being “an anxious, worrying individual, moody and frequently depressed. He is likely to sleep badly, and to suffer from various psychosomatic disorders. He is overly emotional, reacting too strongly to all sorts of stimuli, and finds it difficult to get back on an even keel after each emotionally arousing experience. His strong emotional reactions interfere with his proper adjustment, making him react in irrational, sometimes rigid ways . . . If the highly neurotic individual has to be described in one word, one might say that he was a worrier; his main characteristic is a constant preoccupation with things that might go wrong, and a strong emotional reaction of anxiety to these thoughts.” (pp. 9-10)
Lay conceptions
97
of neuroticism
Predictably
there exist a number of theories which cover the aetiology and cure of neurosis: which suggest that neurotic behaviour is an external manifestation of an underlying emotional disturbance; learning theories which see neurotic behaviour as the product of an inappropriate contingency of behaviour learning or conditioning; and cognitive theories which suggest that the neurotic condition is characterized by particular patterns of selective information processing (Young and Martin, 1981). This study set out to investigate some of the characteristics and determinants of lay-people’s implicit theories of neuroticism and contrast them with explicit psychological theories. It was hypothesized, following the experimental results of Semin et al. (1981) and Sternberg et al. (1981) that people would have similar estimates of their neurosis to scores derived from tests; that they would be moderately accurate at detecting personality questionnaire items measuring neuroticism; that they would believe themselves to be less neurotic than the average person, and finally that they have well-formed prototypes corresponding to various kinds of neuroticism.
dynamic theories
EXPERIMENT
1
The experiment was designed to measure people’s ability to predict their Neuroticism and Social Anxiety scores as measured on standardized psychometrized tests, and secondly to look at the relationship of various self-reported traits to test-measured personality traits. Method Subjects
In all, 70 Ss took part in this experiment. They were all female occupational students with very little training in psychology. They were all British, primarily from middle-class homes and between 18 and 24 yr. Materials
Subjects were given the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (EPQ; Eysenck and Eysenck, 1975) and the Social Anxiety Scale (SA; Watson and Friend, 1969), along with other tests that were a standard procedure at the institution they were attending. Both tests purport to have satisfactory reliability figures. The test-retest reliability on the N scale of the EPQ is reported as 0.86, while the internal consistency reliability is 0.84 (Eysenck and Eysenck, 1975). Similarly the SA scale has a test-retest reliability of 0.78 and had been shown to be internally consistent. A month later they were asked to estimate how neurotic and anxious they were. They were first given the definition of neuroticism by Eysenck and Eysenck (1975) as well as the range, mean and SD of the scores of a normal population (Furnham and Henderson, 1983) and asked how they thought they should (not did) score, given their knowledge of their own personality on this particular scale. They were also asked to rate themselves on 6 other scales (see Table 1). They had had 8 lectures in psychology over this period, none of which concerned personality theory, clinical or abnormal psychology. They had covered the biological basis of behaviour in this period. Procedure
The experimenter asked Ss to rate themselves on the 8 7-point &ales which included Neuroticism (IV) and Anxiety (A). They were also asked to write down all the attributes they believed to be Table 1. Correlations EN
AN Actual N (AN) Estimated N (EN) Actual A (AA) E&mated A (EA) Actual P (AP) Dapr==d (D) Unhappy WI) Unstable (US) Normal (N) Disturbed (DIS) Mad (M)
0.40*** 0.44*** 0.54”’ 0.13 -0.37*** -0.27” -0.31*+ 0.14 -0.15 -0.06
AA
-0.26. 04”’ 0.62**’ -0.21. 0.02 0.66*** -0.24. 0.47*** -0.08 0.46*** -0.07 -0.52*** 0.05 0.38*** -0.10 0.29’. -0.09
‘P < 0.05; l*P < 0.01; l**P < 0.001.
between self- and actual ratinra (N = 70) EA
-0.20’ 0.69*** 0.51*** 0.50*** -0.32.. 0.35*** 0.09
AP
-0.08 -0.15 -0.17 -0.19 -0.07 0.31**
D
UH
0.62*** 0.47*** 0.4s** -0.22. -0.39*** 0.36*** 0.31” 0.17 0.22.
us
-0.35*** 0.50*** 0.11
N
-0.37’99 -0.40***
DIS
0.27.
