Neuroticism and Eating Disorders: Trait Associations and Clinical Limits
Author: Ukrainian Psychological Hub · Published: September 30, 2026 · Editorial Policy
Neuroticism is associated with eating-disorder symptoms, disordered eating, and some diagnosed eating-disorder presentations, but the relationship is a population-level association rather than a diagnostic rule. Higher neuroticism can mark greater vulnerability to distress, anxiety, self-criticism, emotion-driven behavior, and other processes that sometimes participate in eating pathology. It does not mean that a person has an eating disorder, will develop one, or has a particular eating-disorder subtype.
The evidence is also less uniform than a simple “high neuroticism causes eating disorders” story suggests. Studies use different personality instruments, different eating measures, community versus clinical samples, and different age and sex distributions. Some examine diagnosed anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, or binge-eating disorder; many examine symptoms such as binge eating, emotional eating, compensatory behavior, restraint, or body-image concerns without a clinical diagnosis. These outcomes cannot be treated as interchangeable.
Neuroticism and eating disorders: the short answer
The most defensible summary is that higher neuroticism is a meaningful but nonspecific vulnerability marker. A systematic review of 45 Five-Factor Model studies found that higher neuroticism was generally associated with more disordered eating behavior. The review also found substantial variation by behavior and by neuroticism facet, which matters because “disordered eating” covers many different outcomes.
Prospective evidence strengthens the case that the association is not purely a consequence of being ill. In a cohort of girls and young women who were free of an eating disorder at baseline, higher neuroticism measured with an Eysenck personality instrument predicted incident DSM-IV eating disorders over 18 months; the highest neuroticism quartile had an adjusted odds ratio of 3.3 compared with the reference group. That study supports temporal precedence in that population, but it does not establish a universal causal effect, and its measure, age range, sex composition, diagnostic era, and follow-up period constrain generalization: PubMed.
A newer longitudinal study using the NEO Five-Factor Inventory at age 14 found that a multivariate personality profile containing neuroticism, openness, impulsivity, and conscientiousness was associated with later anxiety symptoms and dieting at ages 16 or 19. In separate clinical samples, neuroticism and hopelessness loaded strongly on profiles associated with anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa. The study is informative because it separates premorbid risk profiles from concurrent clinical profiles, while its authors also note limited ethnic diversity, attrition, and an all-female clinical cohort: PubMed.
These findings fit the broader role of neuroticism in mental health as a transdiagnostic risk factor. They do not turn neuroticism into an eating-disorder test. Eating disorders are clinical conditions assessed through eating behavior, cognition, physical and psychiatric status, functional impact, and disorder-specific criteria. The American Psychiatric Association’s current guideline emphasizes screening, comprehensive assessment, and evidence-based treatment rather than personality-trait cutoffs: APA Practice Guideline for the Treatment of Patients With Eating Disorders.
What neuroticism means here—and what it does not
Neuroticism is a broad dimensional personality trait describing stable individual differences in the tendency to experience negative emotion, distress, worry, emotional reactivity, and vulnerability to stress. People vary continuously along this dimension. A high score does not create a categorical boundary between “normal” personality and an eating disorder.
Terminology varies by instrument. NEO instruments use the domain name Neuroticism. The Big Five Inventory-2 uses the closely related label Negative Emotionality and organizes it into anxiety, depression, and emotional-volatility facets. The BFI-2 is a validated hierarchical Big Five instrument, but its domain scores are not numerically interchangeable with NEO, Eysenck, IPIP, or other neuroticism measures: Soto and John’s BFI-2 validation paper.
Negative affect is narrower still: it usually refers to the experience or tendency toward unpleasant emotional states, depending on the measure and time frame. Trait anxiety focuses more specifically on a relatively enduring tendency toward anxiety. Anxiety symptoms and depressive symptoms describe current or recent experiences. Diagnosed anxiety or depressive disorders require condition-specific clinical criteria. These constructs overlap statistically with neuroticism, yet they are not synonyms.
The same rule applies to eating pathology. “Disordered eating” can refer to behaviors or attitudes such as binge eating, compensatory behaviors, restrictive eating, emotional eating, uncontrolled eating, or preoccupation with weight and shape. A diagnosed eating disorder is a clinical condition. The National Institute of Mental Health describes anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, binge-eating disorder, and avoidant/restrictive food intake disorder as distinct conditions with different defining features: NIMH eating-disorders overview.
