This personality trait increases the odds of reaching 85-years-old by up to 70 percent.
Around one-in-five people are thought to have this personality type.
Around one-in-five people are thought to have this personality type.
People who experience a lot of negative emotions and do not express them have more mental and physical health problems.
This is known to psychologists as a ‘type D’ personality: the ‘D’ stands for distressed.
People with a type D personality are likely to agree with statements like, “I am often down in the dumps”.
They are also likely to demonstrate social inhibition by agreeing with statements like, “I am a closed kind of person”.
Type D people are fearful of rejection if they express their negative emotions.
Around one-in-five people is thought to have a type D personality.
The study found that people who were type D tended not to report their health problems to a physician or nurse.
The study’s authors write:
“Type D patients were shown to report lower levels of health status, more cardiac symptoms, and more feelings of disability, when compared with non-Type D patients high on positive affect.”
The study involved 276 heart failure patients.
The results showed that heart failure patients who also had a type D personality were six times more likely to be in a worse state of health.
The study was published in the journal Quality of Life Research (Pelle et al., 2009).
This character trait is linked to a high IQ.
This character trait is linked to a high IQ.
Being conscientious is linked to having a high IQ, but only among females.
People who are conscientious are more careful, efficient and self-disciplined — and they aim for achievement.
Among males, however, those who are more careless and indifferent have higher IQs.
The study of school children also found that introverts who are conscientious get the best grades.
Fear may also be a factor in driving up grades, the Swedish research found, since neurotic pupils got better grades.
Neurotic people tend to worry more, which may motivate them to work harder if their worries are stoked by the system.
Ms Pia Rosander, the study’s first author, said:
“We have a school system in Sweden that favours conscientious and fear-driven pupils.
It is not good for psychological well-being in the long term if fear is a driving force.
It also prevents in-depth learning, which happens best among the open personality types who are driven by curiosity.”
The study included 200 pupils entering secondary school at 16 who were followed for three years.
The results revealed that girls who were eager to please got better grades.
On the other hand, boys were more likely to be curious, but the system tended not to feed their curiosity.
Ms Rosander said:
“Greater conscientiousness, i.e. getting things done, arriving on time, etc. may be a way for boys to compensate for a lower IQ.”
The study also found that introverts get better grades, probably because extraverts have so much to distract them.
Ms Rosander said:
“My studies clearly show that the school system needs to be more individualised.
How else can we support talented pupils with the ‘wrong’ personality type, those we call under-performers, who are capable but lack the ability to plan their school work, for example?”
The study was published in the journal Learning and Individual Differences (Rosander et al., 2011).
The study underlines the surprising resilience of the human mind in the face of life’s tragedies.
The study underlines the surprising resilience of the human mind in the face of life’s tragedies.
People get more optimistic as they get older.
From the age of 15 until mid-life, people’s optimism tends to increase and remains at a high until they reach their 60s or 70s, when it starts to drop again.
Even health problems, divorce and bereavement fail to dent people’s fundamental optimism.
The study underlines the surprising resilience of the human mind in the face of life’s tragedies.
Dr William Chopik, the study’s first author, said:
“We found that optimism continued to increase throughout young adulthood, seemed to steadily plateau and then decline into older adulthood.
Even people with fairly bad circumstances, who have had tough things happen in their lives, look to their futures and life ahead and felt optimistic.”
The study included 75,000 people in the US, Germany and the Netherlands.
They were asked about their levels of optimism, along with life events such as new jobs, marriage, divorce and bereavements.
Dr Chopik was surprised by how the most serious life events affected people’s optimism:
“Counterintuitively — and most surprising — we found that really hard things like deaths and divorce really didn’t change a person’s outlook to the future.
This shows that a lot of people likely subscribe to the ‘life is short’ mantra and realize they should focus on things that make them happy and maintain emotional balance.”
The results showed that, on average, people become more optimistic between 15 and 60 or 70 years old.
Dr Chopik said:
“There’s a massive stretch of life during which you keep consistently looking forward to things and the future.
Part of that has to do with experiencing success both in work and life.
You find a job, you meet your significant other, you achieve your goals and so on.
You become more autonomous and you are somewhat in control of your future; so, you tend to expect things to turn out well.”
Old age brings a decline in optimism as people face health concerns and their own death.
Nevertheless, people do not become fully fledged pessimists, said Dr Chopik:
“Retirement age is when people can stop working, have time to travel and to pursue their hobbies.
But very surprisingly, people didn’t really think that it would change the outlook of their lives for the better.”
People’s resilience is remarkable, Dr Chopik said:
“We oftentimes think that the really sad or tragic things that happen in life completely alter us as people, but that’s not really the case.
You don’t fundamentally change as a result of terrible things; people diagnosed with an illness or those who go through another crisis still felt positive about the future and what life had ahead for them on the other side.”
