Holroyd K A, Coyne J
J Pers. 1987 Jun;55(2):359-75. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-6494.1987.tb00442.x.
This special issue is a sign of a resurgence of interest in the role of personality in health not seen since the 1940s and early 1950s when the promises of the psychosomatic approach to health and illness appeared to be the greatest. This new look at personality and health represented by contributions to this special issue attempts to address the limitations of earlier work in psychosomatic medicine by making more explicit efforts to define personality variables precisely, to distinguish these variables from conceptually related psychological constructs, and to embed them in a body of theory and empirical research. This new work also attempts to remedy methodological limitations of earlier work by placing greater emphasis on prospective research and highlighting distinctions between symptom reports, illness behavior, and actual illness. However, the new work and earlier work in psychosomatic medicine share certain working assumptions, for example, a primary emphasis on the relatively direct impact of personality on disease onset, an assumption that personality variables operate in interaction with stressful events, and a frequent emphasis on general susceptibility to disease. Moreover, this new work frequently risks the same methodological pitfalls that limited scientific progress in psychosomatic medicine. We argue that the rapid rise and decline of psychosomatic medicine is most likely to be repeated in research on personality and health in the 1980s if reasonable criteria for considering personality variables a risk factor for disease are not precisely defined, disease endpoints (the dependent variable) are not assessed precisely, personality variables of interest (the independent variable) are not empirically distinguished from other related psychological variables, and complex relationships among risk factors are not taken into account. It is emphasized that models drawn from personality research cannot be transferred unchanged to the health arena without risking false inferences about the role of personality in health.
本期特刊标志着自20世纪40年代和50年代初以来，人们对人格在健康中的作用的兴趣再度兴起，当时心身医学对健康和疾病的前景似乎最为乐观。本期特刊的文章所代表的对人格与健康的新审视，试图通过更明确地努力精确界定人格变量、将这些变量与概念上相关的心理结构区分开来，并将它们纳入理论和实证研究体系，来解决早期心身医学研究的局限性。这项新研究还试图通过更加强调前瞻性研究以及突出症状报告、疾病行为和实际疾病之间的区别，来弥补早期研究的方法局限性。然而，心身医学的新研究和早期研究有某些共同的工作假设，例如，主要强调人格对疾病发作的相对直接影响，认为人格变量与应激事件相互作用，以及经常强调对疾病的一般易感性。此外，这项新研究经常面临与限制心身医学科学进展相同的方法陷阱。我们认为，如果不精确界定将人格变量视为疾病风险因素的合理标准、不精确评估疾病终点（因变量）、不通过实证将感兴趣的人格变量（自变量）与其他相关心理变量区分开来，以及不考虑风险因素之间的复杂关系，那么心身医学在20世纪80年代迅速兴起又衰落的情况很可能会在人格与健康的研究中重演。需要强调的是，从人格研究中得出的模型如果不做改变就应用于健康领域，就有可能对人格在健康中的作用做出错误推断。
