A study of data on nearly 60,000 Scandinavians may debunk the notion that your personality affects your risk of developing or dying from cancer. Over 30 years, 4,631 participants were diagnosed with cancer and 1,548 died from the disease. Scientists compared cancer risk with two common personality types: extraversion, a tendency to be social and outgoing, and neuroticism, a tendency toward anxiety and emotional swings. After adjusting for known risk factors such as smoking, there was no association-positive or negative-between either personality type and risk of cancer or dying from cancer. The results further disprove a long-held theory that was popularized by controversial European research in the 1980s. For cancer patients, researchers said, the conclusion means they should not think that their personality traits may have affected their cancer or cancer prognosis.TO LEARN MORE: American Journal of Epidemiology,,/i> August 15, 2010; abstract at dx.doi.org/10.1093/aje/ kwq046.
