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Personality and Accidental Injuries

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  • First Online:
Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences

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Synonyms

Personality; Temperament; Unintentional injury

Definitions

Personality is defined as stable individual differences in a person’s thinking, feeling, and behavior.

Temperament is defined as genetically and environmentally influenced characteristics of reactivity to the external environment and internal self-regulation that remain stable throughout the lifetime.

Unintentional injury, first operationalized by Haddon (1980), can be conceived as damage to the body arising from the transfer of external, mechanical, thermal, electrical, chemical, or radiant energy. Injuries arising from these sources of energy often result in falls, poising, burns, choking, and motor vehicle injuries. It should also be noted that injuries can occur as a result of loss of energy, as in the case of drowning. In the past, injuries were often considered to be unavoidable and thus termed accidental. However, the overall consensus in the field is that injuries are preventable (World Health Organization 2006)....

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. The University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, USA

    Elizabeth O’Neal

Authors
  1. Elizabeth O’Neal
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Correspondence to Elizabeth O’Neal .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Oakland University, Rochester, USA

    Virgil Zeigler-Hill

  2. Oakland University, Rochester, USA

    Todd K. Shackelford

Section Editor information

  1. Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland

    Anna Czarna

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O’Neal, E. (2018). Personality and Accidental Injuries. In: Zeigler-Hill, V., Shackelford, T. (eds) Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-28099-8_2099-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-28099-8_2099-1

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  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-28099-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-28099-8

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