Cumulative Life Experiences, Emotion, and Mortality Risk Partitions

Lauren Hale, Princeton University

The relationship between cumulative adverse and advantageous life experiences and mortality risk is not well understood. We categorized individuals in a sub-sample of the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study (n=98) into life experience pathways based on their detailed responses to surveys, interviews, and writing samples collected in multiple waves over their life course. These individuals were then assigned into sex-specific mortality risk partitions based upon biological assessments that reflect wear and tear across multiple physiologic systems collected around age 59-60. Individuals with negative life experiences are almost 3 times more likely to have biological markers that correspond to a high mortality risk compared to someone with positive life experiences. Further, there is a sex difference with regard to the relationship between emotional responsiveness and mortality risk among people with positive life experiences. Future research into determinants of health should control for emotional responsiveness as well as other social characteristics.