Are the costs of neuroticism inevitable? Evidence of attenuated effects in U.S. Latinas.

Abstract

Neuroticism is the heritable and stable personality trait defined by the tendency to experience negative emotion, be easily stressed, and slow to soothe. Neuroticism poses a risk for poor social and health outcomes that has been identified as a major public health concern. To date, factors that attenuate neuroticism’s costs have not been identified. The goal of this work was to test the hypothesis that the costs of neuroticism would be attenuated in sociocultural contexts that emphasize readily accessible social support, emotional positivity, and physical proximity in interdependent relationships. U.S. Latino culture fits these characteristics. Two studies, an online survey study (Study 1) and a laboratory study (Study 2), tested whether three key costs of high neuroticism—less support (Study 1), more distress (Study 2), and blunted cortisol reactivity (Study 2)—would be attenuated in U.S. Latinas relative to non-Latinas of European and East Asian cultural background. Consistent with previous research, neuroticism was associated with less perceived support, more distress, and blunted cortisol reactivity in non-Latina women of European and East Asian cultural background. For Latina women, however, these effects were attenuated. Latina women who were high in neuroticism continued to feel supported, were not as distressed, and their cortisol reactivity was less blunted. The role of sociocultural context for generating a better understanding of personality processes and the social malleability of neuroticism’s costs are discussed.

Culture as a Pathway to Maximizing the Stress-Buffering Role of Social Support

“…American independence and emerging research shows that Latino and Asian interdependence also differ (Campos & Kim, 2017;Ruby, Falk, Heine, Villa & Silberstein, 2012). Previous research on this data set has also found Latino and non-Latino (Asian and European background) differences (Campos, Busse, et al, 2014). 3.…”

Cortisol reactivity and depressive symptoms in pregnancy: The moderating role of perceived social support and neuroticism

“…2 Any significant or trending cortisol summary scores and perceived social support scores were entered into the model in Block 2, because previous work indicates that cortisol responses to the TSST and perceived social support are associated with perinatal depressive symptoms (Nierop et al, 2006;Yim et al, 2015). In Block 3, mother's neuroticism was added because a separate line of research shows that neuroticism is associated with both cortisol stress reactivity and depressive symptoms (e.g., Campos et al, 2014;Lahey, 2009). To test for possible interaction effects, two-way interaction terms were entered in Block 4.…”

“…One reason for the inconsistent findings could be that important modulating variables remain insufficiently explored. For example, our own work provides some evidence for a moderating role of sociocultural context (based on ethnic or cultural background) in the link between neuroticism and cortisol reactivity (Campos et al, 2014). To our knowledge, the cortisol reactivity-neuroticism link in relation to depression has not been explicitly tested in either pregnant or nonpregnant samples.…”

Exploring the East-West Divide in Prevalence of Affective Disorder: A Case for Cultural Differences in Coping With Negative Emotion

“…But recent work by Ford et al (2015) highlights the importance of the latter factor, showing that people living in collectivistic cultures understand and pursue happiness through their relationships with others. Similarly, other work suggests that social support is associated with better health outcomes (Campos, 2015) and that how this support is provided and whether it is effective may be determined by cultural differences (e.g., Campos et al, 2014; Chen, Kim, Sherman, & Hashimoto, 2015). Although patterns of interaction are clearly important and may provide an alternative account of how cultural differences impact on emotional functioning, we take seriously the notion that there is a symbiotic relationship between patterns of social interaction and patterns of thinking (Nisbett et al, 2001; Varnum, Grossmann, Kitayama, & Nisbett, 2010).…”