Participants were drawn from the East Baltimore Epidemiologic Catchment Area Study (Baltimore ECA) [29], a multidisciplinary study which is based on a probability sample of 3,481 East Baltimore residents who were initially interviewed in 1981 and followed up in 1992–98 and in 2004–05. Personality traits were assessed at the two most recent waves. To maximize the sample size, cross-sectional analyses were conducted on the last valid personality assessments (N = 1,102), 80% of which were obtained in 2004–05. At the time of the personality assessments, age ranged from 30 to 94 years (M = 56.6; SD = 12.4), and participants had an average of 12.5 years of education (SD = 2.6). About 62% of the sample was female; 63% were White/Non-Hispanic, 34% were Black/Non-Hispanic, and 3% other or unknown ethnic group. To screen out cognitively impaired individuals, participants with Mini Mental State Scores [30] below the cut-off value of 23 were excluded.
