Withdrawal and Volatility: Two Broad Aspects of Neuroticism
Author: Ukrainian Psychological Hub · Published: September 30, 2026 · Editorial Policy
Withdrawal and Volatility are two correlated, broad aspects of Neuroticism in the Big Five Aspects model. Withdrawal describes a tendency toward anxious and depressive distress, threat sensitivity, self-doubt, discouragement, and feeling overwhelmed. Volatility describes a tendency toward irritability, anger, agitation, emotional lability, and losing composure more readily under frustration. The distinction was formalized by Colin DeYoung, Lena Quilty, and Jordan Peterson as an intermediate level between the broad Big Five domains and narrower facets; their original study introduced the Big Five Aspect Scales, or BFAS. DeYoung, Quilty, and Peterson (2007)
These are personality dimensions, not diagnoses, personality “types,” or two kinds of mental illness. A person can be relatively high on Withdrawal and lower on Volatility, relatively high on Volatility and lower on Withdrawal, high on both, or low on both. The two scores describe different patterns within the broader tendency captured by Neuroticism in the Big Five.
Withdrawal and Volatility: The Short Answer
In the BFAS framework, Neuroticism is divided into two aspects. Withdrawal is the more anxious, apprehensive, self-doubting, and discouragement-prone side of negative emotionality. Volatility is the more irritable, reactive, agitated, anger-prone, and emotionally labile side. Both belong to Neuroticism because both involve greater susceptibility to negative emotion, yet they differ in the characteristic form that negative emotion tends to take.
The distinction is useful because a broad Neuroticism score can conceal meaningful variation. Two people can have similar overall Neuroticism scores while arriving there through different combinations of Withdrawal and Volatility. One may be prone to worry, self-consciousness, and discouragement without being especially irritable. Another may be quick to anger or become agitated under frustration without being especially fearful or self-doubting.
The distinction also has limits. Withdrawal and Volatility are not universally imposed subdivisions in every Big Five inventory, and researchers should not assume that a score from one personality instrument can simply be converted into a BFAS aspect score. The two-aspect model is an influential hierarchical model of personality structure, not the only vocabulary used for lower-order Neuroticism.
Where the Two-Aspect Model Comes From
The Big Five organize personality at a broad domain level. That broadness is useful, but it also compresses heterogeneous tendencies into five large dimensions. DeYoung and colleagues asked whether there was a stable level of structure between broad Big Five domains and the many narrower facets used by personality inventories. They factor-analyzed 75 facet scales drawn from two established instruments and found evidence for two correlated factors within each Big Five domain. They called these intermediate traits “aspects.” Original aspect-model study
For Neuroticism, the two aspects were labeled Withdrawal and Volatility. In the original analyses, NEO-related anxiety, depression, self-consciousness, and vulnerability content clustered strongly with Withdrawal, while angry hostility and impulsiveness contributed more strongly to Volatility. The separation was not perfectly clean: some facet scales cross-loaded, which is exactly why aspects should be understood as empirical dimensions rather than rigid boxes into which every narrower trait must fit.
The authors then developed the 100-item Big Five Aspect Scales to measure ten aspects: two for each Big Five domain. In the public IPIP scoring keys, the Neuroticism domain consists of a 20-item combination of ten Withdrawal items and ten Volatility items. The IPIP page reports internal-consistency estimates of .84 for Withdrawal, .85 for Volatility, and .89 for their combined Neuroticism scale in the cited scoring set. BFAS scoring keys at the International Personality Item Pool
Later work has continued to test aspect-level measurement. A shorter 40-item BFAS version was developed and validated across five studies, with evidence for factor structure, convergence with the full BFAS, test-retest reliability, and construct validity. Gallagher and colleagues (2023) This does not make any single BFAS score a clinical measure; it shows that the aspect level can be measured psychometrically as a personality construct.
The Hierarchy: Domain, Aspects, Facets, and States
It helps to keep four levels separate.
Neuroticism is the broad domain. It summarizes a relatively stable tendency toward negative emotionality and distress across time and situations. The Hub’s broader explanation of the construct is in Neuroticism as a Personality Trait: How Negative Emotionality Works.