98
ADRIAN FURNHAM
typical of a neurotic person. They were tested in their class time. The first part of the experiment took approx. 45 min, and the second 15 min. Ss were later debriefed as to the nature of the experiment. Results
Pearson product-moment correlations were computed between the S’s actual N, P and A scale scores and her estimates on 8 other scales. Table 1 presents the results of the correlational analyses. Not surprisingly many of the correlations are high, and over 60% significant. Indeed one would expect moderate correlations between the measured trait and one’s estimate of it. Both actual+zstimated correlations are significant (N, 0.40, P < 0.001; A, 0.43, P < 0.001) which confirms the results of a study by Furnham and Henderson (1983) who found a similar group of Ss best able to judge their own N and A score. Many of the high positive correlations make perfect sense: estimated A and actual N (0.54, P < 0.001); estimated A and estimated N (0.62, P < 0.001); estimated A and Depression (0.69, P < 0.001); estimated N and Depression (0.66, P < 0.001); and Depression and Unhappiness (0.62, P < 0.001). Predictably all the significant correlations with self-estimates of normality are negative yet there are a few curious significant negative correlations. For instance the Ss’ actual N score correlated negatively with self-estimates of Depression, Unhappiness and Instability. Similarly, actual A and Depression correlated negatively, (-0.24, P < 0.05). The P scale only just correlated negatively significantly with estimated N (-0.21, P c 0.05) but positively with Madness (0.32, P < 0.01). However it is apparent from these results that people are not very accurate in a discriminant validity sense. For example, the estimated A-actual N correlation is higher than the common trait correlations. If the data are recast in a quasi multitrait-multimethod matrix, it is apparent that the monomethod correlations are greater than the convergent correlations and that one of the divergent correlations is greater than the convergent correlations. Thus while the actual/estimated correlations for both Anxiety and Neuroticism are significant, the data do not provide very strong support for the convergence of S estimates and standardized test scores. EXPERIMENT
2
This experiment was designed to test people’s ability to detect items measuring neuroticism on a standard personality inventory, and secondly to assess their beliefs about neurotic traits in themselves as opposed to the average person. Method Subjects
One hundred and thirty Ss took part in this experiment. They were first-year non-psychology university and nursing students who ranged in age from 18 to 27 yr. Approx. 87 were females and 43 males. Materials
One hundred Ss were given the EPQ (Eysenck and Eysenck, 1975) and asked to identify all of the items in the go-item scale that were measuring neuroticism. They were not told how many items there were in all on the N scale (just over 25%) or how they were scored (YES/NO), but merely to list, by number, all the items they thought measured neuroticism. However because of the problem of ‘false positives’ a second group of 30 Ss were asked to identify items measuring neuroticism. They were restricted to 23 choices (the actual number of items measuring neuroticism). Thereafter they were required to rate themselves and the ‘average person’ on 8 7-point trait scales, as used in Experiment 1. Prior to both tasks all Ss were asked to write down all the attributes they believed to be typical of a neurotic person. Procedure
Subjects were tested in their class time, while waiting for feedback from a laboratory class. They took approx. 15 min to complete the task, and were debriefed immediately on completing it.
Lay conceptions
of neuroticism
99
Table 2. The Percentage of Ss correctly identifying the items in the EPQ which supposedly measure neuroticism Items from the EPQ 3. 7. 12. IS. 19. 23. 27. 31. 34. 38. 41. 47. 54. 58. 62. 66. 68. 12. IS. 77. 80. 84. 88.
%
45.8
Does your mood often go up and down? Do you ever feel ‘just miserable’ for no mason? Do you often worry about things you should not have done or said? Are you an irritable person? Are your feelings easily hurt? Do you often feel ‘fed-up? Are you often troubled about feelings of guilt? Would you call yourself a nervous person? Are you a worrier7 Do you worry about awful things that might happen? Would you call yourself tense or ‘highly strung‘? Do you worry about your health? Do you suffer from sleeplessness? Have you often felt listless and tired for no reason? Do you often feel life is very dull? Do you worry a lot about your looks? Have you ever wished that you were dead? Do you worry too long after an embarrassing experience? Do you suffer from nerves? Do you often feel lonely? Are you sometimes bubbling over with energy and sometimes very sluggish? Are you easily hurt when people find fault with you or the work you do? Are you touchy about some things?
