Key result
A 1-SD increase in neuroticism was associated with >50% higher risk of fair to poor health, while higher extraversion, openness, agreeableness, and conscientiousness lowered risk by at least 15%.
Why the study?
No large-scale, multi-cohort study had examined the link between personality traits and self-rated health, and few studies had evaluated personality and change in self-rated health.
Do personality traits predict concurrent and longitudinal self-rated health in a general population?
Cohort (n=46,000)
Yes
Do personality traits predict concurrent and longitudinal self-rated health in a general population?
Lower neuroticism and higher extraversion, openness, agreeableness, and conscientiousness are consistently associated with more favorable self-evaluations of health across multiple international cohorts.
Supports personality–self-rated health link; leaves open causality and clinical relevance.
RATIONALE: There is substantial evidence for the predictive value of single-item selfrated health measures for a range of health outcomes. Past research has found an association between personality traits and self-rated health. However, there has not been a multi-cohort large-scale study that has examined this link, and few studies have examined the association between personality and change in self-rated health. OBJECTIVE: To examine the concurrent and longitudinal association between personality and self-rated health. METHOD: Participants were individuals aged from 16 to 107 years (N > 46,000) drawn from eight large longitudinal samples from the US, Europe, and Japan. Brief measures of the five-factor model of personality, a single item measure of self-rated health, and covariates (age, sex, and education, and race) were assessed at baseline and self-rated health was measured again 3-20 years later. RESULTS: In cross-sectional analyses, higher neuroticism was related to lower self-rated health whereas higher extraversion, openness, agreeableness and conscientiousness were associated with better self-rated health across most samples. A meta-analysis revealed that a one standard deviation higher neuroticism was related to more than 50% higher risk of fair to poor health, whereas a one standard deviation higher extraversion, openness, agreeableness and conscientiousness was associated with at least 15% lower risk of fair or poor health. A similar pattern was found in longitudinal analyses: personality was associated with risk of self-rated excellent/very good/good health at baseline becoming fair/poor at follow-up. In multilevel analyses, however, personality was weakly related to trajectories of self-rated health and in the opposite of the expected direction. CONCLUSIONS: The present study shows replicable cross-sectional and small longitudinal associations between personality and self-rated health. This study suggests that lower neuroticism, higher extraversion, openness, agreeableness and conscientiousness are related to more favorable self-evaluations of health.
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Stéphan et al. (2020) reported a cohort. Five-factor model personality traits was evaluated on Self-rated health (fair to poor health). A 1-SD increase in neuroticism was associated with >50% higher risk of fair to poor health, while higher extraversion, openness, agreeableness, and conscientiousness lowered risk by at least 15%.
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