Psychologists Rate Actors, Musicians, and Journalists as the Most Neurotic Professions

The Big Five model of human personality scores people along spectra of conscientiousness, agreeableness, neuroticism, openness to experience, and extraversion. Recently, researchers Kätlin Anni, Uku Vainik, and René Mõttus at the University of Tartu in Finland, surveyed people in 263 different occupations to assess their personalities using the Big Five model. Their full paper is available online.

I would like to note that, in my completely non-professional understanding, neuroticisim is not inherently bad. To have a touch of neuroticism--that is, to have some negative emotions--is to be realistic. It's unhealthy to be on the extreme ends of the spectra of any of these five personality traits and some environments, such as professions are optimal or suboptimal for particular personalities.

I was delighted to see that my own profession--librarianship--appears in the survey on p. 63. Librarians are among the least conscientious professions.

-via David Thompson


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I directed 30 plays and acted in more than that over a 20 year span working in the 'theatre'. I have stated in the past, and I'm still sticking with my statement, that at least 85% of actors have mental problems. I am talking delusional. What we would call "sane" is hard to find within the acting community. Oh... the stories I could tell.
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