41.6 81.5 25.0 41.6 2s.o 15.0 58.3 62.5 91.6 79.1 19.1 66.6 16.6 8.3 54.1 33.3 19. I
Mean y0 SD
z s4:1 4.1 37.5 53.9 28.1
Results IdentifVing Neuroticism items Because of the ‘signal detection problem’ in the first study the results were not analysed in depth. The average number of items identified was 29.1 of which 12.78 were correct. The percentage of Ss identifying the N items can be seen in Table 2. The mean number of items selected by the Ss was 21.3 (SD = 3.41). Overall Ss’ correct identification for the 23 ‘neurotic’ items ranged from under 10% to over 90%, the mean correct identifications being 53.9%. Six items (12,27,38,41,47,72) were identified by over 70% of the Ss and they related primarily to worrying, while 6 items (15,23,58,62,77,84) were identified by less than 30% of the Ss and they related primarily to feeling bored and listless. On the whole, the Ss appear to be reasonably accurate in their ability to detect items in a questionnaire that are measuring neuroticism. This confirms other studies that suggest that such questionnaires can be ‘faked’ by Ss wishing to present either a good or bad picture of themselves (Furnham and Henderson, 1982). Beliefs about neurotic traits in themselves and others The means and F-levels for estimates of neuroticism and other traits in oneself and others can be seen in Table 3. Of the 8 scales, 6 were significant at the P < 0.05 level or higher. Ss believed themselves to be significantly less neurotic, disturbed, depressed and mad than the ‘average’ person and more happy and stable. However there was no difference in estimated A or normality scores-Ss believed themselves and others to be moderately anxious and fairly normal. Therefore on the whole these Ss tended to see themselves as less disturbed than the average person. It could be argued that these results simply reflect a social desirability bias but they are also in accordance with the work of Calhoun, Johnson and Boardman (1975) and others on attributions for mental illness, which Table 3. Means and F-levels for estimates of neuroticism and other mlated traits for self and others Self-rated traits (‘l-point scale) Neuroticnon-neurotic Anxious-non-anxious Depressed-not depressed Unhappy-happy Unstable-stable ;~~rN~e-undisturbed
lf
Yourself
Average person
F-kvels
5.44 4.19 4.98 5.51 s.51 S.92 6.03
4.94 4.3s 4.48 4.92 5.07 s.22 5.66
4.939 0.58 6.SO** 12sg*** 4.67. I2.20*** 3.62.
100
ADRIAN FURNHAM
suggests that one tends to attribute mental illness in others to dispositional or trait factors, but to situational and environmental factors in oneself. That is, one is more likely to attribute permanent mental illness to others rather than oneself. EXPERIMENT
3
This experiment was designed to determine what lay people believe are the typical characteristics of neurotics. That is, it set out to compile a master list of neurotic behaviours and investigate the perceived relationship between these typical behaviours. Method Subjects
One hundred and eighty Ss took part in this experiment, They were drawn from two groups-approx. 213 were first-year non-psychology university students, while 213 were 16- to 17-yr-old pupils from schools in the London area. There were approximately equal numbers of males and females, and they ranged in age from 17 to 22 yr. Materials
At the beginning of both of the previous two experiments Ss had been given a lined blank page and asked to list all the behaviours and traits they associated with the term ‘neurotic’. Over 400 listed behaviours/traits were produced and these were reduced to 100 by selecting those which were mentioned 3 or more times by the Ss. A questionnaire was then devised which required the above 180 Ss in this experiment to rate each of the 100 behaviours/traits on a 7-point scale of typicality (Sternberg et al., 1981). That is they were asked to rate how typical each behaviour was of a neurotic person. Procedure
Subjects were tested out of their class time while engaged in other psychological tests. They were informed that each task was distinct and that there were no correct or incorrect answers. They took approx. 15 min to complete the task, which was done anonymously. Results The most characteristic neurotic traits
