|
E-mail this page to a friend!
Senior Citizen Longevity & Statistics
Two Personality Traits Linked to Health and
Longevity
Emotional stability and conscientiousness make a
healthy personality
 April 5, 2007 - Psychologists studying the question
of what makes a healthy personality have identified at least two of five
major traits as being directly related to physical well being and
longevity: emotional stability and conscientiousness. More to the point,
wellness is linked to changes in these traits over time.
There is broad consensus today that personality
traits are best described by the "Big Five":
● Extraversion,
● Agreeableness,
● Conscientiousness,
● Emotional stability, and
● Openness to experience.
Each of these broad measures can be broken down
into smaller ones, but in general, this taxonomy appears to take in most
of what we think of as personhood. When you think of someone as "steady"
or "flaky" or "gloomy" or "daring," what you’re really doing is
unconsciously taking a measure of these five traits and crunching them
together.
| |
Related Stories |
|
| |
Oldest Americans More in Sync with Modern Times Than
Many Think
Centenarians credit longevity to 'Faith' over
genes, medical care
April 3, 2007
How Long Can You Expect to Live, How You May Die
Projected by Census Bureau
By Tucker Sutherland, editor
December 16, 2006
Senior Citizens Most Concerned about Health; Get
News from Doctor and Internet
Primarily want to maintain mental ability – fear
Alzheimer's the most
August 23, 2006
Senior Citizens Now 12.1 Percent of
Population; New Census Report Highlights Cities Since 2000
San Francisco has highest percent of seniors and
highest median age, Phoenix the lowest
August 21, 2006
Americans Living Longer, Men Gain on Women
in 2004
CDC releases report
shows death rate at record low for 2004
April 20, 2006
Read more
Statistics on Senior Citizens |
|
Emotional stability
Consider emotional stability. Or, rather, it’s
polar opposite, which psychologists call neuroticism. Neuroticism is the
tendency toward hand wringing and negative thinking. People with a heavy
dose of neuroticism do not handle stress well, and are often anxious and
moody.
Such negativity has been linked to increased
mortality in a number of studies, but for Purdue University psychologist
Daniel Mroczek this finding raised as many questions as it answered.
Does it follow that this inherited trait is a death sentence? Or can
people with this propensity change their destiny?
Mroczek decided to explore this idea. Using a
standard measure of neuroticism, he tracked more than 1600 men over 12
years, recording not only how neurotic they were at the start but also
whether they got more or less neurotic over time.
He also looked at mortality risk for these same men
over an 18-year span. As reported in the May issue of Psychological
Science, those who increased over time in neuroticism was a ticket to an
early grave.
In other words, these men—all middle age or older
to begin with—did not grow old gracefully. They likely got more and more
stressed, worried or fretful, and this downward spiral increased their
risk for dying, mostly from cancer and heart disease.
The good news is that men with a fretful
temperament, if they managed for whatever reason to calm down a bit over
time, had survival rates similar to those of emotionally stable men.
Conscientiousness
This finding coincides with other life-span
research on conscientiousness and health. Studies by Brent Roberts of
the University of Illinois show that the cluster of traits comprising
conscientiousness - orderliness, industry, reliability, conventionality,
and so forth - not only can and do increase over the entire lifespan,
but these changes are directly related to improved health and longevity.
There are a couple likely reasons. "First,
conscientious people create life paths for themselves that contribute to
better health. That is, they are more successful in their careers, earn
more money, have more stable families, and socialize more—all factors
known to be linked to health."
Roberts, for example, tracked college-educated
women from age 21 to age 52, and found that 'women who had been more
conscientious in college were less likely to divorce and had more
children than women who had been less centered." Other studies have
linked conscientiousness to job stability and job satisfaction.
In addition, industrious and reliable people simply
do fewer stupid things. They don’t smoke as much, drink as much, drive
as fast, have sex with the wrong partners—all those things that we know
kill us.
Editor's Notes:
Funding for the study came from the National
Institute on Aging, part of the National Institutes of Health, and the
US Department of Veteran Affairs.
Psychological Science is ranked among the top 10
general psychology journals for impact by the Institute for Scientific
Information.
http://www.psychologicalscience.org
This release was adapted from an entry in Wray
Herbert’s blog "We’re Only Human."
Click here.
To more insights into human nature, please visit
http://www.psychologicalscience.org/onlyhuman/.
Click to More Senior News on the
Front Page
Copyright: SeniorJournal.com |
