Objectives: This longitudinal study tests whether the Big-Five personality traits influence the changes individuals make in self-rated health (SRH) as they adjust their initial level to account for information on concurrent changes in disease burden, activities of daily living (ADLs), and pain. Methods: A bi-variate Latent Growth Curve model was fitted to data to estimate longitudinal associations between SRH and each health measure across up-to-five repeated observations, collected from the year 2006 to 2018 from 13,096 participants in the Health and Retirement Study. Results: Negative longitudinal associations between SRH and all three health reports were significantly stronger for those who are more conscientious. No significant moderation was found for the other four personality traits. Discussion: Compared to the less conscientious, highly conscientious people may assign greater importance to specific health reports when rating and revising their assessments of SRH. This moderating effect was previously tested but not supported.
Aiken-MorganA. T.BichselJ.SavlaJ.EdwardsC. L.WhitfieldK. E. (2014). Associations between self-rated health and personality. Ethnicity and Disease, 24(4), 418–422.
2.
AllenT. A.DeYoungC. G. (2017). Personality neuroscience and the five factor model. In Oxford handbook of the five factor model (p. 52). Oxford Library of Psychology.
3.
BenyaminiY. (2011). Why does self-rated health predict mortality? An update on current knowledge and a research agenda for psychologists.
4.
BloemenH.HochguertelS.ZweerinkJ. (2017). The causal effect of retirement on mortality: Evidence from targeted incentives to retire early. Health Economics, 26(12), Article e204–e218. https://doi.org/10.1002/hec.3493
5.
BoggT.RobertsB. W. (2013). The case for conscientiousness: Evidence and implications for a personality trait marker of health and longevity. Annals of Behavioral Medicine: A Publication of the Society of Behavioral Medicine, 45(3), 278–288. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12160-012-9454-6
DeclerckC. H.BooneC.De BrabanderB. (2006). On feeling in control: A biological theory for individual differences in control perception. Brain and Cognition, 62(2), 143–176. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bandc.2006.04.004
8.
DenovanA.DagnallN.LofthouseG. (2019). Neuroticism and somatic complaints: Concomitant effects of rumination and worry. Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapy, 47(4), 431–445. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1352465818000619
9.
DowdJ. B.ZajacovaA. (2010). Does self-rated health mean the same thing across socioeconomic groups? Evidence from biomarker data. Annals of Epidemiology, 20(10), 743–749. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.annepidem.2010.06.007
10.
FeldmanP. J.CohenS.DoyleW. J.SkonerD. P.GwaltneyJ. M.Jr. (1999). The impact of personality on the reporting of unfounded symptoms and illness. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 77(2), 370–378. https://doi.org/10.1037//0022-3514.77.2.370
11.
GomezR.GomezA.CooperA. (2002). Neuroticism and extraversion as predictors of negative and positive emotional information processing: Comparing Eysenck’s, Gray’s, and Newman’s theories. European Journal of Personality, 16(5), 333–350. https://doi.org/10.1002/per.459
12.
GustmanA. L.SteinmeierT. L. (2000). Retirement outcomes in the health and retirement study. National Bureau of Economic Research.
13.
HarkinsS. W.PriceD. D.BraithJ. (1989). Effects of extraversion and neuroticism on experimental pain, clinical pain, and illness behavior. Pain, 36(2), 209–218. https://doi.org/10.1016/0304-3959(89)90025-0
14.
HenningG.BergA. I.CengiaA.HanssonI.SpulingS. M.WettsteinM. (2021). Do neuroticism and conscientiousness interact with health conditions in predicting 4-year changes in self-rated health among Swedish older adults?Psychology and Aging, 36(6), 730–743. https://doi.org/10.1037/pag0000626
15.
HirdesJ. P.ForbesW. F. (1993). Factors associated with the maintenance of good self-rated health. Journal of Aging and Health, 5(1), 101–122. https://doi.org/10.1177/089826439300500105
16.
HuismanM.DeegD. J. (2010). A commentary on Marja Jylhä’s “what is self-rated health and why does it predict mortality? Towards a unified conceptual model”(69: 3, 2009, 307–316). Social Science and Medicine, 70(5), 652–654. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2009.11.003
17.
IdlerE. L.BenyaminiY. (1997). Self-rated health and mortality: A review of twenty-seven community studies. Journal of Health and Social Behavior, 38(1), 21–37. https://doi.org/10.2307/2955359
18.
JylhäM. (2009). What is self-rated health and why does it predict mortality? Towards a unified conceptual model. Social Science and Medicine, 69(3), 307–316. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2009.05.013
19.
