Jonathan Rauch suspects that it's introverts who blog. Recent studies suggest that "openness to new experience" and neuroticism are key factors:
The results of two studies indicate that people who are high in openness to new experience and high in neuroticism are likely to be bloggers. Additionally, the neuroticism relationship was moderated by gender indicating that women who are high in neuroticism are more likely to be bloggers as compared to those low in neuroticism whereas there was no difference for men.So if someone accuses me of being neurotic, I can reply, "What difference does it make?"
Rosanna E. Guadagno, et al., Who blogs? Personality predictors of blogging (Computers in Human Behavior)
comments: 7
Isn't the term "neurotic" one of those generalized terms that is no longer used in serious psychiatry? How can a generalized (and archaic) term like that be quantified anyway?
Perhaps another study might reveal that people who blog are people who have something to write about.
So I'm thinking neurasthenia is out? How about the vapors?
There's evidently a difference between neurosis and neuroticism:
"There is a difference of opinion over the clinical use of the term neurosis today. It is not generally used as a diagnostic category by American psychologists and psychiatrists any longer, and was removed from the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders in 1980 with the publication of the third edition (it last appeared as a diagnostic category in DSM-II). Some professionals use the term to describe anxious symptoms and associated behavior, or to describe the range of mental illnesses outside of the psychotic disorders (such as schizophrenia, delusional disorder). Others, particularly psychoanalysts (psychiatrists and psychologists who follow a psychoanalytical model of treatment, as popularized by Freud and Carl Jung), use the term neurosis to describe the internal process itself (called an unconscious conflict) that triggers the anxiety characteristic."
Neurosis (Healthline)
Neuroticism has to do with emotional stability. It's one of the Big Five personality traits that provide the context for the studies of bloggers.
So people in general can still be neurotic, while neurosis is now largely the territory of psychoanalysis.
Neurasthenics write very, very long novels (in French, in multiple volumes), not blog posts. : )
I may be neurotic, but I have my dignity. I don't dither and blather about personal problems in my blog. I'm much too introverted for that. ;)
Neuroticism test
Thanks for the link, Genevieve. That's a test I'm glad I didn't ace. : )
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