How do people respond to health news? The role of personality traits

Turiano

et al. 2020

Collabra: Psychology

Self Cite

Current literature suggests that neuroticism is positively associated with maladaptive life choices, likelihood of disease, and mortality. However, recent research has identified circumstances under which neuroticism is associated with positive outcomes. The current project examined whether "healthy neuroticism", defined as the interaction of neuroticism and conscientiousness, was associated with the following health behaviors: smoking, alcohol consumption, and physical activity. Using a pre-registered multi-study coordinated integrative data analysis (IDA) approach, we investigated whether "healthy neuroticism" predicted the odds of engaging in each of the aforementioned activities. Each study estimated identical models, using the same covariates and data transformations, enabling optimal comparability of results. These results were then meta-analyzed in order to estimate an average (N-weighted) effect and to ascertain the extent of heterogeneity in the effects. Overall, these results suggest that neuroticism alone was not related to health behaviors, while individuals higher in conscientiousness were less likely to be smokers or drinkers, and more likely to engage in physical activity. In terms of the healthy neuroticism interaction of neuroticism and conscientiousness, significant interactions for smoking and physical activity suggest that the association between neuroticism and health behaviors was smaller among those high in conscientiousness. These findings lend credence to the idea that healthy neuroticism may be linked to certain health behaviors and that these effects are generalizable across several heterogeneous samples.

Section: Neuroticism and Healthmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Neuroticism and Healthmentioning

confidence: 99%

Is Healthy Neuroticism Associated with Health Behaviors? A Coordinated Integrative Data Analysis

Graham

Turiano

et al. 2020

Collabra: Psychology

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“…Neuroticism may also be associated with healthier behaviors. Individuals high in neuroticism report that they would be likely to engage in a number of adaptive behaviors, like research or seeking social support, after receiving bad health news (Weston & Jackson, 2016).…”

Section: Exploratory Analysis: Is the Relationship Between Neuroticism And Body Vigilance Dependent Upon Having Experienced A Major Healtmentioning

confidence: 99%

The role of vigilance in the relationship between neuroticism and health: A registered report

Journal of Research in Personality

Jackson

2018

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The theory of healthy neuroticism, that neuroticism can impact health through both negative and positive pathways, often relies on descriptions of vigilance to illustrate beneficial effects. The current study is among the first to describe the relationship of neuroticism to body vigilance and test the degree to which this relationship impacts health. In an online participant panel (N = 1055), neuroticism was associated with one factor of vigilance: sensation awareness belief. This factor had a suppression effect on the relationship between neuroticism and healthy behavior, such that the effect of neuroticism through vigilance was healthy, whereas the direct effect was unhealthy. We discuss the implications of these findings and caution against using vigilance to explain the heterogeneity in neuroticism-health relationships.

“…Sometimes, the interaction is only present in three-way interactions, such as the interaction of conscientiousness, neuroticism, and gender to predict mortality risk in Friedman et al (2010), or in subsamples, such as only among individuals diagnosed with some chronic conditions in Weston and Jackson (2015). Moreover, a number of empirical studies show no relationship of this interaction to health behaviors (e.g., Atherton et al, 2014), adaptive responding to health news (Weston and Jackson, 2016), or more distal outcomes, such as frailty (Stephan et al, 2017). It is unclear whether these discrepant results are due to each of these analyses being underpowered to detect the interaction (McClelland and Judd, 1993), or if this interaction is only related to health among some populations or when measured using certain instruments, or if the true interaction effect is null and the published significant results are simply capturing spurious effects.…”

Section: Motivationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Coordinated Data Analysis: A New Method for the Study of Personality and Health

International Perspectives on Aging

Graham²,

Piccinin

2020

Self Cite

A majority of research by personality psychologists examining health has utilized publicly available datasets, for good reason. These resources are often the only available datasets large enough to detect expected effect sizes and may contain biological or genetic data that is difficult to obtain. However, researchers tend to examine only one large dataset at a time. Given recent meta-research on the robustness and replicability of "established" findings, all researchers should take greater care to evaluate the evidentiary value of their findings and seek methods to increase their robustness. Personality and aging psychologists who use publicly available datasets have a unique tool at their disposal in order to achieve this goal, namely, more publicly available datasets. More specifically, psychologists may use coordinated analysis (Hofer and Piccinin, 2009; Piccinin and Hofer, 2008) to examine relationships across several large datasets and, using the tools of meta-analysis, identify generalizable effect sizes and examine heterogeneity across countries and methods. This chapter describes the motivation for coordinated analysis, the process of using this method, and details several examples.