That distinction is essential because much of the Five-Factor Model literature synthesizes disordered-eating behavior rather than verified diagnoses. A correlation between neuroticism and an EAT-26, EDE-Q, DEBQ, TFEQ, or similar questionnaire score cannot be converted into a probability that a person has anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, binge-eating disorder, or ARFID.
What the systematic evidence actually shows
The strongest direct synthesis of Big Five personality and disordered eating is the 2022 systematic review by Gilmartin, Gurvich, and Sharp. Across 45 papers, high neuroticism was the most consistent broad-domain correlate of disordered eating. Within the studies that reported neuroticism, positive associations were much more common than negative or null associations. Binge eating, emotional eating, compensatory behavior, and several forms of eating pathology were frequently associated with higher neuroticism: systematic review.
The review does not support a one-to-one mapping between “neuroticism” and “eating disorder.” First, it included heterogeneous outcomes. Second, associations differed across behaviors. Third, facets within personality domains did not behave identically. Fourth, many studies were cross-sectional. Fifth, participant composition often limited conclusions for men and gender-diverse populations. The review therefore supports a robust association while also arguing against a universal personality profile for every form of eating pathology.
Adolescent evidence points in the same broad direction using a different trait framework. A meta-analysis of 26 studies found that adolescents with eating disorders showed higher negative affectivity than comparison groups, with a pooled standardized mean difference of g = 0.78. They also differed on detachment and conscientiousness-related traits. Because this meta-analysis organized traits using DSM-5 maladaptive personality domains, its “negative affectivity” result should not be relabeled as a Big Five neuroticism effect size. It is convergent evidence from a related, not identical, personality framework: PubMed.
Older reviews remain useful for causal interpretation. Cassin and von Ranson found that anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa were consistently characterized by several features including neuroticism or negative emotionality, perfectionism, obsessive-compulsive traits, and harm avoidance, while also finding meaningful differences between eating-disorder groups: PubMed. Lilenfeld and colleagues concluded that limited prospective evidence supported negative emotionality and several other traits as possible predisposing factors, but emphasized competing models of the personality–eating-disorder relationship: PubMed.
Anorexia nervosa: association without a single personality signature
Anorexia nervosa is often described in personality research using combinations of negative emotionality, harm avoidance, perfectionistic or overcontrolled tendencies, persistence, and obsessive-compulsive features. Neuroticism belongs to that picture, but it does not define anorexia nervosa and does not explain the disorder by itself.
The Five-Factor literature is heterogeneous even within anorexia nervosa. Restricting and binge-eating/purging presentations can differ, and clinical state can influence self-report. In the 2024 multivariate study, neuroticism was part of a strong concurrent personality profile in the anorexia nervosa sample, together with hopelessness. Because this was a profile analysis rather than a univariate diagnostic test, the loading cannot be interpreted as a cutoff or individual classifier: Zhang et al..
Temperament studies add context but should not be collapsed into neuroticism. A meta-analysis using Cloninger’s model found particularly high harm avoidance in anorexia nervosa and high persistence in most eating-disorder groups. Harm avoidance correlates with negative emotionality in some research traditions, but it is a different construct measured by a different model: Atiye et al..
Clinical state is another complication. Starvation, depression, anxiety, sleep disruption, obsessive thinking, and severe distress can affect how people describe themselves. At the same time, some personality differences can persist after symptom improvement or recovery. This mixture of state and trait effects is one reason retrospective personality profiles cannot tell us, by themselves, whether neuroticism preceded an eating disorder, was intensified by illness, or both.
Bulimia nervosa: negative emotionality and impulsive processes can coexist
Bulimia nervosa illustrates why broad personality labels can conceal important combinations. Research often finds elevated negative emotionality alongside impulsive or disinhibited features. In Zhang and colleagues’ clinical bulimia nervosa sample, the profile linked with core psychopathology included neuroticism and hopelessness, with impulsivity also contributing: PubMed.
This does not mean that everyone with bulimia nervosa is impulsive or highly neurotic. Personality distributions overlap extensively with the general population, and the clinical phenotype is heterogeneous. It also does not mean that the NEO PI-R facet historically labeled “Impulsiveness” is identical to modern constructs such as negative urgency, lack of premeditation, or general impulsivity. Measurement models divide impulsive behavior differently.
