Why Do Russians Have High Rates of Neuroticism

[JackKnightstick]

http://www.gnxp.com/blog/uploaded_im...rs1-725321.jpg

It's even higher than Japanese (which is very high) Since I was married to a Japanese woman and lived in Japan, but have also dated and known many of Former Soviets (Russians and Ukrainians mostly) I can tell you that Japanese people are often quite 'strange' but many Russians are just dysfunctional, the one's I know here are quite smart, but usually in their personal lives shit is jacked up...the Japanese I know are pretty stable, but they often have some weird quirks, such as generally calm and rarely show negative emotions in public, but when they do get mad (like at a loss of face) they explode in a way that I rarely see in most Americans. It's like they keep too much stuff bottled up. I think this is why Japanese drink a lot, it is the only time in public they are free to speak their mind without fear of offense...

Russians on the other hand just seem very erratic in their behavior. Almost every Russian I've ever known drinks heavily (by American standards), the women seem very emotional and negative always talking about their "rok" (fate) and not at all hard to get into bed (I'm not saying they are whores, I just means easier than most American women...it's all relative) that being said, it seems they have hard times maintaining stable relationships. Many of the women seem very emotional, irrational (way more than most women, definitely more than American or Japanese women)...


I've seen this many times, it can' be coincidence. One of my Russian male friends said that it is due to Communism, but I don't think so, if you read Russian history, I think you can see a lot of this in the elites as well.

An ex-girlfriend (ethnic Russian) said that she thinks it is just "vodka"...she right now is coming off her 2nd marriage, and she is my age. :-O Most of her friends (almost all Russian and Ukrainians) are also divorced at least once, all of them are under 35...but all are educated professionals, in their personal lives they seem to live more like trailer park people. :-( It's very very odd.

I tried to make it as legible as possible, and the abbreviations are clear (so "Rom" means Romanian, not the Roma). The accompanying graphic that I dug up online shows the Four Temperaments, which are essentially what the four quadrants of an E x N coordinate plane represent, along with some related characteristics. The list of natural language words that describe personality traits can be factor-analyzed, and this approach yields the same Big Five traits from the NEO-PI (Saucier & Goldberg 2001). A word like "excitable" would load positively on both the E and N factors, for instance. Note also that "anxious" reflects both low E and high N -- most interesting personality phenotypes will be composites like this. However, remember that the EPQ and NEO-PI measure continuously varying traits (the score conveys both direction and magnitude), unlike the typological approach of the Four Temperaments and the psychiatric manual DSM-IV.

Other characteristics don't relate much to E or N -- "dependable" or "orderly" are more related to the Big Five factor Conscientiousness. Recall that the EPQ measures a trait called Psychoticism, which is like the interaction between Big Five Agreeableness and Conscientiouness, but inversely related to them -- that is, someone who scores high on Psychoticism would score low on A and C. This multiplicative interaction will skew the distribution much more so than if just A or C or an additive interaction were chosen, and sure enough, in the chart below, notice that the scores on Psychoticism are much lower across countries than on E or N -- the highest score is 9.1, which is barely at the minimum score on either E or N, indicating that the bulk of the Psychoticism distribution is packed into the low end. And unfortunately, you can't decompose a product into a unique pair of multiplicands, so if one person's (or country's) Psychoticism score is higher than another's, that could be because of higher A and equal C, vice versa, or higher scores on both. Having said that, here is the list of Psychoticism scores, in descending order, from the studies synthesized by Lynn & Martin:

Czechoslovakia 9.1
India 8.1
Yugoslavia 7.4
Hong Kong 7
Australia 6.9
China 6.7
Germany 6.1
Uganda 6
France 5.5
Greece 5.4
Iran 5
Lithuania 5
Japan 4.8
Finland 4.7
Mexico 4.5
Egypt 4.4
Italy 4.4
Puerto Rico 4.4
Singapore 4.3
Bangladesh 4.2
Canada 4.2
Sri Lanka 4.2
Bulgaria 4.1
Brazil 4
Korea 4
Hungary 3.8
United Kingdom 3.8
Nigeria 3.6
Russia 3.6
Iceland 3.5
Israel 3.5
Romania 3.5
United States 3.3
Spain 3
Netherlands 2.8
Portugal 2.6
Norway 2.2

[CAONABO]

]
the women seem very emotional and negative always talking about their "rok" (fate) and not at all hard to get into bed (I'm not saying they are whores, I just means easier than most American women...it's all relative) that being said, it seems they have hard times maintaining stable relationships.

I've seen evidence of that here with Russian immigrant women. I don't know how to describe it, I'm not caling them whores, but there is a casualness about it thats quite different than American women.

[JackKnightstick]

No one else has experienced Russian "craziness"? lol My opion is that Russia will always have a very strong authoritarian leadership because I seriously doubt the society would function without that, the temperament of the people...they just need to be controlled.

[Azvarohi]

Is it just my screen or is half the PC-plot missing?

[Malcolm Z]

No one else has experienced Russian "craziness"? lol My opion is that Russia will always have a very strong authoritarian leadership because I seriously doubt the society would function without that, the temperament of the people...they just need to be controlled.

People say the same thing about China. I don't think that's true for neither country. And I think these neurosis you described are the result of the terrible turmoil that happened in Russia in the 80's (socialist stagnation and glasnost) and the 90's (fall of the Soviet Union and great crisis of 98). Two terrible decades for them. Maybe the generation that's growing now will suffer less from this.

[CAONABO]

People say the same thing about China.

I know its a stereotypical gross overgeneralization, but the impression I get from China is similar to what I get looking at a vast colony of ants. All moving as a group, no individuality, etc. The queen directing every facet of their daily life.

[Lemminkäinen]

People say the same thing about China. I don't think that's true for neither country. And I think these neurosis you described are the result of the terrible turmoil that happened in Russia in the 80's (socialist stagnation and glasnost) and the 90's (fall of the Soviet Union and great crisis of 98). Two terrible decades for them. Maybe the generation that's growing now will suffer less from this.

Definitely agreed. Russia has had hard times and I hope they them better future. We have in Finland growing Russian minority and people like them. They are one of the most wanted comers.

[Azvarohi]

We have in Finland growing Russian minority and people like them.

You've obviously never met any of the Finnish members on this forum.

[Lemminkäinen]

You've obviously never met any of the Finnish members on this forum.

People are nice, but the Russian system most of the time awful.

[Karhunkynsi]

You've obviously never met any of the Finnish members on this forum.

Dont speak to Finns during your shift. Back to strawberry field slav.