Category: Personality

The trait can increase the odds of reaching 85-years-old by up to 70 percent.

The personality trait of optimism is linked to a very longer life, research finds.

People who are optimistic are more likely to live an exceptionally long life.

Being optimistic — a trait that can be boosted — can increase the odds of reaching 85-years-old by up to 70 percent.

Optimistic people tend to expect positive outcomes in the future.

Critically, optimists believe they can control their lives and make improvements.

Optimists tend to lead healthier lives and are also better at regulating their emotions.

They are less likely to smoke, have better body mass indexes and are more physically active.

Dr Lewina Lee, the study’s first author, said:

“While research has identified many risk factors for diseases and premature death, we know relatively less about positive psychosocial factors that can promote healthy aging.

This study has strong public health relevance because it suggests that optimism is one such psychosocial asset that has the potential to extend the human lifespan.

Interestingly, optimism may be modifiable using relatively simple techniques or therapies.”

The study included 71,173 people whose optimism and overall health was tracked.

The group were tracked for up to three decades.

The results showed that the most optimistic people lived up to 15 percent longer, with a 50-70 percent higher chance of reaching 85-years-old than the least optimistic people.

One of the reasons optimists live longer could be a healthier lifestyle, along with dealing with stress more effectively, said Dr Laura Kubzansky, study co-author:

“Other research suggests that more optimistic people may be able to regulate emotions and behavior as well as bounce back from stressors and difficulties more effectively.”

Increase your optimism

Exercises such as visualising your ‘best possible self‘ have been shown to increase optimism.

Visualising your best possible self may sound like an exercise in fantasy but, crucially, it does have to be realistic.

Carrying out this exercise typically involves imagining your life in the future, but a future where everything that could go well, has gone well.

You have reached those realistic goals that you have set for yourself.

Then, to help cement your visualisation, you commit your best possible self to paper.

The study was published in the journal PNAS (Lee et al., 2019).

Three personality traits are especially powerful in helping people deal with emotional distress.

Being optimistic, feeling positive emotions and controlling negative emotions are all linked to better mental health, psychologists have found.

The good news is that all three traits can be trained and improved.

Practicing these positive traits can actually change vital brain structures.

Indeed, new research reveals that people with these resilient personality factors have greater brain volume in critical areas of their prefrontal cortex.

Dr Sandra Dolcos, study co-author, said:

“People are not necessarily aware of how plastic the brain is.

We can change the volume of the brain through experience and training.

I teach brain and cognition, and students are so empowered at the end of the course because they realize that they are in charge.

It means that we can work on developing new skills, for instance, new emotion regulation strategies that have a more positive approach, and can actually impact the brain.”

The conclusions come from 85 people who were given both brain scans and personality tests.

The scans focused on the prefrontal area of the brain, the region above and behind the eyes.

Dr Dolcos explained:

“We knew from the clinical literature that there are relationships between brain volume and certain personality traits.

Lower brain volume in certain areas is associated with increased anxiety.”

Mr Matt Moore, the study’s first author, explained the results:

“…we found that if you have larger volume in this set of brain regions, you had higher levels of these protective personality traits.”

The scans revealed exactly where higher resilience can be seen in the brain’s structure, Mr Moore said:

“This study gives us the coordinates of the brain regions that are important as well as some traits that are important.

As the next step, we can then try and engage this plasticity at each of these levels and then train against a negative outcome.”

The study was published in the journal Personality Neuroscience (Moore et al., 2018).

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:

• optimistic about the future,
• closer to other people,
• decisive,
• and felt more useful and relaxed.

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.

One personality trait is linked to understanding other people’s feelings.

Being agreeable is linked to high levels of empathy, research finds.

Agreeableness is one of the five major aspects of personality, along with conscientiousness, neuroticism, openness to experience and extraversion.

Agreeable people tend to be tactful, trusting, friendly and warm.

They are generally mindful of other people’s feelings, which also makes them more compliant.

People who are agreeable are more likely to be helpful to others, because of their propensity for empathy.

The conclusions come from a series of studies in which people read scenarios describing a person getting into difficulties.

Subsequently, they rated how much empathy they felt and whether they would offer assistance.

The results showed that the more agreeable people are, they more they felt empathy for the victim of the story.

Agreeable people were more likely to offer their assistance.

Along with agreeable people, those who were more neurotic were more likely to empathise.

Dr Meara Habashi, the study’s first author, said:

“It is common for persons to experience distress on seeing a victim in need of help.

That distress can lead some people to escape, and to run away from the victim.

But distress does not need to block helping because it may be one first-appearing aspect of empathy.

Distress can actually contribute to helping, but the way it contributes depends on personality.”

Less agreeable people seem to need more reminders that they should help out, said Dr Habashi:

“Personality matters.

It matters in how we structure our request for help, and it matters in how we respond to that request.

Helping is a result of several different processes running in sequence.

Each process contributes something different.

The way we ask for help -perspective taking — can influence our chances for getting it.”

The study was published in the journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin (Habashi et al., 2016).