The broader lesson is that neuroticism can interact with other traits and processes. High negative emotional reactivity may increase the intensity of distress; impulsive tendencies may influence how a person responds to that distress. In a nationally representative U.S. adolescent sample, neuroticism and impulsivity were each associated with lifetime binge eating, and adolescents high on both showed a higher prevalence than those low on both. The study was cross-sectional, so it demonstrates association rather than developmental causation: Lee-Winn et al..
Binge eating and binge-eating disorder are not the same outcome
Binge eating is a behavior that can occur within binge-eating disorder, bulimia nervosa, other specified eating disorders, or outside a full diagnostic syndrome. That distinction matters because many personality studies ask about lifetime or recent binge eating rather than establishing binge-eating disorder through a diagnostic assessment.
The adolescent study by Lee-Winn and colleagues is a good example: it examined lifetime binge eating and found independent associations with neuroticism and impulsivity. It does not provide a neuroticism effect size for clinically diagnosed binge-eating disorder: PubMed.
The 2022 Five-Factor systematic review likewise found that binge and emotional eating were often positively associated with neuroticism, but the measures and samples varied substantially: Gilmartin et al.. A 2025 community study of 712 adults found cross-sectional associations between neuroticism and hunger/disinhibition dimensions of eating behavior and an interaction with conscientiousness, while longitudinal analyses did not show that the neuroticism-by-conscientiousness combination predicted change in eating behavior over time: Arend and Yuen.
These results are useful for understanding eating behavior. They should not be turned into a claim that a Big Five profile can diagnose binge-eating disorder.
ARFID and other eating disorders: evidence is newer and less settled
Most classic neuroticism research concentrates on anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, binge eating, and broad disordered-eating outcomes. Direct Big Five evidence for avoidant/restrictive food intake disorder is newer and currently mixed.
A 2025 Korean clinical cohort using the NEO-FFI found lower neuroticism in patients with ARFID than in patients with restricting-type anorexia nervosa: Kim et al.. A 2026 study comparing treatment-seeking adults with ARFID, restricting anorexia nervosa, and binge-eating/purging anorexia nervosa found no significant group differences across Big Five traits, including neuroticism: Trolio et al.. Different samples, comparison groups, age structures, and clinical contexts can plausibly contribute to the different findings.
The appropriate conclusion is therefore modest: current evidence does not justify treating high neuroticism as a defining ARFID trait. The same caution applies to less-studied feeding and eating disorders. Where disorder-specific personality evidence is sparse, a broad association from anorexia, bulimia, or disordered-eating samples should not be imported automatically.
Why might neuroticism be related to eating pathology?
Several pathways can produce the observed association, and more than one can operate at the same time. Neuroticism is broad enough to influence exposure to distress, appraisal of stress, emotional intensity, coping, self-evaluation, interpersonal sensitivity, and the persistence of worry. Those processes can intersect with eating behavior without making neuroticism a specific eating-disorder mechanism.
Negative emotion and distress
People higher in neuroticism tend, on average, to experience negative emotions more frequently or intensely. Eating behaviors can sometimes become linked to attempts to escape, dampen, control, or organize distress. This is especially relevant to emotional eating and binge eating, but the direction of influence can also run the other way: recurrent eating-disorder symptoms can create shame, anxiety, conflict, and physiological stress.
Emotion regulation
Emotion-regulation difficulty is a plausible bridge between neuroticism and some forms of eating pathology. Yet “emotion regulation” is a family of strategies and capacities, not a single deficit. Avoidance, rumination, suppression, reappraisal, problem solving, distress tolerance, and behavioral control can have different relationships with symptoms. Evidence that neuroticism correlates with emotion-regulation difficulty does not prove that one strategy mediates every eating-disorder presentation.
Perfectionism and self-criticism
Perfectionistic concern, error sensitivity, and self-criticism often appear in eating-disorder research, particularly in anorexia nervosa. They overlap conceptually with distress-proneness but are not components of every neuroticism instrument. A person can be high in neuroticism without clinically important perfectionism, and perfectionism can occur at many neuroticism levels.
Impulsivity and negative urgency
Binge eating and compensatory behavior are sometimes associated with impulsivity, especially the tendency to act rashly under negative emotion. That pattern can create statistical interactions with neuroticism or negative affect. It is still incorrect to equate the NEO neuroticism facet called Impulsiveness with every contemporary impulsivity construct. The combined-neuroticism-and-impulsivity findings in adolescent binge eating show why construct precision matters: Lee-Winn et al..
