Personality and Health, Subjective Well-Being, and Longevity Howard S. Friedman, Margaret L. Kern, and Chandra A. Reynolds University of California, Riverside ABSTRACT Personality traits can be employed to guide understanding of trajectories to health and longevity, but long-term longitudinal study and multifaceted assessment of healthy aging are crucial. Following up on the life span study initiated by Lewis Terman, we assessed 4 validated factors of personality in young adulthood in 1940, constructed a multifactor measure of participants’ healthy aging in 1986, and collected death certificates through 2007 (to determine longevity) on a sample of 1,312 Terman par- ticipants (732 men). Neuroticism predicted worse physical health and sub- jective well-being in old age and, for women, higher mortality risk, but for men, neuroticism predicted decreased mortality risk. For both sexes, extr- aversion predicted old-age social competence, whereas conscientiousness predicted men’s old-age productivity. Differential patterns of association between personality traits and healthy aging components are informative about individual personality characteristics and long-term health outcomes. There seems little doubt that good mental health is generally asso- ciated with good physical health and that neurotic patterns like chronic anxiety and depression are associated with various health This research was supported by NIA grants AG08825 (H. S. Friedman, PI) and AG027001 (C. A. Reynolds, PI). The authors would like to thank Dr. Leslie Martin for helpful comments. This paper is part of our larger multiyear project and includes up- dates to our previous work (additional death certificates, found subjects, and newly created and validated indexes). Previous work from this project is cited where appro- priate and overlapping findings should be noted when conducting meta-analyses or other reviews. Changes in Ns from paper to paper reflect differing time periods, ex- clusionary variables, and data updates. The current investigators bear full responsi- bility for all data refinements, new scales, analyses, and interpretations presented here. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Howard S. Fried- man, Department of Psychology, University of California, Riverside, California 92521. E-mail: Howard.Friedman@ucr.edu. Journal of Personality 78:1, February 2010 r 2010, Copyright the Authors Journal compilation r 2010, Wiley Periodicals, Inc. DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-6494.2009.00613.x