Personality - PsyBlog

3 Personality Traits Linked To A Stronger Immune System

People with these three personality traits tend to have stronger immune systems.

Personality traits and the immune system display some fascinating connections.

For example, contrary to conventional beliefs, outgoing and sociable individuals are found to exhibit the strongest immune responses.

This challenges the assumption that carefulness is synonymous with robust health.

Here are three ways research has found connections between personality and the immune system.

1. Introverts versus extroverts

Outgoing, sociable people have the strongest immune systems, a study finds.

Those who are the most careful, though, are more likely to have a weaker immune system response.

The research found no evidence, though, that a tendency towards negative emotions was associated with poor health.

2. Optimists versus pessimists

Optimists have healthier hearts than pessimists, a study of over 51,000 adults has found.

Optimists tend to have stronger immune systems, which may be part of the reason.

Professor Rosalba Hernandez, who led the study, said:

“Individuals with the highest levels of optimism have twice the odds of being in ideal cardiovascular health compared to their more pessimistic counterparts.
This association remains significant, even after adjusting for socio-demographic characteristics and poor mental health.”

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.

3. Conscientiousness

Men with conscientious personality traits and those who are open to experience live longer, a study has found.

Consciousness has repeatedly been linked to a stronger immune system.

For women, those who are more agreeable and emotionally stable enjoy a longer life.

This means that for women the best personality traits for a long life are:

Extroversion
Optimism
Agreeableness
Emotional stability

Whereas for men, the best traits are:

Extroversion
Optimism
Conscientiousness
Openness to experience

Ask your friends

The kicker is that it’s your friends — not you — who are better at judging these personality traits from the outside and consequently predicting how long you will live and even how strong your immune system might be.

Dr Joshua Jackson, the author of a study on the subject, said:

“You expect your friends to be inclined to see you in a positive manner, but they also are keen observers of the personality traits that could send you to an early grave.
Our study shows that people are able to observe and rate a friend’s personality accurately enough to predict early mortality decades down the road.
It suggests that people are able to see important characteristics related to health even when their friends were, for the most part, healthy and many years from death.”

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The Major Personality Trait Linked To Mating Success

The personality trait linked to ‘getting lucky’ more often.

People who are extraverted have more ‘mating success’.

The more extraverted men and women are, the more often they ‘get lucky’ with the opposite sex.

For men, those with certain combinations fare even better.

Men who are both extraverted and agreeable or extraverted and conscientious are especially fortunate.

Introverted men should not despair — they still do well if they are high on both agreeableness and conscientiousness.

Both extraverted men and women have more offspring.

Dr Stephen Whyte, the study’s first author, said:

“Throughout history, competitive advantages have helped men and women achieve increased success in their occupation, sport, artistic endeavours, their ability to acquire and secure resources, and ultimately, their survival.”

The conclusions come from a study of almost 4,500 heterosexual people.

They were given personality tests and asked about their private lives and any children they had.

Dr Whyte explained:

“The results showed certain trait combinations appear to result in higher mating frequency and more offspring for select males.
The combinations producing higher frequency for select males being high extraversion and high agreeableness, high extraversion and high conscientiousness, and high agreeableness with high conscientiousness.”

The study was published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences (Whyte et al., 2019).

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The Personality Traits In Politicians That Fuel Hate In Their Followers (M)

Rise of the ‘dark leader’: how the personality traits of politicians heighten voter aggression.

Rise of the 'dark leader': how the personality traits of politicians heighten voter aggression.

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2 Teen Personality Traits That Predict Dementia 50 Years Later

Many factors can reduce the risk of developing dementia, such as a healthy lifestyle.

Being calm and mature as an adolescent is linked to a significantly lower risk of dementia decades later.

However, being neurotic is linked to a higher risk of dementia in later life.

Neuroticism is a personality trait that is strongly linked to anxiety, sadness, irritability and self-consciousness.

Neurotic people experience more social anxiety because social situations can be stressful anyway and the neurotic mind tends to focus on the negative.

A second personality trait linked to an increased risk of dementia is a lack of conscientiousness.

People who lack conscientiousness tend to be inefficient and undisciplined — and they tend not to aim for achievement.

Personality, though, is not destiny, when it comes to dementia — good brain health is about nature and nurture.

Many factors can reduce the risk of developing dementia, such as a healthy lifestyle, including eating properly and getting enough exercise.

Keeping the mind active is also thought to reduce the risk of dementia.

Learning new activities, travel and deepening social relationships may all be beneficial.

The conclusions about personality come from a study including 82,232 high school students who were tracked from 1960 until recently.

They were given personality surveys and tested for any signs of dementia.

The results showed that calm and mature adolescents were significantly less likely to develop dementia over 50 years later.

A global personality factor including calm, maturity, tidiness and social sensitivity was linked to a lower risk of dementia.

The factors found roughly translate to what other studies have found: that high neuroticism and low conscientiousness are linked to dementia risk

The study’s authors write:

“Calm is an indicator of low levels of Big Five neuroticism, many facets of which are pronounced near-term risk factors for dementia in older persons.
Explanations for these associations often involve physiological responses to chronic stress, such as dysregulation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis, leading to ongoing glucocorticoid activity.”

Being mature reflects conscientiousness, the authors explain:

“Maturity reflects task and goal orientation, reliability, and responsibility, features of the Big Five domain of conscientiousness.
Later-life conscientiousness also appears to be protective against dementia.”