Withdrawal and Volatility are aspects in the DeYoung/BFAS hierarchy. They are narrower than the overall Neuroticism domain and broader than many specific facets or behavioral tendencies.
Facets are narrower components defined by a particular instrument. The NEO PI-R, for example, uses six Neuroticism facets; the BFI-2 uses a different three-facet structure under the label Negative Emotionality. Facet labels and boundaries therefore depend on the measure.
States are temporary experiences or behaviors at a particular time. Feeling frightened today, becoming angry in one argument, or being discouraged after a setback is a state. A trait or aspect score summarizes recurring tendencies across many occasions. Recent research has explicitly developed aspect-level state measures and found that state manifestations can be studied separately from trait standing, reinforcing the need to distinguish a stable individual-difference construct from a momentary episode. Spark and colleagues (2026)
What Withdrawal Means
Withdrawal in the BFAS model refers to a dispositional tendency toward forms of negative emotion characterized especially by anxiety, apprehension, self-doubt, discouragement, sadness, vulnerability, and feeling overwhelmed. The public BFAS key includes items about worry, threat sensitivity, doubt, discouragement, fear, and becoming overwhelmed, along with reverse-keyed content reflecting lower depressive affect and greater comfort with oneself. IPIP BFAS Withdrawal key
The label can sound as though it means social withdrawal, but that is misleading. A BFAS Withdrawal score is not simply a measure of how much a person avoids parties, prefers solitude, or has few social contacts. Its center of gravity is anxious-depressive distress and passive avoidance in the theoretical model, not social disengagement as such.
A person relatively high in Withdrawal may, on average, anticipate threat more readily, worry more, feel discouraged sooner, doubt their ability to cope, or experience self-conscious distress more intensely. That description remains probabilistic. It does not mean every high-scoring person is chronically fearful or depressed, and it does not specify how the person will behave in every situation.
A person relatively low in Withdrawal tends, on average, to report less worry, threat sensitivity, discouragement, and self-doubt on the relevant scale. Low Withdrawal is not immunity from anxiety, grief, depression, trauma reactions, or other forms of distress. Severe states can occur at any trait level when circumstances, illness, loss, or other factors are strong enough.
What Volatility Means
Volatility in the BFAS model refers to a dispositional tendency toward irritability, anger, agitation, emotional lability, and difficulty maintaining composure when negative emotion is activated. The public BFAS key includes content about becoming angry or upset easily, changes in mood, agitation, and being stirred up, together with reverse-keyed content about irritation, composure, and emotional control. IPIP BFAS Volatility key
Volatility is therefore more specific than the everyday idea of “being emotional.” Positive enthusiasm, excitement, empathy, grief, and expressive warmth are not equivalent to Volatility. The aspect concerns a particular cluster of negative emotional reactivity within Neuroticism.
A person relatively high in Volatility may be more easily irritated, more reactive to frustration, or more likely to experience rapid escalation of negative affect. A person relatively low in Volatility tends to report greater steadiness and composure under provocation on this dimension. Neither description tells you whether someone is kind, aggressive, conscientious, empathic, dangerous, or clinically impaired. Those are separate questions.
Withdrawal vs Volatility: The Core Difference
The simplest distinction is that Withdrawal emphasizes anxious-depressive distress and passive avoidance, whereas Volatility emphasizes irritable-angry reactivity and emotional lability. This shorthand is useful, but it should not be exaggerated into a claim that Withdrawal is always “internal” and Volatility is always “external.” Human emotional behavior is more complex than that.
Withdrawal can be visible in behavior, and Volatility can be experienced internally without overt expression. Someone may feel intense irritation and remain outwardly controlled; someone else may visibly avoid a threatening situation because of high apprehension. The aspects describe dispositional patterns in emotional response, not fixed rules about whether feelings stay inside or come out.
The aspects are correlated because both belong to Neuroticism. Their shared variance captures a common susceptibility to negative emotion. Their distinct variance allows researchers to ask whether worry-proneness and irritability-proneness relate differently to other variables. That is the scientific value of going below the domain level.
