Personality, Disease, and Self-Healing

Why do some people become sick, whereas other seemingly similar people remain healthy or quickly recover from disease? Is it true that people with “hurry sickness” suffer heart attacks, and worriers develop ulcers, and shy people face cancer? Is relaxation an elixir, and will having a smile on your face make you live longer? The relationships among individual differences, disease, and health have been investigated scientifically for more than 100 years, and many thousands of findings have been reported. The general verdict (subject to numerous exceptions and qualifications) is that a person who is chronically irritated, depressed, hostile, impulsive, bored, frustrated, lonely, or powerless is indeed more likely to develop illnesses and to die prematurely than is someone who generally feels emotionally balanced and effective, is in a satisfying job, has stable and supportive social relationships, and is well integrated into the community (Booth-Kewley & Friedman, 1987; Cohen & Williamson, 1991; Friedman & Booth-Kewley, 1987; House, Landis, & Umberson, 1988; Kiecolt-Glaser, Glaser, Cacioppo, & Malarkey, 1998; Miller, Smith, Turner, Guijarro, & Hallett, 1996; Repetti, Taylor, & Seeman, 2002; Smith & Gallo, 2001). Yet the various efforts to measure and characterize such people have often led to a muddle of weak and hard-to-replicate findings.