Emotional stability is how readily negative feelings arise in you and how quickly they settle: worry, irritation, low mood, self-consciousness and the sense of being overwhelmed. It is the same trait as neuroticism, scored the other way up, so a high emotional stability score is a low neuroticism score.
Two names for one scale
The site’s emotional stability test uses the twenty statements for this factor from Goldberg’s Big Five factor markers, such as Am relaxed most of the time and Am not easily bothered by things, with reversed statements such as Get stressed out easily and Change my mood a lot. You rate each on five points, the reversed ones are flipped, and the twenty are added, so a score runs from 20 to 100. The IPIP key page gives coefficient alpha of .91 for the scale, the highest of the site’s single-trait scales. No norms have been published for it on its own.
Goldberg’s markers name the calm end of the scale, so they call it emotional stability. The IPIP-NEO names the other end and calls the same scale neuroticism. The site’s 120-item Big Five test scores neuroticism with six facets against a sample of 410,376 people, the spread shown on the strip below; the 50-item test scores emotional stability with ten statements.
What the research finds
Judge, Erez, Bono and Thoresen (2002) found that emotional stability, self-esteem, sense of control over one’s life and general self-efficacy are so closely related that they behave as one broad trait. Anglim and colleagues (2020) pooled hundreds of studies and found neuroticism the Big Five trait most strongly related to lower well-being and life satisfaction, with moderate effects. Roberts, Walton and Viechtbauer (2006) found that emotional stability rises on average from the twenties onward.
What it is not
A score is not a diagnosis of anything. The scale measures how readily feelings arise in ordinary life, by self-report, across a whole population, and a low score describes a tendency.
It is not the absence of feeling. High scorers have the full range of emotions; they return to baseline faster.
It is not confidence or taking charge. Those belong to extraversion, and the assertiveness guide covers them.
A low score is not weakness. Low scorers notice problems early and plan for what might go wrong.
What it means for your results
A high score means you tend to stay calm and recover quickly from setbacks; a low score means you tend to feel stress, worry and irritation more readily than most. With no norms for the twenty-statement scale alone, the marker shows where your answers fell in the possible range. The 120-item test gives a percentile for the same trait as neuroticism, and its six facets show which feelings arise most readily for you.
The emotional stability test takes three minutes, is scored on your device and shows your score on the strip.