Personality traits affect health throughout adulthood. Recent research has demonstrated that attitudes toward own aging (ATOA) also play an important role in various health outcomes. To date, the role of personality versus ATOA for health has rarely been considered in parallel and contrasted for different periods of the second half of life, such as midlife versus early old age. We posit that with advancing age, associations of personality and ATOA with trajectories of health might change. To address this assumption, we examined trajectories of physician-rated health and its between-person and time-varying, within-person associations with personality (neuroticism and conscientiousness) and ATOA over 20 years in middle-aged (baseline age 43-46 years; n = 502) and older (61-65 years; n = 500) adults. Based on longitudinal multilevel regression models (controlling for gender and education), we found at the between-person level that lower neuroticism scores and more positive ATOA scores were independently associated with better physician-rated health at baseline. This association of ATOA with health was stronger in the old age sample than in the midlife sample. At the within-person level, time-varying associations revealed that both middle-aged and older individuals had better physician-rated health on measurement occasions when they reported more favorable ATOA. In addition, in the old age subsample alone, individuals' physician-rated health was better on occasions when they had higher conscientiousness scores. Our findings suggest that certain personality traits (conscientiousness, but not neuroticism) as well as attitudes toward own aging may gain in importance in later life as predictors of objective health changes. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

中文翻译：

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中年和老年人的20年健康轨迹：对比人格和态度对自身衰老的影响。

人格特质会影响整个成年期的健康。最近的研究表明，对自身衰老的态度（ATOA）在各种健康结果中也起着重要作用。迄今为止，很少有人同时考虑了人格与ATOA在健康方面的作用，并在下半生的不同时期（例如中年与老年）进行了对比。我们认为，随着年龄的增长，人格和ATOA与健康轨迹的关联可能会发生变化。为了解决这个假设，我们研究了20岁以上的中年人（基线年龄43-46岁）的医师评估的健康状况及其人际和时变，人际内与人格（神经质和尽责）和ATOA的关系。 ； n = 502）和年龄较大（61-65岁； n = 500）的成年人。基于纵向多层次回归模型（控制性别和教育程度），我们在人际关系水平上发现，较低的神经质评分和较高的ATOA评分与基线时较好的医师评分健康独立相关。ATOA与健康之间的这种关联在老年样本中比在中年样本中更强。在人际层面上，随时间变化的协会显示，中老年人在报告更有利的ATOA时，在测量时均具有更好的医师评估的健康水平。此外，仅在老年人子样本中，个人的尽职调查得分较高时，其医师评价的健康状况就会更好。我们的发现表明，某些人格特质（尽责，但对神经衰老的态度以及对自身衰老的态度，可能会在以后的生活中变得越来越重要，成为客观健康状况变化的预测指标。（PsycInfo数据库记录（c）2020 APA，保留所有权利）。