ARTICLE REVIEW

Article Review

Article Review

Introduction

The article under review and analysis is “Personality and Obesity Across the Adult Life Span” by Angelina R. Sutin, Luigi Ferrucci, Alan B. Zonderman, and Antonio Terracciano published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology in 2011 (Vol. 101, No. 3, 579-592). The article shows that personality is thought to affect obesity risk but before such information can be incorporated into prevention and intervention plans, robust and converging evidence concerning the most relevant personality traits is needed.

Discussion and Analysis

The obesity epidemic has reached alarming proportions in Western countries. In the United States, 34% of the population is obese, and in many European countries, including Spain, Italy and the United Kingdom, the prevalence of obesity is over 20% . With the exception of bariatric surgery for morbidly obese, obesity treatments have poor long-term maintenance. Intervention programs usually result in an average weight loss of 3-5?kg, which many regain within a few years after the treatment . To date, relatively little is known about factors that explain individual differences in long-term obesity risk or the likelihood of reversion from obese to non-obese (Gaysina, 2011).

Psychological dispositions, indicated by measures of personality, have been implicated in obesity risk . While early studies on personality differences between obese and non-obese individuals found no consistent differences, these had considerable methodological limitations, including small sample sizes and non-standardized personality measures. Recent studies with stronger study designs have found obesity to be associated with various personality traits. Many of these findings have not been replicated across studies and different studies have reported conflicting findings for the same personality traits, including extraversion and agreeableness. Hence, it remains unclear which personality dimensions are involved in the development of obesity and which dimensions are associated with obesity only secondarily or by chance. Before information on personality dispositions can be successfully incorporated into prevention and intervention plans, robust and converging evidence concerning whether personality traits are related to obesity is needed (Angelina, 2011).

The purpose of the present individual-participant meta-analysis was to examine the links between personality dispositions and obesity more comprehensively than has hitherto been the case. Data from 9 cohorts with almost 80,000 participants show that the personality trait conscientiousness is robustly associated with the development and persistence of obesity. Individuals with high conscientiousness are described as self-disciplined, task oriented and well organized, whereas low conscientiousness is characterized by poor self-control, impulsivity and lack of long-term planning . Compared to individuals with low conscientiousness (1 SD below the mean), individuals with high conscientiousness (1 SD above the mean) have almost 40% lower odds of being obese. This association was observed in cross-sectional and longitudinal analysis with an average follow-up time of 7 years, and it is somewhat stronger in women than in men, and in Caucasians than in non-Caucasians. We found no evidence to suggest that this association might have been attributable to reverse causation bias. Although some associations were observed for the other four personality traits in individual studies, only conscientiousness was consistently associated with ...