Our Personality Determines How Long We Will Live

By Margarita Nahapetyan

The latest research by the scientists from the Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM), found that it is our personality that could be a factor to determine how long we live. Researchers have discovered that the children of centenarians, in general, possess certain personality features that are linked to healthy ageing and longevity.

For many years, the scientists from BUSM's New England Centenarian Study have been concentrating on a group of very long-lived individuals 100-years of age and beyond, as well as on their siblings, spouses and children. This study has already revealed some interesting facts about particularly long-lived people, such as:

• They tend not to be overweight, and as to men - they are almost always lean.

• They generally stay sharp-witted, and very rarely suffer from many of the major age-associated diseases, like heart disease and cancer.

• They are leading a healthy lifestyle.

• They typically deal with stress pretty well.

For the study purposes, researchers involved 246 offspring of centenarians. These included 125 women and 121 men, with an average age of 75 years. All the participants were asked to fill out appropriate questionnaires so the experts could measure and determine the levels of neuroticism (tendency to experience negative emotions like depression or anxiety), openness, extraversion (gregariousness), agreeableness and conscientiousness in their personalities. The experts then carried out the same experiment with a group of randomly picked unrelated people of the same age, and then compared the results.

It was found that the participants in both groups showed some substantial differences, and this made the researchers assume that the following personality traits may have important implications to help people live a longer life: Low neuroticism: both male and female offspring of centenarians scored at the bottom of the published normal range for this trait. High extraversion: the offspring of long-lived individuals scored in the high range for sociability. They like being surrounded by people and enjoy being in the center of public attention. The experts further said that women also scored comparatively high in agreeableness, which means that they tended to be cooperative types. The elderly male offspring of centenarians scored within normal range in this trait. In addition, both genders scored within normal range for conscientiousness and openness.

Dr. Thomas Perls, director of the New England Centenarian Study, said: "Interestingly, whereas men and women generally differ substantially in their personality characteristics, the male and female offspring tended to be similar, which speaks to the importance of these traits, irrespective of gender, for health aging and longevity."

It is possible, he further added, that low neuroticism and high extraversion could be beneficial for health. It certainly makes sense that it might not be good for a person to be constantly stressed and worried about problems. The findings coincide with the results of the other research that revealed the negative effects of long-term elevations in stress hormones, for example. As for extraversion, high levels of this trait have been associated with establishing friendships and looking after yourself. Dr. Perls concluded that the new findings suggest that personality is a very important characteristic to be included in future studies of longevity and its genetic and environmental determinants.

The study, conducted in collaboration with scientists from the National Institute on Aging, has been published online in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society.