Four Possible Aspect Profiles
Because Withdrawal and Volatility are separate but correlated dimensions, there is no requirement that they be equally high or low in the same person.
Higher Withdrawal with lower Volatility can describe a profile in which worry, fear, self-doubt, or discouragement are more prominent than anger and irritability.
Lower Withdrawal with higher Volatility can describe a profile in which frustration, agitation, and irritability are more prominent than apprehension and self-doubt.
Higher scores on both aspects can produce a higher overall Neuroticism profile in which both anxious-depressive distress and reactive irritability are prominent.
Lower scores on both aspects usually contribute to lower overall Neuroticism, or greater emotional stability, although exact scoring depends on the instrument. For the broader domain comparison, see High vs Low Neuroticism: What the Difference Means and Neuroticism vs Emotional Stability: Two Ends of the Same Big Five Dimension?.
These combinations are descriptive profiles, not personality types. There is no scientifically justified boundary that turns a continuous score into a natural category such as a “Withdrawal person” or “Volatility person.”
How the BFAS Measures Withdrawal and Volatility
The original BFAS contains 100 items in total, with ten items for each of ten aspects. Neuroticism is represented by ten Withdrawal items and ten Volatility items. The public IPIP scoring page shows positive-keyed and reverse-keyed items for each aspect and reports the combined 20-item Neuroticism scale. BFAS scoring information
A valid interpretation therefore starts by naming the instrument. “My Withdrawal score is 34” has little meaning without knowing whether the score came from the original BFAS, a shortened BFAS, a research adaptation, or a website that created its own scoring and norms.
Raw scores, means, standardized scores, and percentiles are different metrics. A percentile also depends on the reference sample. A 75th-percentile result means that a score was higher than roughly 75% of the people in the specific normative group used by that scorer; it does not mean that the person is “75% Withdrawal,” that 75% of their behavior is caused by the trait, or that they have a clinical condition.
Reverse-keyed items must be scored correctly, missing responses must be handled according to the instrument’s rules, and interpretation should match the population and version used. A research sample of university students, a general-population online sample, and a clinical sample are not interchangeable normative groups.
There is no universal BFAS cutoff at which Withdrawal or Volatility becomes pathological. These are dimensional personality scores. Clinical decisions require condition-specific assessment, impairment, duration, context, differential diagnosis, and professional judgment where appropriate.
BFAS Aspects Are Not the Same as NEO PI-R Facets
One major source of confusion is to treat the BFAS aspects as if they were merely renamed NEO PI-R facets. They are not.
The NEO PI-R traditionally divides Neuroticism into Anxiety, Angry Hostility, Depression, Self-Consciousness, Impulsiveness, and Vulnerability. DeYoung and colleagues used NEO facet scales, together with another personality inventory, as part of the empirical material from which the aspect structure was derived. Withdrawal was strongly marked by anxiety, depression, self-consciousness, and vulnerability. Volatility was strongly marked by angry hostility and also related to impulsiveness, but the factor pattern included cross-loadings. DeYoung, Quilty, and Peterson (2007)
That means the six NEO facets and the two BFAS aspects occupy different levels and are not one-to-one equivalents. A NEO Depression facet score is not automatically a BFAS Withdrawal score. A NEO Angry Hostility score is not automatically a BFAS Volatility score. Researchers can study their relationships, but they should not substitute one measure for another without evidence.
This distinction also protects the neighboring cluster intent: a full discussion of Neuroticism facets belongs to the dedicated facets article, while this page owns the two-aspect Withdrawal/Volatility model.
BFAS Volatility Is Not Identical to BFI-2 Emotional Volatility
The BFI-2 uses the broad domain label Negative Emotionality and divides that domain into three facets: Anxiety, Depression, and Emotional Volatility. Soto and John’s BFI-2 development paper
The similarity in names does not make BFI-2 Emotional Volatility identical to BFAS Volatility. They come from different hierarchical measurement systems, with different items and facet structures. Both concern emotional instability or reactivity within the broad negative-emotionality domain, so correlations are expected, but scores should remain instrument-specific.
This is why personality results should be reported as “BFAS Volatility,” “BFI-2 Emotional Volatility,” “NEO PI-R Angry Hostility,” and so forth rather than collapsed into a generic “volatility score.”
