A life-span behavioral mechanism relating childhood conscientiousness to adult clinical health.

Abstract

Objective To investigate a lifespan health behavior mechanism relating childhood personality to adult clinical health. Methods Childhood Big Five personality traits at mean age 10, adult Big Five personality traits, adult clinically assessed dysregulation at mean age 51 (a summary of dysregulated blood glucose, blood pressure, and lipids), and a retrospective, cumulative measure of lifespan health-damaging behavior (lifetime smoking, physical inactivity, and Body Mass Index from age 20) were assessed in the Hawaii Personality and Health Cohort (N = 759). Structural equation modelling was used to test the conceptual model with direct and indirect paths from childhood Conscientiousness to adult Conscientiousness, lifespan health-damaging behaviors, educational attainment, adult cognitive ability, and adult clinic health. Results For both men and women, childhood Conscientiousness influenced health-damaging behaviors through educational attainment, and lifespan health-damaging behaviors predicted dysregulation. Childhood Conscientiousness predicted adult Conscientiousness, which did not predict any other variables in the model. For men, childhood Conscientiousness predicted dysregulation through educational attainment and health-damaging behaviors. For women, childhood Conscientiousness predicted dysregulation through educational attainment and adult cognitive ability. Conclusions Assessing cumulative lifespan health behaviors is a novel approach to the study of health behavior mechanisms. Childhood Conscientiousness appears to influence health assessed more than forty years later through complex processes involving educational attainment, cognitive ability, and the accumulated effects of health behaviors but not adult Conscientiousness.

Association of personality profiles with depressive, anxiety, and cancer-related symptoms in patients undergoing chemotherapy

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“…The participants in the Hawaii Longitudinal Study of Personality and Health have been described in detail elsewhere (e.g., Hampson et al, 2001; Hampson, Edmonds, Goldberg, Dubanoski, & Hiller, 2015). The Hawaii sample for the present report consisted of 1060 of the 1063 who completed the HBC (three participants with more than 4 missing HBC responses were excluded).…”