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Personality traits as risk factors for stroke and coronary heart disease mortality: pooled analysis of three cohort studies

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Abstract

We examined whether personality traits are differently associated with coronary heart disease and stroke mortality. Participants were pooled from three prospective cohort studies (Health and Retirement Study, Wisconsin Longitudinal Study graduate and sibling samples; n = 24,543 men and women, mean age 61.4 years, mortality follow-up between 3 and 15 years). There were 423 coronary heart disease deaths and 88 stroke deaths during 212,542 person-years at risk. Higher extraversion was associated with an increased risk of stroke (hazard ratio per each standard deviation increase in personality trait HR = 1.41, 95 % CI 1.10–1.80) but not with coronary heart disease mortality (HR = 0.93, 0.83–1.05). High neuroticism, in turn, was more strongly related to the risk of coronary heart disease (HR = 1.16, 1.04–1.29) than stroke deaths (HR = 0.95, 0.78–1.17). High conscientiousness was associated with lower mortality risk from both coronary heart disease (HR = 0.74, 0.67–0.81) and stroke (HR = 0.78, 0.63–0.97). Cardiovascular risk associated with personality traits appears to vary between main cardiac and cerebral disease endpoints.

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Acknowledgments

MK is an Economic and Social Research Council Professor and is supported by the Academy of Finland; Medical Research Council (MRC, K013351); the US National Institutes of Health (R01HL036310; R01AG034454); and the Finnish Work Environment Fund. LPR was supported by the Juho Vainio Foundation and the Academy of Finland (MIND). The research uses data from the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study (WLS) of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Since 1991, the WLS has been supported principally by the National Institute on Aging (AG-9775 and AG-21079), with additional support from the Vilas Estate Trust, the National Science Foundation, the Spencer Foundation, and the Graduate School of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. A public use file of data from the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study is available from the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1180 Observatory Drive, Madison, Wisconsin 53706 and at http://www.ssc.wisc.edu/wlsresearch/data/. The interpretations, opinions, and inferences based on the data are solely the responsibility of the authors.

Conflict of interest

None of the authors have any competing interests. The study sponsors did not contribute to the study design and had no role in data collection, data analysis, data interpretation, or the writing of the report.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Behavioural Sciences, University of Helsinki, Siltavuorenpenger 1A, P.O. Box 9, 00014, Helsinki, Finland

    Markus Jokela & Laura Pulkki-Råback

  2. Department of Psychology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK

    Markus Jokela

  3. National Institute of Health and Welfare, Helsinki, Finland

    Marko Elovainio

  4. Research Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, University College London, London, UK

    Mika Kivimäki

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  1. Markus Jokela
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Jokela, M., Pulkki-Råback, L., Elovainio, M. et al. Personality traits as risk factors for stroke and coronary heart disease mortality: pooled analysis of three cohort studies. J Behav Med 37, 881–889 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10865-013-9548-z

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