This experiment made it possible to rank those behaviours/trairs that lay people thought to be most and least characteristic of neurotics. The 10 most typical characteristics appear to fit well with explicit theories of neuroticism. Here the neurotic is seen as both highly anxious and emotionally labile. The 10 least characteristics are however mixed, with some being typical, others atypical and others still irrelevant to the construct of neuroticism. Although none are seen as totally untypical of a neurotic (most are in the range 4.3-4.8 on a 7-point scale) few characteristics appear in explicit theories. These items refer mainly to the introverted nature of neurotics, their inability to enjoy themselves or their poor ability to make friends. Presumably they were initially tested by Ss with a somewhat idiosyncratic view of neuroticism. Factor analysis
Despite the possible instability of the factor solution obtained from the analyses of only 180 Ss, a factor analysis (Varimax) was computed on the data. (It should be pointed out that Sternberg et al. (198 1) did a similar factor analysis using only 122 people which, though it revealed meaningful results, was also unstable.) Table 5 shows the factor-analytic results. Four clear interpretable factors emerged which accounted for over 35% of the variance. The first factor involved a neurotic person’s inability to communicate and initiate friendships, which is perhaps a characteristic of the socially-unskilled person as a neurotic. The second factor relates to the neurotic person’s instability and variations in day-to-day behaviour though the mean typicality ratings suggest that the Ss did not find these behaviours typical of neurotics. The mean ratings of the third and fourth factors suggest that the Ss found these behaviours-obsessionality and phobic-like behaviours-more
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of neuroticism
Table 4. The means and SDS of the behaviours or trahs rated as most and least characteristic of the neurotic Number
I 4 16 17 :‘: :; 90 88 Number 46
2 22 37 65 78 83 79 41
MOST CHARACTERISTIC Bchaviourflrait Tends often to be very anxious Tends to ba highly strung Finds it hard to relax Often escalates the problem out of proportion Has nervous habits Is unstable under pressure Generally a worrying person Easily gets upset Is never at peace with himpherself Is very aware of what others might think LEAST CHARACTERISTIC Behaviour’Trait Holds strong religious beliefs Goes to extreme lengths to be noticed Often has facial tics Pretends to be a strong character Is pessimistic about the future Is extraverted Has a disorganized life style Is not considerate H-hen listening to others Has little time for pleasure Is no good at making friends
Mean’
SD
1.62 I .a4 2.10 2.44 2.45 2.56 2.19 2.80 2.81 2.71
0.97 1.31 1.14 1.44 1.36 1.29 1.36 1.37 1.56 1.61
Mean’
SD
5.14 5.06 4.87 4.82 4.71 4.70 4.55 4.31 4.33 4.32
I.41 I.31 1.76 I.51 1.44 I .49 1.32 1.56 I.61 I .63
‘Score on a ‘l-point scale. where I = typical: 7 = not typical.
characteristic of the typical neurotic. The third factor concerns primarily the neurotic person’s obsessionality-compulsive ritualized behaviours-while the fourth factor concerns primarily phobic behaviours though there are numerous obsessional-type items loading on this factor as well. Overall the factor-analytic results seem to indicate that the lay person has a clear conception of various types of neurotic behaviour. DISCUSSION From the above three experiments it seems that the lay person has a well-developed implicit theory of neuroticism and the typical behaviours of a neurotic. There seems to be consensually held beliefs that neuroticism has a number of different characteristics including anxiety, emotional lability, depression and obsessive behaviours. Furthermore, subjects appear to have no difficulty in specifying these prototypes. This suggests that everyday usage of terms such as ‘neuroticism’ allows individuals to relatively accurately communicate information about perceived behaviours and traits of themselves and others. Thus they appear to hold a shared implicit personality theory Table 5. Factor-analytic
-
(Varimax) results for the 100 neurotic items’
Items
Factor
Loading
Mean
Eigenvalue
Variance (%)
Communication Problems
7. 30. 42. 60. 62. 63. 82. 98.
Has difficulty getting on with strangers Geta angry over trifling matters Does not like to be centre of attention Often feel that they have no friends Finds it difficult to communicate Is an anti-social sort of person Is a shy sort of person Embarrasses friends and family in public
0.54 0.85 0.51 0.58 0.82 0.54 0.42 0.71
3.33 3.57 4.49 3.82 3.11 3.98 3.06 3.39
14.05
19.3
Unstable
IS. 18. 27. 28. 66.
