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Big-Five personality factors, obesity and 2-year weight gain in Australian adults

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Abstract

The objective of this paper was to examine whether the Big-Five Personality factors were associated with obesity and 2-year weight gain in Australian adults. The sample included 5265 Australian adults aged 25–65 years. Binary logistic regression models indicated that Extraversion, Agreeableness and Neuroticism were cross-sectionally associated with obesity, with Conscientiousness inversely associated with obesity. The longitudinal analyses indicated that Extraversion predicted 2-year weight gain. The relationships between personality and obesity/weight gain were not moderated by age or sex. These results have potentially important implications for developing more effective treatment and prevention strategies for obesity.

Introduction

Recent research suggests that personality is implicated in the aetiology of obesity, which could aid the development of more effective obesity interventions. Cross-sectional studies indicate that traits such as Neuroticism (N) and (Eysenckian) Psychoticism (P) are positively associated with body mass index (BMI), which is a widely used measure of body weight status (Brummett et al., 2006). In contrast, Conscientiousness (C) may be protective against obesity as it is inversely associated with BMI (Brummett et al., 2006). The findings for Extraversion (E) have been mixed; some studies report positive associations between E and BMI (Kakizaki et al., 2008), while others report no significant relationship (Brummett et al., 2006). Other personality traits such as novelty seeking and low self-directedness have also been linked with BMI (Sullivan, Cloninger, Przybeck, & Klein, 2007).

Importantly, longitudinal data are lacking in this area. Brummett et al. (2006) found that lower C predicted larger increases in BMI over a 14-year period. Terracciano et al. (2009) demonstrated that impulsiveness was positively correlated with 3-year weight gain in 4765 adults. These two studies provide some insight into the nature of the association between personality and weight change, but more longitudinal studies are required.

There is also a need to identify mechanisms linking personality traits with obesity and weight gain. One possibility is that personality influences body weight indirectly via lifestyle and behavioural factors. For example, Cs may be less likely to be obese and gain weight because they engage in health-enhancing behaviours such as regular physical activity (Goldberg and Strycker, 2002). Therefore certain health behaviours such as physical activity, alcohol consumption and diet may mediate the association between personality and obesity, but this has not yet been investigated.

The objective of this paper was to investigate the associations between personality, assessed in the context of the Five-Factor model of personality (Costa & McCrae, 1985), and obesity. This involved examining whether personality traits were associated with baseline obesity (cross-sectional analysis) and 2-year weight change (longitudinal analysis). We tested whether age and sex moderated these associations, consistent with previous studies. For example, Faith, Flint, Fairburn, Goodwin, and Allison (2001) found that E was negatively associated with BMI in females, but positively in males, and that N was linked with elevated BMI in females only. We also tested whether health behaviours (i.e. physical activity and alcohol consumption) mediated the associations between personality and obesity/weight gain.

Section snippets

Participants

We utilised data collected through the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey, a household panel study that commenced in 2001 and involves follow-up collection every 12 months. The HILDA survey collects diverse information on demographic factors, health behaviours and personality variables through a face-to-face interview and self-completed questionnaire. The present study utilised data from three waves of the HILDA study (waves 5, 6 and 8) collected between 2005 and

Preliminary analyses

The demographic characteristics of the sample (including differences between males and females) are shown in Table 1. At baseline, 23.7% of participants were obese and this was slightly higher in males (24.3%) than females (23.2%). The stability of BMI was high (r = .847), with 22.5% of the sample gaining >5% body weight over the 2-year period. Females were significantly more likely to have gained >5% body weight compared to males (26.1% versus 18.5%). There were some sex differences in regards

Discussion

The present cross-sectional results indicated that C was associated with a reduced likelihood of baseline obesity, whereas A, N, and E were associated with an increased likelihood of obesity. These associations were independent of a range of health and demographic factors, and were not moderated by age or sex. These results add support to existing research examining the relationships between personality traits and obesity.

C was inversely associated with obesity, which is consistent with

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    Rather, we found that agreeableness had a positive association with BMI and waist circumference for women but not men. That the sex moderation effects were not replicated in full is perhaps unsurprising given the inconsistent findings across the general body of literature on sex as a moderator of personality trait association with BMI (cf., Armon et al., 2013; Brummett et al., 2006; Chapman, Fiscella, Duberstein, Coletta, & Kawachi, 2009; Magee & Heaven, 2011; Sutin et al., 2015). There was more consistency for the comparisons between weight categories.

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