Prospective self- and informant-personality associations with inflammation, health behaviors, and health indicators.

Abstract

Objective: Personality influences many aspects of the health process. It is unclear to what extent selfand informant-reports of the Big Five offer incremental validity for the prediction of inflammatory biomarkers and whether inflammation provides a unique pathway between personality and indicators of physical health, independent of health behaviors. Method: Using data from older adults (N = 1,630) enrolled in the St. Louis Personality and Aging Network study, we tested whether self-and informant-reported Big Five traits show unique associations with inflammation (IL-6, CRP, TNF-a). Further, we tested whether inflammation and health behaviors indirectly link personality to healthrelated quality of life, body mass index, and chronic disease burden using longitudinal mediation in a structural equation modeling framework. Results: Self-reports, informant-reports, and general trait factors of personality predicted future inflammatory biomarker levels (unstandardized regression coefficients ranged À.08 to .07 for self, À.13 to À.10 for informants, and À.16 to À.11 for general). Additionally, all assessment methods of personality were associated with the indicators of physical health through biomarker and health behavior pathways. Effects were primarily found for conscientiousness and neuroticism; IL-6 and CRP were the biomarkers with the most indirect effects; and indirect paths overall emerged more frequently through health behaviors, but this varied by outcome. Conclusions: Self-and informant-reports provided unique predictive validity of inflammatory biomarkers. Findings highlight the benefits of using of multiple assessments of personality and the importance of examining multiple, distinct pathways by which personality might influence health to understand the mechanisms underlying this relationship more fully.

Childhood temperament and adulthood personality differentially predict life outcomes

“…Thus, our study should be considered a first step in examining this and future work is needed to confirm and expand upon the results. Second, different reporting methods were used (parent, self) which have been differently associated with life outcomes 42 , 60 . Third, an alternative explanation for the findings is content and/or structural differences between the two sets of individual differences 2 , 61 .…”

Do changes in personality predict life outcomes?

“…Agreeableness predicts volunteerism (Penner et al, 1995), religiosity (MacDonald, 2000), disease processes (Miller et al, 1996), and relationship satisfaction (Jensen-Campbell et al, 2002;Robins et al, 2002). Conscientiousness, one of the traits most strongly related to various outcomes, predicts occupational performance and success (Anderson et al, 2001;Barrick et al, 2001), longevity (Jackson et al, 2015), engagement in health and risk behaviors (Bogg & Roberts, 2004;Friedman et al, 2014;Wright et al, 2022), and relationship quality (Solomon & Jackson, 2014). Neuroticism likewise has many strong associations: higher levels predict lower well-being (Smith & Spiro, 2002), psychopathology (Trull & Sher, 1994;Wright & Jackson, 2022b), interpersonal problems (Karney & Bradbury, 1997), and poorer relationship quality (Donnellan et al, 2005).…”

“…This is expected if the mechanisms relating trait changes with outcomes reflect the same processes relating trait levels with life outcomes. For example, high levels of conscientiousness are associated with health via health behaviors (Hampson et al, 2007;Lodi-Smith et al, 2010;Wright et al, 2022) and physiological mechanisms (O'Súilleabháin et al, 2021;Wright et al, 2022). Increases in conscientiousness should thus lead to changes in these intermediary processes, such as an increase in health behaviors (Takahashi et al, 2013), thereby leading to greater health-promoting practices.…”

“…For example, both levels and changes in neuroticism were negatively predictive of future health status. The detrimental effect that neuroticism can have on one's health can stem from many sources (Friedman, 2019), including greater likelihood to engage in negative health behaviors (Wright et al, 2022), such as smoking and drinking (Turiano et al, 2012), cognitive decline (Terracciano et al, 2014;Terracciano et al, 2017), higher levels of inflammation (Graham et al, 2018;Sutin et al, 2010;Wright et al, 2022), and greater comorbidity of physical health problems with psychopathology (Kotov et al, 2010). The negative consequences of some of these risk factors take time to emerge, such that, for example, smoking a single cigarette will not immediately lead to cancer.…”

Is parent personality associated with adolescent outcomes for their child? A response surface analysis approach

“…For example, conscientiousness was positively related to their child's self-reported health status. Conscientiousness is the Big Five trait most routinely linked to health outcomes (Brummett et al, 2006;Hill et al, 2011;Jackson et al, 2015;Jokela et al, 2018;Wright et al, 2022) and is one of the main traits found to have compensatory effects on health in child-mother dyads (van Aken et al, 2007) and other interpersonal dyads such as romantic partners . Thus, the association of parent's conscientiousness with their child's health status, even when controlling for their child's level of conscientiousness, further underscores the utility of having conscientious people in one's social sphere.…”