Personality Characteristics, Reactivity, and Cardiovascular Disease

The objectives of the present chapter are two-fold. One is to survey personality characteristics that have been investigated in relation to cardiovascular disease (CVD) and/or reactivity. The second is to call attention to some of the issues that need to be considered by researchers who investigate possible associations between personality and reactivity. An important overarching consideration for this area of inquiry is that personality characteristics operate within a framework of other variables and processes to potentially affect reactivity. In other words, a personality characteristic does not influence reactivity or relate to CVD separately or directly but in the context of other variables and processes. A useful approach for considering the relation between personality characteristics, reactivity, and CVD is in the structure of a model of affective and motivational arousal will be briefly outlined here that underscores a sequence of events and an interplay between variables.