BFAS Withdrawal Is Not PID-5 Withdrawal
This is an especially important terminology trap.
The Personality Inventory for DSM-5, or PID-5, includes a facet called Withdrawal under the broader pathological-personality domain of Detachment. Its content concerns social disengagement and reduced interest in social relationships. BFAS Withdrawal, by contrast, is an aspect of Neuroticism centered on anxious and depressive distress.
A study directly integrating the BFAS and PID-5 warned about this “jingle” problem: scales with the same label can measure different constructs. The authors renamed the BFAS construct “Withdrawn Distress” and the PID-5 construct “Social Withdrawal” for clarity in their analyses. DeYoung, Carey, Krueger, and Ross (2016)
So a high PID-5 Withdrawal score should never be interpreted as a high BFAS Withdrawal score merely because the word is the same. Instrument, model, and item content determine meaning.
Are Withdrawal and Volatility “Internalizing” and “Externalizing”?
The labels internalizing and externalizing are sometimes used as rough descriptions of the two aspects. Withdrawal has an obvious conceptual affinity with anxious and depressive internal distress. Volatility has a stronger connection to anger, irritability, and reactive expression. But the analogy should remain an analogy.
Internalizing and externalizing are also broad terms in psychopathology research, where they refer to spectra of symptoms and disorders. BFAS Withdrawal and Volatility are normal-range personality dimensions. A high aspect score is not the same thing as belonging to a psychopathology spectrum, and it does not diagnose any disorder.
The systematic-review evidence is more specific than the internet shorthand. A 2021 review of lower-order Big Five traits and affective disorders included 15 studies and 408 reported associations. At the BFAS aspect level, the clearest review finding was a positive association between Withdrawal and major depressive disorder. The authors could not conduct a meta-analysis because measures were heterogeneous and called for more research on mediating pathways. Lyon and colleagues (2021)
That evidence supports studying lower-order personality dimensions in relation to mental health. It does not justify a universal rule that “Withdrawal equals internalizing disorder” or “Volatility equals externalizing disorder.”
Theoretical Mechanisms: Passive Avoidance and Active Defense
Cybernetic Big Five Theory offers a mechanistic interpretation of the aspects. In that theory, Withdrawal is linked more strongly to passive avoidance and behavioral inhibition under uncertainty, threat, punishment, or error. Volatility is linked more strongly to active defensive reactions to immediate threat, punishment, or frustration, including anger and emotional escalation. DeYoung (2015)
This account is useful because it generates hypotheses about why the aspects might differ in attention, motivation, emotion, and behavior. It is still a theory. Terms such as “behavioral inhibition system” or “fight-flight-freeze system” should not be treated as direct readings from a personality questionnaire or as proof that a particular neural circuit is malfunctioning in an individual.
The theoretical distinction also does not imply that people consciously choose one defense mode. Personality traits are statistical tendencies in patterns of emotion, cognition, motivation, and behavior. A person can show different states in different contexts.
What Neuroscience Has — and Has Not — Shown
One fMRI study examined Withdrawal and Volatility in relation to amygdala responses during an approach-avoidance task. The researchers reported different group-level associations: higher Volatility was associated with greater amygdala response to negative stimuli, whereas higher Withdrawal was associated with greater amygdala response during approach conditions regardless of stimulus valence. Cunningham and colleagues (2010)
This is an interesting mechanistic finding, not a biomarker. An fMRI association in a research sample cannot tell whether a particular individual is “high Withdrawal” or “high Volatility,” cannot diagnose a disorder, and does not establish that one brain region causes the personality aspect. Personality neuroscience studies are correlational and sensitive to tasks, samples, analytic choices, and measurement.
More generally, personality-neuroscience theory treats psychological traits as constructs that require explanation across levels rather than simple localization in a single brain area. DeYoung and colleagues’ metatheoretical discussion The useful conclusion is therefore modest: the two aspects have motivated testable neurobiological hypotheses, and some studies report distinguishable correlates, but there is no clinical brain test for Withdrawal or Volatility.
