The Critical Thinking box "Do Personality Factors Cause Disease?" discusses the problems involved in answering this question and suggests that in order to disentangle the relationship between personality and health, researchers need to conduct carefully controlled:

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In order to determine causality between personality factors and disease, it is important to conduct carefully controlled longitudinal studies that track individuals over time to examine the development of both personality traits and disease outcomes. These types of studies are known as prospective studies. Retrospective studies rely on participants' recall of past events and may not accurately capture the true causal relationship between personality and disease. Correlational studies may determine a relationship between two variables but cannot determine causality. Surveys and interviews can be useful in gathering data, but cannot provide causal evidence.

The Critical Thinking Box "Do Personality Factors Cause Disease?" Discusses