Personality Development Across the Lifespan

Abstract

Numerous studies that link personality traits with health status, sometimes decades in the future, providing a strong claim for personality traits to causally influence physical health. While the prevailing consensus is that personality traits influence health through intermediary processes like health behaviors, less discussed is the possibility that health status influences personality. In this chapter, we describe the existing evidence that health is associated with changes in personality and discuss the potential mechanisms that relate the two.