Citation

Deary IJ, Weiss A, Batty GD. Psychol. Sci. Public Interest 2010; 11(2): 53-79.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2010, Association for Psychological Science, Publisher SAGE Publishing)

DOI

10.1177/1529100610387081

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

This monograph describes research findings linking intelligence and personality traits with health outcomes, including health behaviors, morbidity, and mortality. The field of study of intelligence and health outcomes is called cognitive epidemiology, and the field of study of personality traits and health outcomes is known as personological epidemiology. Intelligence and personality traits are the principal research topics studied by differential psychologists, so the combined field could be called differential epidemiology. This research is important for the following reasons: The findings overviewed are relatively new, and many researchers and practitioners are unaware of them; the effect sizes are on par with better-known, traditional risk factors for illness and death; mechanisms of the associations are largely unknown, so they must be explored further; and the findings have yet to be applied, so we write this to encourage diverse interested parties to consider how applications might be achieved.

Language: en