Commentary: Personality and the socioeconomic-health gradient.

position equates to better health—spans both time and place and is found for almost all diseases and many health risk behaviours. The near universality of this phenomenon has led to a search for more fundamental causes. Although differences in material resources and/or psychosocial attributes have been postulated, neither can satisfactorily explain the ubiquity of the socioeconomic–health gradient. 1 In this edition of the International Journal of Epidemiology, Pulkki and colleagues 2 ask if adolescent personality traits can explain the inverse relation between selected cardiovascular health risk behaviours and educational achievement. Their longitudinal study shows that a set of 'Type A'-like personality traits predict educational attainment (a component of SES) and accounts for part of the SES gradient in health risk behaviour. The study delivers an important message that we hope will not be lost in the details of the work. The message, as we understand it, is that collaboration between epidemiologists and personality psychologists may prove helpful in better understanding how one's position in the social structure affects health. In this commentary, we amplify two issues. First, we discuss promising directions in the measurement of personality, and the need to use more comprehensive, and more comparable, personality measurement across epidemiological studies. 3 Second, we discuss issues of causation, and identify alternative ways in which personality may contribute to the social gradient in health. One of the great obstacles to making progress in integrating the study of personality and the study of health is the difficulty of Temperament, mothering, and hostile attitudes: a 12-year longitudinal study. somatic risk factors of coronary heart disease in young Finns—a six-year follow-up study. in children: assessment of children's competitiveness, impatience-anger, and aggression. Child Dev 1980;51:466–75. 27 Lundberg U. Type A behavior and its relation to personality variables in Swedish male and female university students. JSA. Effects of persistent physical activity and inactivity on coronary risk factors in children and young adults. childhood and general health in adulthood: questionnaire study of contribution of psychological attributes. children's health: how and why do these relationships change with age? A behaviors and psychophysiological responses to stress in children.