Vulnerability: why do some people freeze under pressure?

The exam starts. You open the paper, read the first question, and your head is suddenly empty. Everything you knew yesterday is gone.

Or it happens at work: three things go wrong at once, the phone keeps ringing, and you do not know where to start. Your heart is racing, and you just want to get away.

Meanwhile, the colleague next to you calmly takes one thing at a time.

Why do some people freeze or panic under pressure, while others stay clear-headed?

Psychologists describe part of this difference with the facet vulnerability. In the Big Five model, it is one of six facets of neuroticism. It describes how well you cope when stress hits: whether you keep your head, or feel overwhelmed, confused and helpless.

What does vulnerability mean?

Vulnerability in the Big Five is about how you react when demands pile up. It is not about how sensitive or open you are as a person, as the word is sometimes used in everyday speech.

People who score high often recognise themselves in this:

• You panic easily when something unexpected happens.
• You feel overwhelmed when many things happen at once.
• You sometimes feel that you are unable to deal with things.
• It is hard to think clearly in a crisis.
• You tend to look to others to take charge when things get difficult.

A high score does not mean you are weak or that you cannot handle difficult situations. It means stress costs you more, and that your ability to think and act clearly is affected more easily.

The key is not how much stress you have, but how strongly it knocks you off balance.

Not more stress, but stronger reactions

Do people high in neuroticism simply have more stressful lives?

Niall Bolger and Elizabeth Schilling followed 339 people who reported their minor daily stressors and their mood every day for six weeks. They wanted to know whether people high in neuroticism felt worse because they encountered more stressors, or because they reacted more strongly to the same ones.

Both played a part. Together, exposure and reactivity explained more than 40 percent of the difference in distress between people high and low in neuroticism. But reactivity counted twice as much as exposure.

The study measured neuroticism as a whole, not the vulnerability facet alone. But it points to the core of what this facet is about: it is not mainly the amount of stress that differs, but how hard it hits.

Stress makes it harder to think

When people say they "go blank" under pressure, it is not just a feeling.

A meta-analysis from 2016 by Grant Shields, Matthew Sazma and Andrew Yonelinas pooled experiments where people were put under acute stress and then given cognitive tasks. Stress impaired working memory, the ability to keep information in mind and work with it. It also impaired cognitive flexibility, the ability to switch between tasks and ways of thinking.

These are exactly the abilities you need when several things go wrong at once. People high in vulnerability are not less capable. But when stress hits harder, more of that capacity is temporarily lost.

Why skilled people choke

Sian Beilock and Thomas Carr studied a related phenomenon: choking under pressure, when skilled people perform worse than usual precisely because it matters.

In their experiments, golf putting, a skill that runs largely on autopilot once it is well practised, got worse under pressure. A letter-based arithmetic task that still required step-by-step attention did not. The explanation, according to the researchers, is that pressure makes us pay attention to movements that normally run by themselves, and the attention itself disrupts the skill.

Interestingly, the choking disappeared when the participants had practised putting under conditions designed to make them self-conscious. They got used to performing while aware of themselves, and the pressure no longer broke them down.

The study is about performance pressure in general, not about the personality facet. But it shows something useful: you can get used to pressure by practising under conditions that resemble the real thing.

Vulnerability is not the same as anxiety or low confidence

Vulnerability is often confused with two other facets.

Anxiety is mostly about what happens before: worry and tension about what might go wrong. Vulnerability is about what happens during: whether you lose your grip when the pressure is actually on. Some worry for weeks but cope well on the day. Others hardly worry at all, but panic when it happens.

Self-efficacy, in conscientiousness, is about your belief that you can get things done. It overlaps with vulnerability, but is broader and calmer: it concerns your overall confidence in your own competence, not your reaction in the heat of the moment.

The facet is also different from the vulnerability-stress model used in clinical psychology to explain why some people develop mental illness. You can read more about that in Vulnerability and stress.

What does a high or low score mean?

High vulnerability

Pressure and chaos affect you strongly, and you may feel overwhelmed sooner than others. In demanding periods, it is wise to protect yourself against too many simultaneous demands.

