Personality, risky health behaviour, and perceived susceptibility to health risks
✍ Scribed by Margarete Vollrath; Daria Knoch; Loredana Cassano
- Publisher
- John Wiley and Sons
- Year
- 1999
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 146 KB
- Volume
- 13
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0890-2070
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
We examined the relations between personality (Five-Factor Model), risky health behaviours, and perceptions of susceptibility to health risks among 683 university students. The hypothesis was that personality would aect perceptions of susceptibility to health risks in two ways: directly, irrespective of risky health behaviours, and indirectly, through the eects of personality on risky health behaviours. The students were surveyed about smoking, being drunk, drunk driving, risky sexual behaviour, and perceptions of susceptibility to related health risks. In path-analytical models we found the expected direct and indirect eects. The personality dimensions of Agreeableness and Conscientiousness had negative direct eects on perceptions of susceptibility as well as negative indirect eects through risky health behaviours. Neuroticism was the only personality dimension to show positive direct eects on perceptions of susceptibility as well as negative indirect eects.