Personality predicts mortality risk: An integrative data analysis of 15 international longitudinal studies

Abstract

This study examined the Big Five personality traits as predictors of mortality risk, and smoking as a mediator of that association. Replication was built into the fabric of our design: we used a Coordinated Analysis with 15 international datasets, representing 44,094 participants. We found that high neuroticism and low conscientiousness, extraversion, and agreeableness were consistent predictors of mortality across studies. Smoking had a small mediating effect for neuroticism. Country and baseline age explained variation in effects: studies with older baseline age showed a pattern of protective effects (HR<1.00) for openness, and U.S. studies showed a pattern of protective effects for extraversion. This study demonstrated coordinated analysis as a powerful approach to enhance replicability and reproducibility, especially for aging-related longitudinal research.

Smokers Are Extraverted in Japan: Smoking Habit and The Big Five Personality Traits

“…More recently, in one of two samples examined by Sallis, Smith, and Munafò (2018), the effect of Extraversion was not only significant, but also very weak. In an integrative data analysis of 15 international longitudinal studies, Graham et al (2017) also found similar results.…”

Neuroticism and health as individuals age.

“…A promising complementary research technique combines existing and newly refined longitudinal data from different data sets to utilize personality concepts to help distill healthy pathways across the decades. For example, one analysis integrated data from the Terman Life Cycle Study and the Hawaii Personality and Health Longitudinal Study (two long-term archival prospective studies) to show how samples from different cohorts and ages can be linked to examine life span theories of personality and health (Graham et al, 2017; see also Kern, Hampson, Goldberg, & Friedman, 2014).…”

Is Within–Individual Variation in Personality Traits Associated with Changes in Health Behaviours? Analysis of Seven Longitudinal Cohort Studies

“…Personality has been related to many important health outcomes, including all‐cause mortality (Graham et al, ; Jokela et al, ), dementia (Low, Harrison, & Lackersteen, ), cardiovascular disease (Jokela, Pulkki‐Råback, Elovainio, & Kivimäki, ), obesity Jokela et al, ), and type 2 diabetes (Jokela et al, ). Personality has also been associated with health behaviours, such as smoking (Hakulinen et al, ), physical inactivity (Sutin et al, ), and heavy alcohol consumption (Hakulinen et al, ), and with subclinical biomarkers of health, such as systemic inflammation (Luchetti, Barkley, Stephan, Terracciano, & Sutin, ) and lung function (Terracciano, Stephan, Luchetti, Gonzalez‐Rothi, & Sutin, ).…”