A sample of 704 cognitively intact individuals (M age = 63.7 years) performed a battery of cognitive tests on as many as three occasions, at approximately 3-year intervals. The authors used random effects models to analyze cross-sectional relationships between cognitive performance and state anxiety and longitudinal relationships between cognitive change and neuroticism, after controlling for g...

Many clinicians and researchers hypothesize that tobacco use disorders, regardless of the route of administration, are maintained by the ability of nicotine to regulate positive and negative mood states. The present study (N=137) examined whether certain mood states predicted dependence on either cigarettes or smokeless tobacco and whether specific personality characteristics (e.g., extraversio...

The personality traits neuroticism and alexithymia have been hypothesized as predisposing factors for somatization. Stability over time is a basic assumption underlying any trait construct. Although there are considerable (and sometimes conflicting) data relevant to this issue, the stability of neuroticism and alexithymia has not been assessed in somatization. The main purpose of this study was...

BACKGROUND Brain volume decreases with normal aging. We sought to determine whether, in addition to age, individual differences in stress reactivity (i.e., neuroticism) would also predict reductions in brain volume. METHODS Brain volume ratios were calculated for a sample of 86 healthy volunteers, based on segmented brain volumes taken from T(1)-weighted magnetic resonance imaging and correct...

The present investigation extends previous work on the relationship between daily stressors and memory failures in a naturalistic setting by examining whether this relationship varies across levels of neuroticism. A daily diary study of 333 older adults (mean age = 73.27 years, SD = 7.17) in the Veterans Affairs Normative Aging Study (see A. Spiro & R. Bossé, 2001, for additional information) w...

BACKGROUND Neuroticism is frequently discussed as a risk factor for psychopathology. According to the maturity principle, neuroticism decreases over the course of life, but not uniformly across individuals. However, the implications of differences in personality maturation on mental health have not been well studied so far. Hence, we hypothesized that different forms of neuroticism development ...

Stability and change in the mean levels and sources of variation in personality was examined. A sample of 149 monozygotic and 202 dizygotic twin pairs over 80 years were studied three times with a 2-year interval between measurement occasions. The Eysenck Personality Inventory to measure extraversion and neuroticism was used. Linear mixed models and Cholesky variance decomposition were carried ...

Do high levels of neuroticism predict intimate partner violence (IPV)? Although neuroticism may predispose partners to increased risks of IPV perpetration, the extent to which it predicts such perpetration is likely to depend on the broader context of the relationship. Consistent with this prediction, the current longitudinal study of 169 community couples revealed that the effects of neurotici...

We found evidence of a mutual suppression effect between anxiety and depression on an individual's level of commitment within escalation dilemmas. On the one hand, our results demonstrate a positive relationship between anxiety and level of commitment; on the other, our results demonstrate a negative relationship between depression and level of commitment. Based on the opposing relationships be...