# Prenatal and Early Life Antecedents of Personality: An Intergenerational Lifespan Approach

> **NIH NIH RF1** · FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY · 2023 · $2,235,167

## Abstract

Project Summary
Alzheimer’s disease is prevalent at the end of life and remains the only leading cause of death without a cure or
way to stop or significantly slow its progression. Prevention remains the best hope for reducing risk of Alzheimer’s
disease in older adulthood. Given that Alzheimer’s disease has a complex etiology, with risk factors that range
from genetics to the environment, multipronged approaches to prevention will likely be needed for an intervention
to be broadly effective. Among the psychosocial risk factors for Alzheimer’s disease, personality traits have
emerged as consistent predictors of cognitive health across adulthood. Specifically, higher neuroticism (the
tendency to experience negative emotions and vulnerability to stress) and lower conscientiousness (the
tendency to be organized, disciplined, and responsible) are associated with worse performance on cognitive
tasks, more subjective cognitive complaints, and greater risk of Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias. Even
after diagnosis, these traits are associated with behavioral and psychological symptoms at the end of life.
Lifespan models of personality and health indicate that personality contributes to long-term health outcomes
through both behavioral and clinical pathways. Missing from these models, however, are the antecedents of
personality, novel mechanisms that go beyond behavioral and clinical risk factors, and how informant ratings of
personality and cognition provide unique information about the target’s cognitive health. This work builds on the
success of our previous award that found that personality is shaped by socioeconomic factors and that
personality is one mechanism in the pathway from childhood socioeconomic status to adult cognitive health. The
purpose of this project is to expand consideration of advantages and disadvantages experienced across the
lifespan to include other domains, including structural and environmental advantages and disadvantages, to
better understand how the accumulation and interplay of such factors across childhood and adulthood shape
adult personality traits. This project will further evaluate socioemotional health and behavioral life skills as novel
pathways from personality to cognitive health, which are hypothesized to be mechanisms that go beyond
traditional behavioral and clinical risk factors. Finally, this project will also include informant ratings of personality
and cognition as an additional source of information that provides unique information about the target’s health.
We will address these aims in an ongoing longitudinal cohort study with a racially and socioeconomically diverse
sample. The ultimate goal of this work is to develop a personality-informed intervention to support healthier
cognitive aging and reduce risk of Alzheimer’s disease. We seek to build a robust and replicable evidence base
for a lifespan model of personality and cognitive health that includes antecedents of personality and mechanisms
...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10655052
- **Project number:** 2RF1AG053297-06A1
- **Recipient organization:** FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY
- **Principal Investigator:** Angelina R Sutin
- **Activity code:** RF1 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2023
- **Award amount:** $2,235,167
- **Award type:** 2
- **Project period:** 2017-04-01 → 2026-03-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10655052

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10655052, Prenatal and Early Life Antecedents of Personality: An Intergenerational Lifespan Approach (2RF1AG053297-06A1). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-23 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10655052. Licensed CC0.

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