The MIDUS survey’s self-administered mailed questionnaire included a personality measure based on the Five Factor Model (FFM) of personality (Lachman & Weaver, 1997). For the current study, we make use of the Neuroticism scale (α = .75). Respondents were asked to rate themselves on four adjectives: ‘moody,’ ‘worrying,’ ‘nervous,’ and ‘calm’ (reverse scored). Adjectives were rated on a scale of 1–4 indicating “how well each of the following describes you: a lot, some, a little, not at all,” with 1 signifying “a lot.” The neuroticism scale was constructed by calculating the mean across these items.
