https://sarajweston.com/tags/personality/Recent content in Personality on Sara WestonHugoen-usWed, 01 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000https://sarajweston.com/publication/shryock-stability-2025/Wed, 01 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000https://sarajweston.com/publication/shryock-stability-2025/Using two experience sampling studies with a one-year gap, we asked how many observations per person it takes for average emotion and emotional variability to look like stable traits. Averages did so with a modest number of observations, variability much less so.https://sarajweston.com/publication/atherton-longitudinal-2024/Mon, 01 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000https://sarajweston.com/publication/atherton-longitudinal-2024/We followed about 7,000 U.S. adults over two decades to see how Big Five personality traits were associated with routine, scheduled, and urgent healthcare use, and whether age, income, insurance, and sense of control mattered.https://sarajweston.com/publication/lanning-person-community-2024/Mon, 01 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000https://sarajweston.com/publication/lanning-person-community-2024/We compared three ways of measuring how well a person’s personality fits their community, using data from 75,705 people across the US. Fit was modestly associated with education, health, and well-being, mostly because of normativity.https://sarajweston.com/publication/mather-scaling-2024/Mon, 01 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000https://sarajweston.com/publication/mather-scaling-2024/We built a multiple-choice version of the compound remote associates task, a common measure of associative ability, and tested its reliability and validity in four studies, one with more than a million participants.https://sarajweston.com/publication/weston-role-2024/Fri, 08 Aug 2025 04:41:45 +0000https://sarajweston.com/publication/weston-role-2024/We asked whether Big Five personality traits are associated with using health care over two decades among older U.S. adults, once chronic conditions and self-rated health are taken into account.https://sarajweston.com/publication/willroth-personality-2023/Sun, 01 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000https://sarajweston.com/publication/willroth-personality-2023/Across 15 samples and nearly 359,000 people, we found small but consistent associations between Big Five traits and visiting the dentist, seeing a general practitioner and being hospitalized. The pattern differed by type of care.https://sarajweston.com/publication/weston-body-2022/Fri, 08 Aug 2025 04:41:45 +0000https://sarajweston.com/publication/weston-body-2022/In about 9,500 US adolescents, parental socioeconomic status was more strongly associated with body mass percentile than any personality trait or cognitive ability. Narrow personality traits added a little more prediction than the Big Five.https://sarajweston.com/publication/goktan-personality-2022/Sat, 01 Jan 2022 00:00:00 +0000https://sarajweston.com/publication/goktan-personality-2022/Using three waves of MIDUS data spanning about 20 years, we examined how mental health care use and Big Five personality traits changed together over adulthood.https://sarajweston.com/publication/wright-prospective-2022/Sat, 01 Jan 2022 00:00:00 +0000https://sarajweston.com/publication/wright-prospective-2022/In older adults from St. Louis, personality reported by the participant and by someone who knows them well were each associated with later inflammation. Both were linked to later physical health through inflammation and through health behaviors.https://sarajweston.com/publication/condon-personality-2021/Fri, 08 Aug 2025 04:41:45 +0000https://sarajweston.com/publication/condon-personality-2021/We tracked the daily average personality of U.S. adults through 2020 and asked whether it shifted after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, and whether its ups and downs lined up with COVID-19 cases and the stock market.https://sarajweston.com/publication/mroczek-lifespan-2020/Wed, 01 Jan 2020 00:00:00 +0000https://sarajweston.com/publication/mroczek-lifespan-2020/A chapter on how personality shapes healthy aging through long chains of events, feedback loops, and effects that change across the lifespan, and how that might inform tailored interventions.https://sarajweston.com/publication/weston-2020-healthy/Fri, 08 Aug 2025 04:41:45 +0000https://sarajweston.com/publication/weston-2020-healthy/We tested whether conscientiousness changes the link between neuroticism and hypertension, diabetes, and heart disease across 15 longitudinal studies. We found no evidence that it does, either at one time point or in new diagnoses over time.https://sarajweston.com/publication/turiano-is-2020/Wed, 01 Jan 2020 00:00:00 +0000https://sarajweston.com/publication/turiano-is-2020/We asked whether neuroticism is only linked to earlier death when conscientiousness is low, using the same preregistered analysis in 12 longitudinal studies. We found no sign of that interaction in any study or in the pooled estimate.https://sarajweston.com/publication/weston-personality-2020/Wed, 01 Jan 2020 00:00:00 +0000https://sarajweston.com/publication/weston-personality-2020/In 665 middle-aged adults from the Hawaii Personality and Health Cohort, traits such as conscientiousness and openness were associated with eating more healthy and fewer unhealthy foods. The associations did not differ by socioeconomic status.https://sarajweston.com/publication/graham-trajectories-2020/Wed, 01 Jan 2020 00:00:00 +0000https://sarajweston.com/publication/graham-trajectories-2020/We fit the same growth models to 16 longitudinal samples of mostly midlife and older adults and combined the results. Extraversion, openness, and conscientiousness declined slightly on average, and neuroticism showed a U-shaped pattern.https://sarajweston.com/publication/weston-no-evidence-2019/Tue, 01 Jan 2019 00:00:00 +0000https://sarajweston.com/publication/weston-no-evidence-2019/We searched a long-running Hawaii cohort for signs that neuroticism is healthy for some people. Across conscientiousness, socioeconomic status, chronic disease, and neuroticism facets, we found none.https://sarajweston.com/publication/hill-co-development-2018/Mon, 01 Jan 2018 00:00:00 +0000https://sarajweston.com/publication/hill-co-development-2018/Using data from more than 20,000 older adults in the Health and Retirement Study, we examined how perceived support from children, family, friends, and spouses goes along with Big Five personality traits and with changes in those traits over time.https://sarajweston.com/publication/weston-who-2018/Fri, 08 Aug 2025 04:41:45 +0000https://sarajweston.com/publication/weston-who-2018/Using about 2 million bank transactions from 2,133 people, we looked at how Big Five personality traits are associated with holiday spending. Neuroticism and openness were each associated with spending somewhat less, and the associations were small.https://sarajweston.com/publication/condon-reconsidering-2017/Sun, 01 Jan 2017 00:00:00 +0000https://sarajweston.com/publication/condon-reconsidering-2017/A short commentary on an Institute of Medicine committee’s recommendations for which psychosocial measures belong in electronic health records. We argue the criteria are too restrictive and the process needs broader input.https://sarajweston.com/publication/weston-how-2016/Fri, 08 Aug 2025 04:41:45 +0000https://sarajweston.com/publication/weston-how-2016/We asked adults to imagine receiving worrying health news and to say what they would do next. Both the features of the news and the person’s personality traits were associated with the responses they reported.https://sarajweston.com/publication/weston-personality-2015/Fri, 08 Aug 2025 04:41:45 +0000https://sarajweston.com/publication/weston-personality-2015/In about 6,900 older adults followed for four years, personality traits, most notably conscientiousness, neuroticism, and openness, were associated with the risk of a new disease diagnosis.https://sarajweston.com/publication/weston-identification-2015/Fri, 08 Aug 2025 04:41:45 +0000https://sarajweston.com/publication/weston-identification-2015/We asked whether the combination of high neuroticism and high conscientiousness is associated with less smoking after a person develops a serious chronic disease. In a large national sample, it was, and only after disease onset.