# The contributions of personality and social relationships to late-life health: A twin study approach

> **NIH NIH R01** · UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA · 2020 · $384,994

## Abstract

In the parent R01 to this supplementary proposal, we seek to understand aging and health as an integrative
biopsychosocial process, with specific foci on the roles of personality and relationship quality as predictors of
health status. In this supplementary proposal, we seek to enhance our current NIH funded efforts by expanding
our participant pool to also include a sample of African American twins from a parallel study of aging, and
including measures of cognitive health, and thereby establishing relevance to Alzheimer’s disease and/or its
related dementias. This will position our research team for future research on health in a more diverse sample
and with a focus on Alzheimer’s disease and/or its related dementias. Specifically, personality and relationship
quality are known predictors of health status, but underlying reasons for these associations are less well
understood. Because of the integrative biopsychosocial focus of our parent NIA-funded R01, this supplement
would allow us to begin to tackle major shortcomings of the existing literature. First, variation in personality and
the quality of adults' interpersonal resources are rarely examined conjointly so that their associations with
health can be studied in terms of their relative magnitude and possible interplay, particularly in diverse
samples. Second, the degree to which these associations emerge from environmentally mediated processes
amenable to intervention remains largely unknown because existing research cannot rule out the possibility
that these associations might reflect the impact of confounds, including especially evocative genetic processes,
that produce correlations between personality/interpersonal experiences and health outcomes. Our parent R01
uses an innovative co-twin control design to rule out genetic and family background confounds, thereby
identifying environmentally mediated connections linking both personality and interpersonal experiences in
advancing age with outcomes. More specifically, with this supplement, we will position ourselves to ultimately
study whether relations between individual/interpersonal differences and health are environmentally mediated
by augmenting our sample with 100 twin pair participants (200 individuals) in the Carolina African American
Twin Study of Aging (CAATSA). These participants will complete assessments parallel to those we are
completing with twins in the Minnesota Twin Registry (MTR; 1600 twins in 800 pairs, similar in age).

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10110561
- **Project number:** 3R01AG053217-05S1
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA
- **Principal Investigator:** Robert F Krueger
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2020
- **Award amount:** $384,994
- **Award type:** 3
- **Project period:** 2016-09-01 → 2022-04-30

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10110561

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10110561, The contributions of personality and social relationships to late-life health: A twin study approach (3R01AG053217-05S1). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-23 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10110561. Licensed CC0.

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