According to Gordon Allport, a cardinal trait is defined as a dominant characteristic of a person's personality. Neuroticism was one of the dominant characteristics of Michael Jackson. He had a high neurotic trait in which he was a very nervous, anxious, high strung, vulnerable and insecure person. His father verbally abused him by calling him ugly and made fun of his big nose. Michael mentioned multiple times during interviews that whenever his father would come into a room he was in, Michael would throw up. He loved his father but the thought of his father made him feel sad and angry to the point of getting sick. Not only did he get mistreated by his father, but also from strangers. When going door to door to proselytize about his faith he would sometimes be insulted and made fun of due to the appearance of his skin, which were later to be diagnosed as lupus and vitiligo. While recording a music video he had an incident where his head and face were accidentally burned. This made him resort to surgery to try and fix these burns but was always depressed because he was unhappy with his physical appearance. Slowly, he began to drastically change his physical appearance with multiple surgeries. His audience did not like the way he was altering his physical appearance and began to make fun of him by calling him weird and wacko. As a result, Michael developed a dependence on medication to deal with the stress, insomnia and negative emotions from others. When Michael was a child, he kept to himself most of the time and his only friends during his childhood were adults. When he became an adult, he preferred being in the presence of children and animals. However, some of his behaviors with children were deemed socially unacceptable and was accused of child molestation.
The environmental factors in Michael's life influenced his neurotic trait to emerge. Growing up he experienced tremendous amount of tension and anxiety.
