Lifelong pathways to longevity: personality, relationships, flourishing, and health.
Building upon decades of research with the lifelong (nine-decade) Terman 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 Terman 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.
University of Pennsylvania.
Margaret L
ML
Kern
Serenity S
SS
Della Porta
Howard S
HS
Friedman
D000328:Adult; D002140:California / Q000453:epidemiology; D005260:Female; D005500:Follow-Up Studies; D006304:Health Status; D006801:Humans; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D008136:Longevity; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D008960:Models, Psychological; D009026:Mortality; D009497:Neurotic Disorders / Q000523:psychology; D010549:Personal Satisfaction; D010551:Personality; D010553:Personality Development; D012044:Regression Analysis; D012307:Risk Factors; D012649:Self Concept; D012941:Social Responsibility; D013315:Stress, Psychological; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D016019:Survival Analysis