Personality development and health
Joshua J Jackson, Sara J Weston, Leah H Schultz
In *Personality Development Across the Lifespan* (Elsevier)
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.
What we did
Many studies link personality traits to health, sometimes decades later. The usual reading is that traits influence health, mostly through health behaviors such as diet, exercise, and smoking. Far less attention has gone to the reverse direction, in which health status might shape personality. In this chapter, we describe the existing evidence that health is associated with changes in personality.
We also discuss the potential mechanisms that relate the two. In other words, we ask not only whether health and personality change go together but also how one might lead to the other.
This summary is based on the published abstract.
Health may be one of the ways personality changes.