Personality & Physical Health Flashcards
What were the 5-year survival rates for recipients of Medicare aged 65-100 affected by
Conscientiousness (high lead to sig longer survival)
What did Matthews et al (2009) say were the 4 potential pathways?
- Direct causation (personality trait -> health)
- Correlational
- Causal chain (personality trait -> behaviour -> health)
- Somatogenic (health -> personality trait)
What did Friedman & Rosenman (1959) find for disease-prone personality types?
- Personality factors that predict Cardiovascular diseases (CVD)
- Type A: Competitive, ambitious, aggressive, impatient
- Type B: Relaxed, takes life as it comes
- Can be thought of as a continuum
Measuring Type A personality
- Challenging interview-based measure captured anger & hostility components
- Self-report ‘Jenkins Activity Survey’ covers broader range of components
What did Maltby, Day & Macaskill (2017) find for type A and CVD risk?
- Longitudinal studies found inconsistent findings
- Meta-analyses found sig but modest effect of type A on CVD, showed that differences in results may be linked to the type of assessment
What did Glass (1977) find for Type A and CVD?
- 3 Separable components of type A: competitiveness, sense of urgency, hostility
- Anger & hostility sig associated with heart disease incidence & prognosis
- Hostility likely to be direct causation of reactivity to stress
What is Type C personality? (Kissen & Eyesnck, 1962)
- Cancer prone
- High extroversion, low neuroticism
- Suppressing and repressing emotions
- Little convincing evidence
What is Type D personality (Denollet, 2002)?
- Distressed, depressed & socially inhibited
- Poorer recovery from heart attack and increased risk of future heart problems
What did Chapman et al (2011) find about the effect of conscientiousness on health?
- Clear link between it and longevity
- Support for causal behavioural chain mechanism
- Potential causal biological chain mechanism (better coping = lower stress hormone = increased longevity)
What did O’Conner et al (2009) find about the effect of conscientiousness on health?
High conscientiousness associated w fewer daily stressors and better coping (e.g., going on a walk)
What did Chapman et al (2011) find about the effects of neuroticism on health?
- Reduced longevity
- But some confounding effects of socio-economic status (SES)
- Low SES has been linked to high neuroticism and worse health outcomes
- So relationship could be correlational, not causal
Inconsistent results of Neuroticism and health
- Not all studies suggest its is linked to reduced longevity
- Friedman (2002) proposed there may be healthy and unhealthy neuroticism
What did Chapman et al (2011) find on the effects of extraversion on health?
- Mixed results
- Different effects of specific characteristics
- Impulsivity is associated w destructive behaviours
- Positive associations between extraversion and mortality partly explained by smoking
What did Ploubidis & Grundy (2009) find on the effects of extraversion on health?
- 9003 ppl completed EPI (Eysenck Personality Inventory)
- 5755 followed up 20 years later
- Higher levels of extraversion associated w increased mortality
- Ppl higher in impulsivity
What did Weiss et al (2013) find on the effects of extraversion on health?
- More social ties (buffer against stress) + active, engaged life = increased longevity
- Extraversion = increased immune functioning
- But not a clear causal link underlying this
What was Weiss et al (2012)’s study on extraverted gorillas?
- Personality ratings of 283 captive gorillas on ‘Gorilla Behaviour Index’
- Mean age 16.5 years at baseline
- At follow up 119 had died
- Only personality trait associated with survival was extraversion
- Death rates decreased as extraversion increased
What did Chapman et al (2011) find on the effects of openness to experience on health?
- Good evidence for positive association with longevity
- Mechanisms unclear
- Related to cognitive reserve
- Cognitive and educational activities could lead to better health decision making
What is cognitive reserve?
Resilience to effects of neural disease or injury
Dementia and cognitive reserve
- People can have high levels of dementia in brain but cognitive functions unaffected
- May have high levels of cognitive reserve
- Lessening impact of disease
What did Waxman et al (2013) find about somatogenic pathways?
- Very low birth weight associated with lower extroversion & openness to experience and higher neuroticism, agreeableness & conscientiousness
- Higher cautiousness
What are the potential mechanisms behind cautiousness and low birth weight?
- Extra-uterine brain development
- Subsequent illness (may be more cautious due to susceptibility)
- Higher parental monitoring and behavioural restrictions
What did Jokela et al (2014) find about somatogenic pathways?
- Impact of chronic disease on Big 5 traits
- Those w one or two health conditions weren’t sig different in extraversion from those w none
- Those w 3 or more had sig lower extraversion
- Increasing effects w increasing health conditions for neuroticism, conscientiousness and openness to experience as well
- Size of effects differed across health conditions (largest for strokes, smallest for cancer)
What chronic diseases did Jokela at al (2014) find to impact the Big 5
Heart disease, Stroke, Diabetes, Cancer, Respiratory disease, Arthritis, Hypertension
What are the potential mechanisms behind impact of health on Big 5?
- Some diseases affect neural function
- Coping w distress and challenges of disease may account for increases in neuroticism
- Fatigue could decrease extraversion
- Lowered ability to organise life could decrease conscientiousness
