Associations between major domains of personality and health behavior.

Abstract

The fitness and health of military personnel is important for operational readiness and effectiveness. This point is the basis for program's such as the Navy's Health and Physical Readiness Program. The effectiveness of those programs depends on an adequate understanding of the antecedents and consequences of the behaviors the programs attempt to modify. The present study examined personality as an antecedent of differences in health behaviors.A sample of U.S. Navy recruits (n = 103) and a sample of U.S. Marine Corps personnel (n = 76) completed standardized questionnaires to describe their personality and their habitual health behavior patterns. The personality measures included scales for neuroticism, extraversion, openness to experience, agreeableness, and conscientiousness, based on a growing consensus among personality researchers that these dimensions comprehensively cover the major personality domains. The health behavior measures included scales for wellness behaviors, accident prevention, substance-use risk taking, and traffic risk taking developed in prior Naval Health Research Center studies. Correlation and regression analyses were performed separately in each sample to estimate the relationships between personality and health behaviors. The results were pooled to produce overall estimates of the magnitude of associations and their statistical significance.The most important personality correlates of health behaviors were conscientiousness and agreeableness. In the multiple regression analyses, conscientiousness was related to engaging in more frequent wellness behaviors and accident control behaviors and less frequent traffic risk taking behaviors. Agreeableness was related to less traffic risk taking and substance use risk taking. In addition, openness to experience was the strongest single predictor of substance use risk taking and was related to higher risk taking. Extraversion was related to more frequent wellness behaviors. In combination, the personality variables accounted for 9% to 25% of the variance in the health behavior variables.Personality variables merit more attention than they have received in health behavior research. Knowledge of the personality composition of the target population for a program such as the Navy's Health and Physical Readiness Program can be used in two ways to enhance the impact of these programs. One way is by identifying general behavioral trends that must be overcome for a program to be effective. A second way is by providing a basis for selecting the -2-most suitable types of intervention programs for the target population. For example, simply providing information about the need for good health behaviors and the appropriate methods for incorporating those behaviors into one's life style may be sufficient when dealing with people who are high on conscientiousness. For people who are low on conscientiousness, programs which rely more on involvement with peers may be appropriate, particularly among those who are agreeable and presumably more responsive to that ...

Who is a Distracted Driver? Associations between Mobile Phone Use while Driving, Domain‐Specific Risk Taking, and Personality

“…Largely consistent with past studies investigating the associations between personality and other risky driving behaviors, we found that greater conscientiousness and honesty/humility were associated with fewer reported risk behaviors and heightened risk perceptions. These findings reinforce past work investigating personality correlates of risky driving behaviors . Similarly, the current results also reinforce a burgeoning literature that explicates the association between honesty/humility and risk taking, especially in health/safety and ethical domains.…”

“…However, our results are largely consistent with their observed correlations with respect to openness and distracted driving in teenagers. Additionally, if one considers how agreeableness in Big 5 models corresponds with agreeableness and honesty/humility dimensions in the HEXACO model, the current results provide convergent evidence of the association between low agreeableness and risky driving, and extend it to an adult population.…”

“…Studies using the five‐factor model, or the “Big 5” (neuroticism, extraversion, openness, agreeableness, and conscientiousness), have yielded similar results. Specifically, greater conscientiousness, a trait dimension related to reasoned and planned behaviors, has been associated with lower incidences of risky driving behavior, in addition to a wide range of health‐risking behaviors …”

Smoking and the Five‐Factor Model of personality

“…Low conscientiousness has been associated with other health risk behaviors (see Trobst et al . 2000), and the present study supports the view that conscientiousness is the strongest personality predictor of health risk behaviors (Booth‐Kewley & Vickers 1994). It is worth noting that the personality dimension of conscientiousness, which showed the largest association to smoking behavior in this study, has rarely been considered in previous studies.…”

“…Vollrath, Knoch & Cassano (1999) found smoking to be inversely related to self‐reported agreeableness. There is evidence that low conscientiousness is related to health risk behaviors (Booth‐Kewley & Vickers 1994; Vollrath et al . 1999; Trobst et al .…”