Abstract
Personality traits predict dietary habits in middle-to-older adults. Personality traits are consistently associated with health behaviors, but little research has examined the role of traits on eating habits among middle-to-older adults. Importantly, food choices are constrained by financial resources or availability of healthy options, suggesting the need to test differential associations across SES. We examined the associations between traits and dietary habits, whether healthy eating predicted health at age 60, and if SES moderated these relationships. We used a sample of 665 middle-to-older adults from the Hawaii Personality and Health Cohort. Participants completed personality and eating questionnaires at age 44 and reported health at age 60. Dietary items were consolidated using factor analysis, which resulted in two factors: healthy and unhealthy foods. Eating healthy foods was associated with higher levels of agreeableness (r = .11), conscientiousness (.14), emotional stability (.14) and openness (.19) and predicted better self-rated health (.21) and lower BMI (-.19). Eating unhealthy foods was associated with lower levels of agreeableness (r = -.11), conscientiousness (-.12), emotional stability (-.09) and openness (-.14) and predicted lower self-rated health (-.13). Unhealthy food consumption did not predict BMI. Surprisingly, these results were not moderated by SES. Overall, we conclude that personality traits have a consistent relationship with dietary habits across levels of SES, and thus the use of traits to predict and understand eating choices can be applied consistently across patients, regardless of financial resources. Moreover, these associations between traits and eating choices may consequences for older-adult health.