The study was published in the Journal of Research in Personality (Chopik et al., 2020).
Grit is the determination to put in the months or even years of effort to succeed at a goal.
Grit is the determination to put in the months or even years of effort to succeed at a goal.
Grit is more about passion than personality.
It is not just about being born or brought up with a ‘gritty’ personality.
Everyone can find the determination in themselves to succeed if they have passion for their goal.
Developing a passion for a goal is linked to a kind of adaptive perfectionism.
Adaptive perfectionism means perfectionism with some level of obsession, but not so much that it is ultimately destructive.
Setting oneself attainable goals is one of the keys to avoiding destructive perfectionism.
The conclusions come from a study of 251 students who completed a series of questions about grit.
People with high levels of grit tend to agree with statements like:
Ms Danielle Cormier, the study’s first author, said:
“We wanted to know whether people bring grit to every aspect of their life, or if they are gritty athletes or gritty students, or even a gritty parent or a gritty hobbyist.”
It emerged that people were more gritty in specific areas of their life, rather than being gritty overall.
In other words, some students were passionate about their academic studies and they did better at those.
Others were more passionate about sports, so they did better at those.
Ms Cormier said:
“It seems grit is best conceptualized as a domain-specific trait, and not in general, which is how the field has been measuring grit since it was conceptualized.”
A growth mindset is key to success, Ms Cormier said:
“Instead of thinking talents are fixed, like believing your intelligence is just the way it is, a growth mindset allows you to believe that intelligence, or other character traits and talents, can be grown.
In order to do that you must embrace failures and setbacks, because without any of those learning opportunities, you’re not going to get better.
Everyone has an element of grit in them, it is just finding that passion.”
The study was published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences (Cormier et al., 2019).
This personality trait is linked to mental health problems.
This personality trait is linked to mental health problems.
Being impulsive can be a sign of poor mental health.
People who are impulsive tend to prefer a small immediate reward over a larger reward later on.
Impulsive people tend to act on their immediate thoughts and emotions without thinking about the consequences.
In other words, impulsive people want to have fun now, not later — even if waiting is more sensible.
People who are depressed, have bipolar disorder, schizophrenia or some eating disorders are more likely to be impulsive.
Psychologists can measure this type of impulsivity with a test of ‘delay discounting’.
Delay discounting is the idea that people tend to discount a reward more, the longer the delay until they receive it.
So, psychologically, $5 right now is worth more than $10 in three weeks time.
Or, as the proverb has it: a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.
People who can delay their gratification find it easier to wait for their rewards.
However, people with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and borderline personality disorder find it particularly hard to delay gratification.
The conclusions come from a review of 43 separate studies.
Dr Michael Amlung, the study’s first author, said:
“The revelation that delay discounting is one of these ‘trans-diagnostic’ processes will have a significant effect on the future of psychiatric diagnosis and treatment.”
Among people with mental health problems, though, anorexia was the exception.
People with anorexia tend to make excessively self-controlling decisions.
This makes sense given that anorexia is a disorder characterised by a very high level of self-control over eating behaviours.
Professor Randi McCabe, study co-author, said:
“Examining factors that cut across psychiatric disorders, such as delay discounting, helps to illuminate commonalities and distinguishing characteristics amongst disorders that then guide further research on treatment and prevention.”
The study was published in JAMA Psychiatry (Amlung et al., 2019).
People were asked how they generally coped with stress and were given a blood test for markers of bodily inflammation.
People were asked how they generally coped with stress and were given a blood test for markers of bodily inflammation.
People who express their emotions more freely tend to have a stronger immune system.
In contrast, avoiding expressing the emotions is linked to more inflammation in the body, suggesting the immune system is not working as well.
Other studies have shown that loneliness, poor sleep and stress can also damage the functioning of the immune system.
The current research was conducted in the context of bereavement, explained Dr Christopher Fagundes, study co-author:
“There has been work focused on the link between emotion regulation and health after romantic breakups, which shows that distracting oneself from thoughts of the loss may be helpful.
However, the death of a spouse is a very different experience because neither person initiated the separation or can attempt to repair the relationship.”
The study included almost 100 people who had all recently lost a spouse.
They were asked how they generally coped psychologically with stress and were given a blood test for markers of bodily inflammation.
Dr Fagundes said:
“Bodily inflammation is linked to a host of negative health conditions, including serious cardiovascular issues like stroke and heart attack.”
The results showed that people who habitually bottle up their emotions tend to have greater signs of bodily inflammation, suggesting their immune systems are not functioning as well.
Dr Fagundes said:
“These findings really highlight the importance of acknowledging one’s emotions after the death of a spouse rather than bottling them up.”
The research shows the importance of expressing emotions both for mental health and the immune system.
