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: (a) 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, beta = 0.11, 95% confidence interval [CI] = [0.04, 0.18], p = .002. Negative emotionality-particularly its subfacet alienation, characterized by mistrust of others-helped explain this childhood-to-midlife association (indirect effect: beta = 0.06, 95% CI = [0.04, 0.09], 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.