Withdrawal, Volatility, and Mental Health
Neuroticism is a broad transdiagnostic risk factor at the population level, and lower-order aspects can sometimes sharpen associations with particular outcomes. This does not turn either aspect into a disorder.
Withdrawal overlaps conceptually with experiences such as worry, sadness, fear, self-consciousness, and discouragement, so associations with anxiety and depressive symptoms are unsurprising. The 2021 systematic review found positive associations between many Neuroticism facets and affective disorders and identified Withdrawal as positively associated with major depressive disorder at the aspect level. Lyon et al. (2021)
Volatility overlaps with irritability, anger, agitation, and emotional lability, which can appear in many clinical and nonclinical contexts. Those experiences are transdiagnostic and nonspecific. Irritability can occur during stress, sleep deprivation, mood disorders, trauma-related conditions, some neurodevelopmental conditions, substance effects, medical conditions, or ordinary frustration. A personality aspect score cannot determine which explanation applies.
The distinction is therefore one of vulnerability and characteristic emotional style, not diagnosis. A person can score high on Withdrawal without having generalized anxiety disorder or major depression. A person can score high on Volatility without having bipolar disorder, borderline personality disorder, ADHD, PTSD, or an impulse-control disorder. Conversely, a person can have any of those conditions without a particularly high score on the corresponding BFAS aspect.
Symptoms, screening results, personality traits, and diagnoses answer different questions. The presence of one should not be used as a shortcut for the others.
Does a High Withdrawal or Volatility Score Mean Something Is Wrong?
A high score means high standing relative to the scoring system or comparison group used by that instrument. It does not carry a universal value judgment.
Whether a trait tendency creates difficulty depends on its extremity, the person’s environment, other traits, coping skills, relationships, role demands, health, stress exposure, and many other factors. The cluster has a separate reserved search intent for whether Neuroticism is “good or bad”; this page stays with the structure and interpretation of Withdrawal and Volatility rather than turning aspect scores into moral or clinical grades.
For the same reason, low scores are not automatically superior. Very low threat sensitivity, very low emotional responsiveness, or very low concern about negative consequences may be advantageous in some contexts and less useful in others. Personality science describes distributions and associations; it does not provide a universal ranking of personalities.
Can Withdrawal and Volatility Change?
Withdrawal and Volatility are trait-like dimensions, so they are intended to capture relatively enduring differences rather than temporary mood. Relatively enduring does not mean fixed.
Personality traits show both stability and change across the life course, and interventions can be associated with measured trait change. At the aspect level, however, the evidence base for deliberately and selectively changing Withdrawal versus Volatility is much thinner than the evidence for broad Big Five traits or psychiatric symptom change.
A reduction in anxiety symptoms after therapy is not automatically the same thing as a reduction in BFAS Withdrawal. Fewer anger episodes are not automatically the same thing as lower BFAS Volatility. To claim aspect-level trait change, the aspect should be measured repeatedly with a validated instrument and distinguished from short-term state fluctuation and symptom improvement.
How to Interpret Your Own Profile Without Overreading It
Start with the exact instrument name and version. If the questionnaire did not actually administer BFAS Withdrawal and Volatility items, it may be using the same words for something else.
Next, identify the scoring metric. A raw score, item mean, z score, T score, and percentile are not interchangeable. If a percentile is reported, identify the normative sample and population.
Look at both aspects together and at the broader Neuroticism domain. A moderately elevated domain score can arise from two moderately elevated aspects or from a more uneven profile.
Then separate description from explanation. A high Withdrawal score describes a pattern of responses to questionnaire items; it does not tell you whether the pattern arose from genetics, temperament, current stress, trauma history, learned coping, physical health, culture, or another cause.
Finally, separate personality from clinical assessment. If the real concern is persistent anxiety, depression, anger, panic, self-harm, trauma symptoms, mania, psychosis, substance problems, or functional impairment, a personality score is not the appropriate diagnostic tool.
Common Misinterpretations
“Withdrawal means introversion.” It does not. Introversion is the low pole of Extraversion. BFAS Withdrawal belongs to Neuroticism. A person can be socially outgoing and still score high on anxious-depressive Withdrawal, or be introverted and score low on Withdrawal.
