Dimensions of neuroticism: relationships with gender and personality traits

The results of two studies into sex-related neuroticism are reported. In the first, no support for the validity of “sex-free” and “sex-related” measures of neuroticism was found. Although scores on both neuroticism measures were significantly related to depression scores, “sex-free” neuroticism was also found to be associated with extraversion, psychoticism, and social desirability among males only. In Study 2, no significant differences in total scale scores were observed between the sexes using a “natural language” measure of neuroticism. The theoretical implications of these findings are briefly noted and some suggestions for future research are also made.