Many high scorers are also very aware of their limits and good at asking for help. That is often a strength, not a weakness. They also tend to take crises seriously instead of underestimating them.

Low vulnerability

You usually stay calm and clear-headed under pressure, and others may look to you when things get hectic. Crises are unpleasant, but they rarely paralyse you.

The flip side can be that you take on too much because you can, or that you find it hard to understand that others are struggling. Being calm is not the same as being unaffected; stress can take its toll even when it does not show.

Both descriptions are about typical tendencies, not rules that hold in every situation.

In everyday life

• At work: Deadlines, interruptions and many tasks at once are the toughest. Writing down the next single step can make chaos manageable.
• Exams and presentations: Practising under realistic conditions, with a timer or an audience, makes the real situation less unfamiliar.
• In crises at home: A simple plan made in advance, such as who to call and what to do first, reduces the need to think clearly in the moment.
• In relationships: It helps to tell people close to you that you need a little time to collect yourself when things get hectic.

Can vulnerability change?

Personality is fairly stable, but not fixed.

A large review from 2017 pooled 207 studies and found that psychological interventions were associated with clear changes in measured personality traits, especially emotional stability, that is, lower neuroticism. The changes often appeared within a few months and held up at follow-up.

How you interpret the body's stress response also seems to matter. Jeremy Jamieson, Matthew Nock and Wendy Berry Mendes asked some participants to think of their racing heart and quick breathing during a stressful task as a sign that the body was getting ready to perform. Compared with control groups, these participants showed a healthier cardiovascular stress response and paid less attention to negative information.

Other things that may help:

• Break the situation down into one thing at a time. Ask: what is the very next step?
• Breathe slowly for a minute before you act. It gives your thinking a chance to catch up.
• Practise under pressure in safe settings, so the real situation feels more familiar.

A Big Five score is not a diagnosis. If stress often leads to panic, or you feel unable to cope with everyday life over time, it can help to talk to your doctor or a psychologist.

Frequently asked questions

Does high vulnerability mean I am weak?

No. The facet measures how strongly stress affects you, not your character or your worth. Many people high in vulnerability achieve a lot, but need more recovery and better planning to do it.

Is vulnerability the same as panic disorder?

No. Panic disorder is a clinical condition with recurring, unexpected panic attacks. The facet describes a normal tendency to feel overwhelmed under pressure, which everyone has to some degree.

Can I be low in anxiety but high in vulnerability?

Yes. You can worry little in advance and still feel overwhelmed when the situation is actually there. That is one reason the facets tell you more than the overall neuroticism score.

How is vulnerability measured in the Big Five test?

Our test is based on the IPIP-NEO-120, where each facet is measured with four statements. For vulnerability, they are about panicking easily, becoming overwhelmed by events, feeling unable to deal with things, and (reversed) remaining calm under pressure. Read the score as a sign of a pattern, not as a complete description of you.

Find out where you score

Vulnerability is only one of the six facets of neuroticism. You can feel overwhelmed under pressure and still score low on anger, depression or immoderation.

Take the Big Five test and see your whole profile, with all 30 facets.

Sources

• Bolger, N. & Schilling, E. A. (1991). Personality and the problems of everyday life: The role of neuroticism in exposure and reactivity to daily stressors. Journal of Personality, 59(3), 355–386.
• Shields, G. S., Sazma, M. A. & Yonelinas, A. P. (2016). The effects of acute stress on core executive functions: A meta-analysis and comparison with cortisol. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 68, 651–668.
• Beilock, S. L. & Carr, T. H. (2001). On the fragility of skilled performance: What governs choking under pressure? Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 130(4), 701–725.
• Jamieson, J. P., Nock, M. K. & Mendes, W. B. (2012). Mind over matter: Reappraising arousal improves cardiovascular and cognitive responses to stress. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 141(3), 417–422.
• Roberts, B. W. et al. (2017). A systematic review of personality trait change through intervention. Psychological Bulletin, 143(2), 117–141.
• Johnson, J. A. (2014). Measuring thirty facets of the Five Factor Model with a 120-item public domain inventory: Development of the IPIP-NEO-120. Journal of Research in Personality, 51, 78–89.