The Continuity of Adversity: Negative Emotionality Links Early Life Adversity With Adult Stressful Life Events.

Adversity that exhibits continuity across the life course has long-term detrimental effects on physical and mental health. Using 920 participants from the Dunedin Study, we tested the following hypotheses: (1) children (ages 3-15) who experienced adversity would also tend to experience adversity in adulthood (ages 32-45), and (2) interim personality traits in young adulthood (ages 18-26) would help account for this longitudinal association. Children who experienced more adversity tended to also experience more stressful life events as adults, β=.11, 95% CI [.04, .18], p=.002. Negative emotionality-particularly its sub-facet alienation, characterized by mistrust of others-helped explain this childhood-to-midlife association (indirect effect: β=.06, 95% CI [.04, .09], p<.001). Results were robust to adjustment for sex, socioeconomic origins, childhood IQ, preschool temperament, and other young-adult personality traits. Prevention of early-life adversity and treatment of young-adult negative emotionality may reduce vulnerability to later life stress and thereby promote the health of aging adults.