Comorbid anxiety and depression
Eating disorders frequently co-occur with anxiety and mood disorders, which are themselves strongly related to neuroticism. This creates several possible pathways: neuroticism may contribute to broad internalizing vulnerability; anxiety or depression may contribute to eating pathology; eating-disorder illness may worsen anxiety or depression; or shared causes may influence all three. The overlap is discussed more broadly in Neuroticism, Anxiety, and Depression: Shared Vulnerability and What It Does Not Prove.
A 2026 umbrella review of anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, and binge-eating disorder confirms extensive psychiatric and medical multimorbidity while also emphasizing that the credibility of observational associations varies and that many apparent risk-factor relationships remain below the highest evidentiary certainty: Fornaro et al..
Association, vulnerability, and causation are different claims
Saying that neuroticism is associated with eating disorders is a descriptive statistical claim. Calling it a vulnerability factor adds a temporal or risk interpretation. Saying it causes an eating disorder is a much stronger causal claim. The current evidence supports association and, in some populations, prospective risk prediction. It does not support a single deterministic causal pathway.
At least four models remain relevant. In a predisposition model, higher neuroticism precedes and contributes to vulnerability. In a complication or scar model, eating-disorder symptoms and their physical or psychological consequences increase measured neuroticism. In a common-cause model, shared genetic, developmental, environmental, or psychiatric influences affect both personality and eating pathology. In a pathoplasty model, personality shapes the expression, course, coping style, or treatment experience of a disorder after it develops. Lilenfeld and colleagues reviewed evidence for these competing models and concluded that stronger prospective research was needed to separate them: methodological and empirical review.
The models are not mutually exclusive. A person may enter adolescence with a relatively high negative-emotionality disposition, experience anxiety or depression, encounter sociocultural and interpersonal pressures, adopt restrictive or binge-related coping patterns, and then undergo illness-related state changes that further elevate self-reported distress. A single cross-sectional correlation cannot decompose that sequence.
This is why prospective studies are especially valuable. The Cervera cohort measured neuroticism before incident eating disorders, supporting vulnerability in that specific population. The 2024 Zhang study measured personality at age 14 before later symptoms, but found multivariate profiles rather than a simple one-trait pathway. Together they strengthen temporal evidence without establishing that neuroticism is necessary, sufficient, or independently causal.
Measurement changes the meaning of a “high neuroticism” result
There is no universal neuroticism score that indicates eating-disorder risk. A raw score, percentile, T-score, or category such as “high” only has meaning relative to a specific instrument, scoring method, reference sample, age group, language version, and population.
The prospective Cervera study used an Eysenck personality measure and analyzed quartiles. The 2024 longitudinal and clinical study used the 60-item NEO-FFI for the Big Five, alongside the Substance Use Risk Profile Scale for traits such as impulsivity and hopelessness: Zhang et al.. The Five-Factor systematic review included multiple instruments and multiple eating-behavior scales. These operational differences are part of the heterogeneity.
The NEO PI-R is especially relevant when research discusses six traditional neuroticism facets—Anxiety, Angry Hostility, Depression, Self-Consciousness, Impulsiveness, and Vulnerability. Those labels belong to that instrument’s architecture. The English Hub’s dedicated guide to neuroticism facets explains why facet names should not be read as diagnoses. The Depression facet, for example, is not major depressive disorder; the Anxiety facet is not an anxiety-disorder diagnosis.
Likewise, a personality inventory is not an eating-disorder screener. The distinction between trait measurement, norms, raw scores, percentiles, and clinical interpretation is covered in Neuroticism Test: What It Measures and How to Interpret Results. When eating-disorder symptoms are the concern, disorder-specific screening and clinical assessment are the relevant tools.
Can neuroticism predict who will develop an eating disorder?
It can contribute to risk prediction at the group level, but it is not a stand-alone individual prediction tool. The prospective OR of 3.3 in the highest neuroticism quartile in the Cervera cohort is sometimes tempting to read deterministically. It should instead be read as a relative association in a defined sample of girls and young women, measured with a particular instrument, during an 18-month follow-up under DSM-IV criteria: Cervera et al..
An odds ratio does not tell us that three out of every ten highly neurotic people will develop an eating disorder, nor does it provide an individual probability without the study’s baseline risks and model context. It also cannot be transferred directly to men, older adults, another country, another personality inventory, ARFID, or current DSM-5-TR diagnostic practice.
