Journal Article10.1037//0003-066X.40.1.19
Hypochondriasis, neuroticism, and aging. When are somatic complaints unfounded?
Paul T. Costa,Robert R. McCrae +1 more
515
TL;DR: Data are presented showing that, even among psy- chiatrically normal individuals, the personality of neuroticism is systematically related to the number of medical symptoms reported and that neuroticism-related complaints are best viewed as exaggerations of bodily concerns rather than as signs of organic disease.
read more
Abstract: An analysis of the relation between subjective and objective health provides the framework for an evaluation of the view that medical complaints among the elderly are often unfounded. Naive realist, psychiatric-categoricaL and dimensional models of somatic concern are compared, and it is argued that individuals differ along a continuum from persistent underreporting of symptoms to frank hypochondriasis. Data are presented showing that, even among psy- chiatrically normal individuals, the personality di- mension of neuroticism is systematically related to the number of medical symptoms reported and that neuroticism-related complaints are best viewed as exaggerations of bodily concerns rather than as signs of organic disease. Psychometric data purporting to show that hypochondriasis increases in the elderly are confounded by real health changes with age, and evidence from longitudinal studies shows that where health complaints increase, they probably reflect veridical reports of changing health status. These conclusions have implications for health research, medical diagnosis, and public policy and suggest that the stereotype of old men and women as hypo- chondriacs is unfounded.
read more
Chat with Paper
AI Agents for this Paper
Find similar papers on Google Scholar, PubMed and Arxiv
Write a critical review of this paper
Analyze citations of this paper to find unaddressed research gaps
Citations
Distinguishing optimism from neuroticism (and trait anxiety, self-mastery, and self-esteem): a reevaluation of the Life Orientation Test
TL;DR: Examination of the scale on somewhat different grounds, however, does suggest that future applications can benefit from its revision, and a minor modification to the Life Orientation Test is described, along with data bearing on the revised scale's psychometric properties.
6.9K
Health complaints, stress, and distress: exploring the central role of negative affectivity.
David Watson,James W. Pennebaker +1 more
TL;DR: Results demonstrate the importance of including different types of health measures in health psychology research, and indicate that self-report health measures reflect a pervasive mood disposition of negative affectivity (NA), which will act as a general nuisance factor in health research.
3.2K
Individual differences in social comparison: Development of a scale of social comparison orientation
TL;DR: The Iowa-Netherlands Comparison Orientation Measure [INCOM] as mentioned in this paper is a measure of individual differences in social comparison orientation, which was developed to measure the tendency toward social comparison in two cultures: American and Dutch.
1.3K
Intraindividual and interindividual analyses of positive and negative affect: their relation to health complaints, perceived stress, and daily activities.
TL;DR: The most significant finding was that, contrary to prediction, health complaints were as strongly related to intraindividual fluctuations in PA as in NA.
1.1K
Neuroticism, somatic complaints, and disease: is the bark worse than the bite?
Paul T. Costa,Robert R. McCrae +1 more
TL;DR: Analysis of mortality in the literature and in the present article show no influence of neuroticism, suggesting that symptom reporting may be biased by Neuroticism-related styles of perceiving and reporting physiological experiences.
1K
References
Personality stability and change over a 30-year period--middle age to old age.
TL;DR: The results of the present investigation suggest that the increase in mean score on the Depression scale may reflect realistic bodily concerns and the presence of actual physical illness.
117
Twenty-four mortality follow-up of Army veterans with disability separations for psychoneurosis in 1944.
TL;DR: Although World War II Army inductees medically discharged for psychoneurosis in 1944 experienced a 20‐percent excess mortality over the period 1946‐1969, highest in the earlier years and diminishing thereafter, the anxiety and emotional conflicts leading to discharge seem not to have been associated with chronic disturbances of physiologic function sufficient to cause severe organic disease in later life.
85