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Lifelong Pathways to Longevity: Personality, Relationships, Flourishing, and Health
Author(s) -
Kern Margaret L.,
Della Porta Serenity S.,
Friedman Howard S.
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
journal of personality
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.082
H-Index - 144
eISSN - 1467-6494
pISSN - 0022-3506
DOI - 10.1111/jopy.12062
Subject(s) - longevity , personality , psychology , flourishing , conscientiousness , developmental psychology , psychosocial , thriving , personality development , big five personality traits , life course approach , social psychology , gerontology , psychiatry , medicine , psychotherapist , extraversion and introversion
Building upon decades of research with the lifelong (nine‐decade) T erman Life Cycle Study, we present a life pathway model for understanding human thriving that accounts for long‐term individual difference in health and longevity, with a particular focus on child personality and adult social relationships. Developing data derived and supplemented from the T erman study ( N = 570 males, 451 females), we employed regression and survival analyses to test models of childhood personality predicting adult psychosocial factors (subjective well‐being, family relationships, community involvement, subjective achievement, hardships) and subsequent longevity. Child personality differentially related to midlife social relationships, well‐being, and hardships. Conscientiousness and good social relationships predicted longer life, whereas subjective well‐being was unrelated to mortality risk. Examining multiple life factors across long time periods uncovers important pathways through which personality relates to premature mortality or longevity. Typical stress‐and‐illness models are untenable and should be replaced with life span trajectory approaches.