“Volatility means aggression.” It does not. Volatility includes irritability and anger-proneness, but aggression is a behavior with many determinants. High Volatility cannot establish that someone will act aggressively.
“Withdrawal means avoidance.” Only partly. Passive avoidance is a theoretical mechanism associated with the aspect, but the BFAS score is broader than any single avoidance behavior.
“Volatility is bipolar mood swings.” It is not. The word volatility in a personality scale refers to dispositional negative emotional lability and irritability. Bipolar disorders involve clinically defined mood episodes and require diagnostic assessment.
“High Withdrawal means anxiety disorder.” It does not. Withdrawal is a personality aspect; anxiety disorders are clinical diagnoses with specific criteria.
“High Volatility means borderline personality disorder.” It does not. Emotional lability can occur across many contexts and conditions. A broad personality aspect cannot diagnose a personality disorder.
“Withdrawal and Volatility are the only real components of Neuroticism.” They are one influential two-aspect decomposition. Other instruments use other lower-order structures.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are Withdrawal and Volatility in personality psychology?
They are two broad aspects of Neuroticism in the Big Five Aspects model. Withdrawal emphasizes anxious-depressive distress, threat sensitivity, self-doubt, and discouragement. Volatility emphasizes irritability, anger, agitation, and emotional lability.
Are Withdrawal and Volatility part of the Big Five?
They are lower-order aspects within the Big Five domain of Neuroticism in the DeYoung/BFAS hierarchy. The Big Five themselves are the five broad domains; the aspects sit one level below them.
What is the difference between Withdrawal and Volatility?
Withdrawal is more strongly characterized by apprehension, worry, discouragement, self-conscious distress, and passive avoidance. Volatility is more strongly characterized by irritability, anger, agitation, mood lability, and reactive escalation under frustration.
Can someone be high in Withdrawal but low in Volatility?
Yes. The aspects are correlated but distinct, so uneven profiles are possible. A person can report substantial worry and self-doubt while reporting comparatively little irritability, or the reverse.
Is Withdrawal the same as social withdrawal?
No. BFAS Withdrawal is an aspect of Neuroticism centered on anxious-depressive distress. PID-5 Withdrawal, by contrast, is a Detachment facet centered on social disengagement. Similar labels do not make the constructs interchangeable.
Is Volatility the same as BFI-2 Emotional Volatility?
No. The constructs are related in meaning, but BFAS Volatility and BFI-2 Emotional Volatility are scales in different measurement models with different items and hierarchical structures.
Is Withdrawal the same as anxiety?
No. Anxiety-related content is important to Withdrawal, but the aspect also includes discouragement, depressive affect, self-doubt, vulnerability, and related tendencies. It is broader than a temporary anxiety state and is not an anxiety-disorder diagnosis.
Is Volatility a mental-health diagnosis?
No. It is a personality aspect. Irritability and emotional lability can be clinically relevant symptoms in some contexts, but a BFAS Volatility score does not diagnose any disorder.
Which test measures Withdrawal and Volatility?
The Big Five Aspect Scales were developed specifically to measure the ten Big Five aspects, including Withdrawal and Volatility. A validated 40-item short form, BFAS-40, has also been developed. Other Big Five instruments may use different lower-order structures.
What counts as a high Withdrawal or Volatility score?
There is no universal raw-score cutoff. Interpretation depends on the exact instrument, scoring method, normative sample, and population. A percentile is meaningful only relative to the reference distribution used to calculate it.
Are Withdrawal and Volatility traits or states?
In the BFAS they are personality traits or aspects: relatively enduring individual differences. Temporary fear, irritation, sadness, or anger are states. Recent work has developed separate aspect-level state measures, which is another reason not to equate a single emotional episode with trait standing.
Do Withdrawal and Volatility predict mental disorders?
They can be statistically associated with symptoms or disorders at the group level, especially because they are components of Neuroticism. The evidence does not support using either aspect as a diagnostic test or as an individual prediction of who will develop a disorder.
Related Articles
Neuroticism Facets: Anxiety, Anger, Depression, Self-Consciousness, Impulsiveness, and Vulnerability
References
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