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Past research has shown that personality traits relate to body weight, but this relationship may be confounded by unobserved family-level characteristics such as genetic endowments.

The purpose of this study was to investigate whether the association between personality traits, as measured by the Big Five taxonomy, and body weight among young adults is spurious owing to shared family background.

Participants were drawn from the full (n = 14,366) and family (n = 2813) samples of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health). The study employed family-fixed effects to eliminate shared family background factors that might affect personality traits and body weight simultaneously.

Among the Big Five personality traits, only conscientiousness showed a robust association with body weight, including body mass index (BMI) and obesity risk. These results …