The 2024 longitudinal work reinforces this point because neuroticism operated inside a broader profile rather than as an isolated predictor. The same person’s risk is influenced by multiple personality traits, anxiety and depressive processes, body-image and sociocultural factors, dieting and other behaviors, family and developmental context, genetic liability, stressful experiences, and protective factors.
In practical terms, high neuroticism can justify attention to distress and coping in research or individualized formulation. It does not justify labeling someone as “at risk for anorexia” or “likely to develop bulimia” from a personality score alone.
Can eating disorders raise neuroticism scores?
Yes, measured neuroticism can contain some state-related variance. Severe anxiety, depression, starvation-related cognitive and emotional changes, sleep disruption, shame, and ongoing preoccupation can influence self-report. This does not make personality scores meaningless; it means trait measures are not perfectly insulated from current state.
Longitudinal personality research in eating disorders shows both stability and change. Older intensive-treatment work found that some personality dimensions moved toward healthy-control values during recovery while other temperament differences persisted. Reviews therefore caution against assuming that every cross-sectional personality difference existed before illness. This is one reason the strongest claims rely more heavily on prospective measurement before symptom onset.
The same logic applies when symptoms improve. A fall in a neuroticism score during successful treatment does not prove that neuroticism itself was “cured.” It may reflect reduced psychiatric symptoms, genuine trait change, altered self-appraisal, or some combination.
Does neuroticism explain differences among eating disorders?
Only partly. Eating disorders are heterogeneous, and personality variation exists within every diagnostic group. Broad reviews find recurring tendencies—such as greater overcontrol and persistence in some anorexia presentations and more impulsive features in some bulimia presentations—but these are distributions, not personality types.
The temperament meta-analysis by Atiye and colleagues is instructive: harm avoidance was high across eating disorders and especially pronounced in anorexia nervosa, persistence was elevated in most groups except binge-eating disorder, and novelty seeking was elevated relative to controls only in bulimia nervosa. Because these are Cloninger temperament dimensions, they should be reported as such rather than translated into Big Five labels: PubMed.
The 2022 Five-Factor systematic review similarly found that different eating behaviors had different personality associations and that facet-level findings could vary in direction. The useful scientific picture is therefore multidimensional: neuroticism is one broad axis within a larger personality and psychopathology profile.
What does this mean for treatment?
A person does not need treatment because a personality inventory says they are high in neuroticism. Treatment decisions are based on eating-disorder symptoms, medical status, psychiatric comorbidity, functional impairment, patient needs and preferences, and the diagnosis or clinical formulation—not a neuroticism threshold.
The APA guideline for eating disorders provides disorder-specific recommendations for assessment and treatment, especially for anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, and binge-eating disorder. It includes psychological, physical, and laboratory assessment and evidence-based psychotherapeutic and pharmacologic approaches where indicated: APA guideline.
Personality can still matter clinically. It may help explain how someone experiences uncertainty, criticism, interpersonal stress, negative emotion, or treatment demands. It can suggest processes worth discussing in therapy—such as worry, self-criticism, emotion regulation, rigidity, avoidance, or impulsive responses to distress—without turning the trait itself into a disease.
Evidence that personality predicts treatment response remains too inconsistent for a simple algorithm. A systematic review of seven randomized trials plus four follow-up studies found that personality disorders and traits sometimes influenced eating-disorder treatment outcomes, but measures, diagnoses, treatment approaches, and time points varied considerably. The authors called for more routine and systematic personality assessment in trials rather than claiming a universal treatment-selection rule: Simpson et al..
The safest clinical interpretation is therefore process-focused. If a person with an eating disorder also has intense worry, depression, emotional volatility, perfectionistic self-criticism, or impulsive behavior, those features may deserve attention because they affect suffering and functioning. They are not evidence that neuroticism is the diagnosis.
What a neuroticism score can and cannot tell you
A neuroticism score can describe where a person falls on a measured personality dimension relative to an appropriate reference framework. It can be useful for research, self-understanding, and some forms of psychological assessment.
It cannot establish that someone has an eating disorder. It cannot identify anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, binge-eating disorder, or ARFID. It cannot distinguish dieting from anorexia, binge eating from binge-eating disorder, or emotional eating from bulimia. It cannot determine medical severity. It cannot replace assessment of eating behavior, weight and nutritional status, physical complications, psychiatric symptoms, and functional impairment.