The study was published in the JAMA Psychiatry (Chapman et al., 2019).

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People who are low on this trait can improve it over time.

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The Ways Depression Changes People’s Personality

Study tests if depression changes people’s personality.

People who are depressed become more neurotic, more dependent on others and more thoughtful in the short-term.

After recovering from depression, though, people’s personality returns almost completely to its pre-depression state.

Depression does not change people’s personality in the long-term, the study found.

Indeed, people’s personality may become slightly more healthy after recovering from an episode of depression.

However, depression does affect people’s personality somewhat while they are experiencing an episode.

There was some evidence, though, that people lose some of their social confidence after an episode of depression.

It may also be that multiple, severe bouts of depression can have a long-lasting effect on personality.

The conclusions come from thousands of people, some with and some without depression, who were followed across six years.

The study’s authors explain the results:

“None of the scales for which negative change would be
predicted by the scar hypothesis (increased neuroticism, emotional reliance, and lack of social self-confidence; decreased ascendance/dominance, sociability, and extroversion) showed such change.
In general, scores on these scales remained stable from time 1 to time 2; if they changed at all, they changed numerically in the direction of healthier scores at time 2.”

No mental scars

The results showed no evidence of the so-called ‘scar hypothesis’.

The authors explain that…

“…the “scar” or “complication” model, suggesting that the depressive episode is the cause of lasting change in personality.”

Instead, the study supports the idea that certain personality types are vulnerable to depression.

Negative emotionality is the strongest risk factor for depression among personality traits, research finds.

Negative emotionality is essentially being highly neurotic and involves finding it hard to deal with stress and experiencing a lot of negative emotions and mood swings.

People who are neurotic are more likely to experience negative emotions like fear, jealousy, guilt, worry and envy.

The study was published in The American Journal of Psychiatry (Shea et al., 1996).

Forget Optimism: The Personality Trait That Actually Leads To Happiness

Around 80 percent of people are thought to be optimists, but does that make you happier?

Realists are significantly happier than both pessimists and optimists in the long-run.

Pessimism and optimism are personality traits that lie at opposite ends of a spectrum.

Realists, meanwhile, sit halfway in between, occupying the middle ground.

Optimists may suffer in the long-term because they are often disappointed.

The regular disappointment can end up being a stronger emotion than the pleasure gained from anticipating positive outcomes.

The most optimistic people are 13.5 percent less happy than realists, the study found.

Around 80 percent of people are thought to be optimists.

The problem for pessimists is perhaps more obvious: they are constantly dreading the worst.

This dread can overtake any benefits gained from things turning out better than expected.

The most pessimistic people are 21.8 percent less happy than realists, the study also found.

Both optimists and pessimists make decisions based on biased false beliefs.

Dr Chris Dawson, study co-author, said:

“Plans based on inaccurate beliefs make for poor decisions and are bound to deliver worse outcomes than would rational, realistic beliefs, leading to lower well-being for both optimists and pessimists.
Particularly prone to this are decisions on employment, savings and any choice involving risk and uncertainty.
I think for many people, research that shows you don’t have to spend your days striving to think positively might come as a relief.
We see that being realistic about your future and making sound decisions based on evidence can bring a sense of well-being, without having to immerse yourself in relentless positivity.”

The study included 1,601 people who were tracked for over 18 years.

They reported their life satisfaction and any psychological distress each year.

People were also asked about their finances and their tendency to over- or under-estimate them.

The results showed that realists were most satisfied with their lives (life satisfaction is a measure of overall happiness, in contrast to momentary pleasure).

The study was published in the journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin (de Meza & Dawson, 2020).

Eating This Food Is A Sign You Are Extraverted

What your diet says about your personality.

Eating more meat is a sign of being extraverted.

Vegetarians and vegans, meanwhile, are more likely to be introverted.

However, vegetarians also tend to be slimmer than their meat- eating peers.

This is probably because avoiding animal foods reduces the intake of fat and sugar.

Dr Veronica Witte, study co-author, is not sure exactly why vegetarians tend to be more introverted:

“It could be because more introverted people tend to have more restrictive eating habits or because they are more socially segregated because of their eating habits.”

The conclusions come from a study of 8,943 people in Germany who were given a test of personality, along with other measures.

The researchers had expected to find a link between diet and neuroticism, but did not.

Dr Witte said:

“Earlier analyses had found that more neurotic people were generally more likely to avoid certain groups of foods and to behave more restrictively.
We focused here solely on the avoidance of animal products and could not observe any correlation.”

People who are neurotic are more likely to experience depression and anxiety.

Indeed, some research finds that plant-based diets are linked to depression.

However, there was no evidence of this in the current study.

Dr Witte said:

“It is possible that in previous analyses other factors had blurred the results, including the BMI or conspicuous personality traits that are known to be associated with depression.
We accounted for them.”

The lower weight of vegetarians and vegans is less mysterious.

Ms Evelyn Medawar, the study’s first author, said:

“Products that are excessively rich in fat and sugar are particularly fattening.
They stimulate the appetite and delay the feeling of satiety.
If you avoid animal foods, you consume fewer such products on average.
People who eat predominantly vegetable foods may therefore absorb less energy.”

The study was published in the journal Nutrients (Medawar et al., 2020).