A 2026 study of 296 Norwegian university students found a strong association between believing that worry is uncontrollable and dangerous and higher neuroticism—a personality tendency involving anxiety, sadness, irritability and feeling easily stressed.
The association remained after researchers accounted for the other four Big Five personality traits. In the study’s network analysis, the adjusted connection between negative worry beliefs and neuroticism was .55, compared with a plain correlation of .63 before adjustment.
What the researchers measured
Participants completed the 240-item NEO-PI-R, which measures the Big Five traits, along with the negative-beliefs subscale of the Metacognitions Questionnaire-30, or MCQ-30.
That MCQ-30 subscale assesses beliefs about whether worry is uncontrollable and dangerous. Scores range from 6 to 24, with higher scores indicating stronger negative beliefs about worry.
The sample was 77.7% women, had an average age of 22, and included 199 first-year students. Because the participants were mostly young university students, the findings do not directly establish whether the same pattern would appear in clinical groups or in the wider population.
A possible direction, not proof of cause
An exploratory model placed negative worry beliefs before neuroticism. That direction appeared in 84% of 10,000 resampled versions of the data, and removing the arrow reduced model fit by 81.11 BIC units.
Those results do not show that negative beliefs about worry cause neuroticism. The survey was conducted at one time, so it could not establish which variable came first. The researchers said that reverse direction and a shared cause could not be ruled out.
They also noted that causal interpretation would require, among other conditions, that important omitted variables were not driving both measures. Those conditions could not be checked with this study design.
How the finding fits with earlier research
The researchers described the directional result as consistent with the Self-Regulatory Executive Function model, but said the model was not independently tested in this study. They presented the result as a hypothesis for future longitudinal or experimental research.
Earlier work from the same group followed 982 participants who completed measures of metacognitive beliefs and trait anxiety, with 425 completing the measures again eight weeks later. That 2019 study reported that metacognitive beliefs predicted later trait anxiety and depression-proneness.
Treatment research provides related but separate evidence. In a Norwegian randomized trial involving 81 adults with generalized anxiety disorder, both metacognitive therapy and cognitive behavioral therapy were effective. Recovery rates were higher with metacognitive therapy than cognitive behavioral therapy in that trial, 65% versus 38%, and the difference remained at two years.
However, the 2026 student study did not test treatment. It also did not show that changing worry beliefs would change personality.
Why the results need careful reading
- The participants were university students rather than a clinically selected group.
- The analysis used only the negative-beliefs MCQ-30 subscale, not the questionnaire’s other four subscales.
- Overlapping questionnaire content and the shared self-report format may have contributed to the association.
- The researchers cautioned against overinterpreting the precise ranking of network measures because the expected-influence stability check was 0.44.
In practical terms, the findings identify a relationship worth studying rather than a diagnosis or a proven explanation for personality differences. Longitudinal and experimental studies will be needed to determine whether beliefs about worry, neuroticism or another shared factor comes first.
AI tools were used to assist with the preparation of this article.
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