A score also cannot be interpreted outside its instrument. Someone at the 85th percentile on one normed scale is not automatically equivalent to someone with a raw “high” score on another. For a practical explanation of those distinctions, see Neuroticism Test: What It Measures and How to Interpret Results.
Clinical limits: when the eating-disorder question matters more than the personality question
If someone is asking about neuroticism because they are restricting food, losing control over eating, bingeing, vomiting, misusing laxatives or other compensatory methods, becoming medically unwell, or experiencing intense fear, preoccupation, or impairment around eating, the clinically important issue is the eating behavior and its consequences. Personality interpretation is secondary.
Eating disorders can produce serious medical and psychiatric complications. NIMH describes them as serious illnesses and emphasizes that treatment is available: NIMH. The APA guideline similarly centers screening, diagnosis, medical assessment, psychiatric assessment, and evidence-based care: APA.
A clinician may include personality assessment when it adds value, but a high neuroticism result should never be used to confirm an eating disorder, and an average or low result should never be used to rule one out.
Frequently asked questions
Is neuroticism common in people with eating disorders?
On average, higher neuroticism or related negative-affectivity traits are common findings in eating-disorder and disordered-eating research. The distributions overlap substantially, so the association does not define every individual: Gilmartin et al..
Does high neuroticism cause eating disorders?
Current evidence supports association and some prospective risk prediction, but not a single deterministic causal pathway. Predisposition, shared causes, comorbidity, illness-related state effects, and personality influences on course can all contribute.
Can someone have high neuroticism and never develop an eating disorder?
Yes. Neuroticism is a broad personality dimension, and many people high on it never develop an eating disorder.
Can someone have an eating disorder with average or low neuroticism?
Yes. Eating disorders occur across a range of personality profiles. Neuroticism changes average associations; it is neither necessary nor sufficient for diagnosis.
Is neuroticism the same as anxiety around food or weight?
No. Neuroticism is a broad personality trait. Anxiety about food, weight, shape, eating consequences, or social evaluation can be a symptom or process within specific clinical contexts.
Is negative emotionality the same as neuroticism?
They are closely related labels in personality science, but their exact meaning depends on the model. BFI-2 uses Negative Emotionality for a Big Five domain; NEO instruments use Neuroticism. DSM-5 maladaptive negative affectivity is another related framework. Scores should not be transferred across instruments as if they were identical.
Does neuroticism predict anorexia nervosa specifically?
Neuroticism is associated with anorexia nervosa in clinical and personality research, but it is not specific enough to predict or diagnose anorexia by itself. Other personality features, symptoms, developmental factors, and environmental and biological influences matter.
Does neuroticism predict bulimia nervosa or binge eating?
Higher neuroticism is associated with bulimia-related and binge-eating outcomes in several studies, often alongside impulsivity or negative urgency. A behavior such as binge eating is still not equivalent to a binge-eating-disorder or bulimia diagnosis.
Can treatment lower neuroticism?
Personality scores can change over time, and symptom improvement may change how people respond to personality items. Eating-disorder treatment targets the disorder, associated symptoms, impairment, and relevant psychological processes; neuroticism itself is not an illness that must be cured.
Should a neuroticism test be used to screen for eating disorders?
No. A neuroticism inventory measures personality. Eating-disorder screening and diagnosis require condition-specific tools and clinical assessment. A personality score can add context but cannot substitute for them.
Bottom line
Neuroticism is one of the more consistent personality correlates of disordered eating and several eating-disorder presentations. Systematic reviews, adolescent meta-analysis, prospective cohort research, and newer longitudinal work all support a meaningful relationship. The relationship remains broad, heterogeneous, and probabilistic.
The scientifically useful claim is that higher neuroticism can contribute to a wider vulnerability profile involving negative emotion, anxiety, self-criticism, emotion regulation, and, in some people, impulsive responses to distress. The clinically important limit is equally clear: neuroticism is a personality trait, not an eating-disorder diagnosis, and no neuroticism score can replace disorder-specific assessment.
For the broader transdiagnostic framework, see Neuroticism and Mental Health: Why the Trait Is a Transdiagnostic Risk Factor. For the trait itself, see Neuroticism: What It Is in the Big Five Personality Model.
Related Articles
Neuroticism Facets: Anxiety, Anger, Depression, Self-Consciousness, Impulsiveness, and Vulnerability
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