Dr Richard Lopez, the study’s first author, said:
“The research also suggests that not all coping strategies are created equal, and that some strategies can backfire and have harmful effects, especially in populations experiencing particularly intense emotions in the face of significant life stressors, such as losing a loved one.”
The study was published in the journal Psychosomatic Medicine (Lopez et al., 2020).
Survey of almost 30,000 people finds one personality trait consistently linked to longer life.
Survey of almost 30,000 people finds one personality trait consistently linked to longer life.
Being positive has been linked to living longer by research.
People lived longer if they were more:
Those who scored in the top sixth for being positive were 18% less likely to die over the next four years.
Other key factors linked to living longer included getting married and having a degree.
The results come from a survey of 28,662 people.
Both people’s mental health and their medical records were examined by the survey.
The people analysed in the survey had similar levels of physical health, income and other demographic characteristics.
Income, perhaps surprisingly, did not have an effect on the chance of dying.
Dr Christopher Jacobi, the study’s author, said:
“The results indicate that better positive mental health seems to have a somewhat protective effect against mortality.
In research literature the most frequently stated ways in which positive mental health is likely to affect mortality are via direct physiological responses such as lowered blood pressure, capacity to cope with stress, less drinking and smoking, an active lifestyle, and better sleep quality.
Likewise, people with high positive mental health might not be affected as severely by potentially negative symptomatic and physiological effects of life events like divorce or unemployment.”
Previous research has also revealed that both extroverts and optimists are more likely to live longer than introverts and pessimists.
As I wrote previously:
“Optimists have healthier hearts than pessimists, a study of over 51,000 adults finds.
Optimists also had healthier body mass indexes, were more physically active and less likely to smoke.
Researchers found that the more optimistic people were, the greater their overall physical health.
The most optimistic people were 76% more likely to have health scores that were in the ideal range.”
The study was presented at the British Sociological Association’s Medical Sociology conference in Birmingham on 8 Sept 2016.
The trait has already been linked with worse physical health, but what is it doing to the brain?
The trait has already been linked with worse physical health, but what is it doing to the brain?
People with high levels of cynicism are more likely to develop dementia.
It’s already been found that those who believe others are mainly motivated by selfish concerns — the definition of cynical distrust — have worse physical health; for example, cynicism has been linked to heart disease.
Now you can add dementia to the list.
In the study, conducted in Finland, 1,449 people were given tests of their cynicism that included questions like:
The more people endorsed these statements, the stronger their cynical distrust was deemed to be.
They were also given tests of dementia and other factors that might affect their risk of developing dementia later on, like smoking and high cholesterol levels.
Eight years later, people were tested again to see if they had developed any symptoms of dementia.
Forty-six people had, and in that group, people who were high on cynical distrust were three times more likely to develop dementia than those low on that measure.
One of the study’s authors, Dr Anna-Maija Tolppanen, said:
“These results add to the evidence that people’s view on life and personality may have an impact on their health.
Understanding how a personality trait like cynicism affects risk for dementia might provide us with important insights on how to reduce risks for dementia.”
The study was published in the journal Neurology (Neuvonen et al., 2014).
The study showed 128 young women personality profiles of various men.
The study showed 128 young women personality profiles of various men.
Extraverts with stable, or non-neurotic personalities are particularly attractive.
However, both of these personality traits also help explain the attraction of the ‘bad boy’ to women, who also tends to be laid-back and extraverted.
Narcissist and psychopaths are seen as both extraverted and having stable, non-neurotic personalities, the study found.
Both of these contribute to the attractiveness of men with ‘dark triad’ personalities.
The ‘dark triad’ of personality factors includes narcissism and psychopathy, along with Machiavellianism.
The study’s authors write:
“Women, particularly in respect of short-term mating, may be attracted to ‘bad boys’, possessing confidence, hard-headedness and an inclination to risk-take – all accurate descriptors of Dark Triad [DT] men; all attractive to women.”
Another explanation for the attractiveness of bad boys could be their superficial charm, the authors write:
“Women may be responding to DT men’s ability to ‘sell themselves’; a useful tactic in a co-evolutionary ‘arms race’ in which men convince women to pursue the former’s preferred sexual strategy.
This ability may derive from a ‘used-car dealer’ ability to charm and manipulate, and DT-associated traits such as assertiveness.
Men with a DT personality are undoubtedly well-placed to successfully implement such a strategy.”
The conclusions come from a study in which 128 young women were shown personality profiles of various men.
One was designed to be high in dark triad personality factors.
The results showed that women saw the ‘bad boy’ as more attractive, when appearance was held constant.
Here is the authors’ quick description of the dark triad personality traits:
“Narcissism is defined by a sense of entitlement, dominance and a grandiose self-view.
Machiavellians are interpersonally duplicitous, insincere and extraverted.
Psychopathy consists of callousness, a lack of empathy, and antisocial, erratic behaviour.”
The study was published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences (Carter et al., 2014).
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