We’ve known for some time that our personalities—that is, our characteristic ways of thinking, feeling, and acting—influence many aspects of our lifestyles, including the behaviors that impact our health.

We all have ‘those’ friends who wake up at dawn to train for their next triathlon, while our extraverted mates are just rolling home from a boozy night out. The former are most likely meal planning and measuring macronutrients, while the latter are chatting with friends over one last cigarette.

These are amusing differences in how we approach the world, for sure, but also ones with serious implications given evidence suggesting that our highly conscientious ‘triathlon’ friends have around a 40% lower death rate from all causes compared to our more chilled-out pals.

The ‘five-factor’ (or OCEAN) model is probably the most studied theory of personality in the domain of health research, and shows consistent and significant links with many health-related behaviors. This model states that each of us are a mixture of high and low scores on five core personality traits—openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism—and that this mix leads us to act in predictable ways in the world.

By now, much has been written on the link between the OCEAN model and diet, with personality, particularly higher neuroticism and lower........

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