Grant Edmonds’s research interests are focused on understanding the mechanisms linking personality to physical health across the lifespan. His work is predicated by two ideas: (1) personality is an established predictor of mortality and, (2) personality changes in developmentally important ways across the lifespan. Within this framework, Dr. Edmonds is committed to developing and testing models relating consequential change in personality to trajectories of health via multiple paths. These include behavioral pathways, social environmental influences, and ultimately biological systems.

The larger goal is to construct a model of personality development and health change that explains the personality-mortality connection, and provides a guide for planning future interventions that may benefit public health. An important focal point of Dr. Edmonds’s work involves enhancing the assessment of personality constructs by incorporating multiple modes of measurement. These include peer and self ratings of dispositional tendencies, cognitive behavioral measures, and personality in the context of social dyads.