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Journal of Health Psychology
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Individuality in Vulnerability

Influences on Physical Health

Karen L. Horner

Ohio State University, Mansfield, Ohio, USA

The relation between personality traits, environmental stressors and their impact, coping behaviors, and health status was examined, as were pathways through which health is influenced by these individual difference variables. It was hypothesized that personality predicts susceptibility to stressors and coping mechanisms that modify the cognitive and affective reactions that influence health status. Two hundred and eighty- four university students completed self-report questionnaires. Ego resilience, low neuroticism, hardiness, internal locus of control, and extraversion loaded on a factor moderately related, indirectly, to health status. A path analysis testing sexes separately revealed that men with a vital personality (i.e. emotionally calm but flexible, self-reliant, and hardy) reported perceiving fewer environmental threats, using more efficacious coping behaviors, and experiencing lower levels of negative affect and better health status than did less self-possessed persons. Similar results emerged for women except that stressors predicted health status independently of personality influences. Moreover, the use of wishful thinking predicted health status directly for men but not for women. Personality appears to be related to poor health, through ineffective coping and consequent negative affect.

Key Words: coping • personality • physical illness • sex differences • stressors

Journal of Health Psychology, Vol. 3, No. 1, 71-85 (1998)
DOI: 10.1177/135910539800300106
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