There has been a recent resurgence of interest in personality psychology and its applications. This book is organised in three parts: personality and health outcomes; mechanisms relating personality and health; personality specific prevention and intervention. It covers child and adolescence health behaviour as well as that of adults and integrates new developments within personality psychology (such as neurophysiology and temperamental traits) with health psychology and examines major health outcomes such as disease, the mechanisms between these outcomes and personality, and prevention and intervention programmes.

Margarete Vollrath is Professor of Personality Psychology at the University of Oslo. As well as teaching personality psychology, she lectures on health psychology and has published a number of journal articles on personality, stress and health behaviour. She recently co-edited a special edition of the European Journal of Personality.