I had never thought about it, but I can see some features of the intellectual and practical ecosystem that would select against people with higher neuroticism (at least to the extent it manifested as anxiety and certain other dimensions):
People who are higher in neuroticism might find EA’s attitude toward risk tolerance challenging to accept.
The prevalence of grant-based funding is difficult for many people more temperamentally prone to anxiety to tolerate.
More generally, effectiveness orientation is more anxiety-inducing than a belief in Lake Wobegon charity where all efforts are above average.
So I wonder if the [edit: people who predicted high neuroticism] are conflating EA’s pressures can cause neurotic symptoms with EA attracts relatively more people with neurotic temperaments. My rough (and extreme) analogy might be air-traffic controllers; the work seems very likely to cause anxiety and some other negative emotional states. At the same time, people who are higher in neuroticism may be more likely to choose another career (or be screened out by psychological testing).
Unfortunately, to test these hypotheses, one would probably need to sample an appropriate non-EA population and correlate certain attitudes toward generalized openness to the EA way of thought.
I wonder if the predictors are conflating EA’s pressures can cause neurotic symptoms with EA attracts relatively more people with neurotic temperaments.
My default assumption would be that we’re measuring trait-neuroticism rather than just temporary, locally caused anxiety. That’s partly because personality traits are relatively stable, but also because I’d be surprised if EA were having a large effect on people’s tendency to describe themselves as being “anxious, easily upset” etc. (and that doesn’t seem to be the case in our results on the effect of EA on mental health). Of course, it’s also worth noting that our results in this study tended towards lower neuroticism for EAs.
I do think that whether the results are driven more by EA selecting for people who are higher in emotional stability at the outset, or whether the community is losing people with higher trait-neuroticism, is a significant question however. I agree that we couldn’t empirically tackle this without further data, such as by measuring personality across years and tracking dropout.
Sorry, by predictors I had meant “people who had predicted you would find higher levels of neuroticism,” not your survey questions. Edited my comment to clarify.
I think this is also notable, whatever the effect size, because people have often predicted a directionally opposite result.
I had never thought about it, but I can see some features of the intellectual and practical ecosystem that would select against people with higher neuroticism (at least to the extent it manifested as anxiety and certain other dimensions):
People who are higher in neuroticism might find EA’s attitude toward risk tolerance challenging to accept.
The prevalence of grant-based funding is difficult for many people more temperamentally prone to anxiety to tolerate.
More generally, effectiveness orientation is more anxiety-inducing than a belief in Lake Wobegon charity where all efforts are above average.
So I wonder if the [edit: people who predicted high neuroticism] are conflating EA’s pressures can cause neurotic symptoms with EA attracts relatively more people with neurotic temperaments. My rough (and extreme) analogy might be air-traffic controllers; the work seems very likely to cause anxiety and some other negative emotional states. At the same time, people who are higher in neuroticism may be more likely to choose another career (or be screened out by psychological testing).
Unfortunately, to test these hypotheses, one would probably need to sample an appropriate non-EA population and correlate certain attitudes toward generalized openness to the EA way of thought.
My default assumption would be that we’re measuring trait-neuroticism rather than just temporary, locally caused anxiety. That’s partly because personality traits are relatively stable, but also because I’d be surprised if EA were having a large effect on people’s tendency to describe themselves as being “anxious, easily upset” etc. (and that doesn’t seem to be the case in our results on the effect of EA on mental health). Of course, it’s also worth noting that our results in this study tended towards lower neuroticism for EAs.
I do think that whether the results are driven more by EA selecting for people who are higher in emotional stability at the outset, or whether the community is losing people with higher trait-neuroticism, is a significant question however. I agree that we couldn’t empirically tackle this without further data, such as by measuring personality across years and tracking dropout.
Sorry, by predictors I had meant “people who had predicted you would find higher levels of neuroticism,” not your survey questions. Edited my comment to clarify.