Although rank-order stability of personality traits is high in adulthood (44), it is of interest to address the possibility that personality assessment was influenced by terminal decline or other conditions associated with incipient death. We repeated the main analyses on a subsample with at least five years interval between assessment and death or censoring date (n = 2269). Excluding the 90 individuals with less than five years between assessment and outcome, the results remained essentially the same, with significant effects for General Activity (HR = 0.989, 95%CI = 0.978–0.999), Emotional Stability (HR = 0.984, 95%CI = 0.972–0.996), and Conscientiousness (HR = 0.976, 95%CI = 0.957–0.996), and a trend for Objectivity (HR = 0.987; 95%CI = 0.974–1.002).