Is dependent on speciSc other people Flits from one idea to another Constantly seeks attention Fluctuates from extremes of happiness and unhappiness Is easily agitated
0.70 0.55 0.58 0.77 0.55
4.27 3.99 4.44 3.97 3.44
7.17
9.4
Obsessional
34. Tends to do things repetitively 45. Tends to be superstitious SO. Keeps on having the same thoughts and feelings 89. Behaves in ritualixed ways
0.64 0.71 0.81 0.69
3.67 3.77 3.02 2.48
5.19
S.l
Phobic
26. 34. 37. 44.
0.51 0.61 0.74 0.82
3.16 3.14 3.84 3.71
4.11
4.9
Panics when confronted by a new situation Tends to do things repetitively Tends to be obsessed by people and things Has many phobias
‘Only items loading 0.5 or above were retained for interpretation.
102
ADRIAN FURNHAM
which, though it does not exclude the possibility of idiosyncratic constructions, suggests some commonly-shared frame of reference. However, this is not to suggest that the lay person and the ‘expert’ share precisely the same definition of neuroticism, or that there exists no bias in a person’s estimation of neuroticism. Though highly significant, the correlations between ‘estimated’ and ‘actual’ N and A only account for about 20% of the variance in Experiment 1. Furthermore the subjects’ ‘actual’ N score correlated significantly with ratings of depression, unhappiness and instability, suggesting perhaps a certain bias in perceiving or reporting their own neuroticism. This was confirmed in the second experiment, in which subjects tended to perceive themselves as significantly less neurotic and unhappy than the average person. It seems then that people are either fairly reticent or unable to report totally accurately on their own neuroticism (presupposing, of course, that the psychological tests are providing accurate measures). Indeed, Fumham and Henderson (1982) have pointed out that scores are also open to various biases and have various psychometric problems. Thus in Experiment 1, although the term ‘actual score’ was used, this might not itself be the only accurate measurement of the characteristic. After all, it is well known that, tests supposedly measuring the same thing do not always correlate highly. Moreover, one might expect those high in neuroticism to be particularly poor at estimating their own score. But recent research in attribution theory has shown that the expert is as likely to make attribution errors as the lay man. For instance, Johnson, Calhoun and Boardman (1975) found that clinical psychologists did not differ from non-clinicians in causal attribution of depression made from information about typicalness and temporal consistency of symptoms, though unique in their utilization of information that relates to the severity of the individual’s psychological difficulty. Furthermore, to the extent that clinicians may transmit their own theories or explanations to their clients, it is possible that clinicians may induce clients to perceive their own severe mood problems as resultant from external causes. In this sense, experts’ views change or influence the views of lay people. The experiments reported in this paper are not without their problems. For instance, there was a fairly homogeneous young. well-educated sample in each of the 3 experiments, which may be unrepresentative of the population as a whole. Nevertheless, these experiments do suggest many possibilities for further research along the lines of the research on depression by Rippere (1977, 1981). For instance, it would be of great interest to look at individual differences in the definition and estimation of N scores; lay-persons’ beliefs about the best way to cure neuroses and their estimates of neuroses in the population as a whole; cross-cultural differences in beliefs about neuroticism; social conditions which are likely to stimulate neuroticism etc. It might also be of interest to construct a Common-sense Neuroticism Scale (based on Table 4) and compare it with an already established scale measuring neuroticism (Semin el’ al., 1981). Furthermore, the historical dimensions of common-sense beliefs such as the survival of older medical ideas and treatments in lay medical beliefs and behaviours would also be of great interest (Rippere, 1980a). Implicit and explicit theories are different things. Implicit theories are related to such things as word meanings cultural jargon and media usage, while explicit theories attempt to define and measure complicated forms of behaviour thought to endure over time and across cultures. Yet few of the established theories of neuroticism appear to fully explore or measure the full scope of the concept (Young and Martin, 1981). In fact the very complexity of the concept in the psychological literature may account for its recent disappearance from the official nomenclature. But implicit and explicit theories are related and overlap. The implicit theories of researchers which may begin from astute observations and discussions with others, become explicit theories tested on objective behavioural data. REFERENCES Beard G. (1880) A Practical Treatise on Nerrous Exhaustion (Neurasthenia): Its Symptoms, Nature, Sequences and Treatment. Wood, New York. Buss A. (1966) Psychopathology. Wiley, New York. Calhoun L., Johnson R. and Boardman W. 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