JylhäM.VolpatoS.GuralnikJ. M. (2006). Self-rated health showed a graded association with frequently used biomarkers in a large population sample. Journal of Clinical Epidemiology, 59(5), 465–471. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclinepi.2005.12.004
20.
KlimstraT. A.BleidornW.AsendorpfJ. B.Van AkenM. A.DenissenJ. J. (2013). Correlated change of Big five personality traits across the lifespan: A search for determinants. Journal of Research in Personality, 47(6), 768–777. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrp.2013.08.004
21.
Kööts–AusmeesL.SchmidtM.EskoT.MetspaluA.AllikJ.RealoA. (2016). The role of the five–factor personality traits in general self–rated health. European Journal of Personality, 30(5), 492–504. https://doi.org/10.1002/per.2058
22.
LazarevičP.BrandtM. (2020). Diverging ideas of health? Comparing the basis of health ratings across gender, age, and country. Social Science and Medicine, 267, 112913. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2020.112913
23.
LöckenhoffC. E.TerraccianoA.FerrucciL.CostaP. T.Jr. (2012). Five-factor personality traits and age trajectories of self-rated health: The role of question framing. Journal of Personality, 80(2), 375–401. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-6494.2011.00724.x
OiK. (2020). Disuse as time away from a cognitively demanding job; how does it temporally or developmentally impact late-life cognition?Intelligence, 82, 101484. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.intell.2020.101484
26.
Quesnel–ValléeA. (2007). Self-rated health: Caught in the crossfire of the quest for ‘true’health?International Journal of Epidemiology, 36(6), 1161–1164. https://doi.org/10.1093/ije/dym236
27.
RafieniaP.AzadfallahP.Fathi-AshtianiA.Rasoulzadeh-TabatabaieiK. (2008). The role of extraversion, neuroticism and positive and negative mood in emotional information processing. Personality and Individual Differences, 44(2), 392–402. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2007.08.018
28.
RobertsB. W.KuncelN. R.ShinerR.CaspiA.GoldbergL. R. (2007). The power of personality: The comparative validity of personality traits, socioeconomic status, and cognitive ability for predicting important life outcomes. Perspectives on Psychological Science: A Journal of the Association for Psychological Science, 2(4), 313–345. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1745-6916.2007.00047.x
29.
SmithJ.RyanL.SonnegaA.WeirD. (2017). Psychosocial and lifestyle questionnaire 2006–2016. Survey Research Center, Institute for Social Research.
30.
SočanG.BucikV. (1998). Relationship between speed of information-processing and two major personality dimensions—extraversion and neuroticism. Personality and Individual Differences, 25(1), 35–48. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0191-8869(98)00031-2
31.
SpulingS. M.WurmS.Tesch-RömerC.HuxholdO. (2015). Changing predictors of self-rated health: Disentangling age and cohort effects. Psychology and Aging, 30(2), 462–474. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0039111
32.
StenholmS.PenttiJ.KawachiI.WesterlundH.KivimäkiM.VahteraJ. (2014). Self-rated health in the last 12 years of life compared to matched surviving controls: The Health and Retirement Study. PloS One, 9(9), Article e107879. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0107879
33.
StephanY.SutinA. R.LuchettiM.HognonL.CanadaB.TerraccianoA. (2020). Personality and self-rated health across eight cohort studies. Social Science and Medicine, 263, 113245. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2020.113245
34.
TurianoN. A.PitzerL.ArmourC.KarlamanglaA.RyffC. D.MroczekD. K. (2012). Personality trait level and change as predictors of health outcomes: Findings from a national study of Americans (MIDUS). The Journals of Gerontology. Series B, Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences, 67(1), 4–12. https://doi.org/10.1093/geronb/gbr072
35.
WadeJ. B.DoughertyL. M.HartR. P.RafiiA.PriceD. D. (1992). A canonical correlation analysis of the influence of neuroticism and extraversion on chronic pain, suffering, and pain behavior. Pain, 51(1), 67–73. https://doi.org/10.1016/0304-3959(92)90010-9
36.
WilliamsP. G.O'BrienC. D.ColderC. R. (2004). The effects of neuroticism and extraversion on self-assessed health and health-relevant cognition. Personality and Individual Differences, 37(1), 83–94. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2003.08.001
37.
XiaY.YangY. (2019). RMSEA, CFI, and TLI in structural equation modeling with ordered categorical data: The story they tell depends on the estimation methods. Behavior Research Methods, 51(1), 409–428. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13428-018-1055-2
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
