Category: Personality

The less the ‘default network’ is activated, the less pain people felt, the study showed.

People who are more mindful feel less pain.

Brain scans showed that people who stay in the moment without judging it have lower activation in areas linked to the self and emotions.

Mindful people do not focus so heavily on the experience of pain, rather they allow it to flow away from them.

Acceptance may be key to the benefits of mindfulness, previous research suggests.

Dr Fadel Zeidan, the study’s first author, explained:

“Mindfulness is related to being aware of the present moment without too much emotional reaction or judgment.

We now know that some people are more mindful than others, and those people seemingly feel less pain.”

For the study, people were given heat stimulation while their brains were scanned.

People who were more mindful had lower activation in two critical areas: the posterior cingulate cortex and the medial prefrontal cortex.

Together these form part of what psychologists call ‘the default network’.

Dr Zeidan explained its relevance:

“As soon as you start performing a task, the connection between these two brain regions in the default mode network disengages and the brain allocates information and processes to other neural areas

Default mode deactivates whenever you are performing any kind of task, such as reading or writing.

Default mode network is reactivated whenever the individual stops performing a task and reverts to self-related thoughts, feelings and emotions.

The results from our study showed that mindful individuals are seemingly less caught up in the experience of pain, which was associated with lower pain reports.”

The more the ‘default network’ is activated, the more pain people felt, the study showed.

Dr Zeidan said:

“Now we have some new ammunition to target this brain region in the development of effective pain therapies.

Importantly this work shows that we should consider one’s level of mindfulness when calculating why and how one feels less or more pain.

Based on our earlier research, we know we can increase mindfulness through relatively short periods of mindfulness meditation training, so this may prove to be an effective way to provide pain relief for the millions of people suffering from chronic pain.”

Related

• 7 Psychological Ways Your Brain Can Control Pain — Without Medication (P)

The study was published in the journal PAIN (Zeidan et al., 2018).

People live longer in countries where this trait is more common.

Being generous leads to a longer life.

People who share more of their resources with others enjoy higher life expectancy.

Scientists analysing people’s generosity across different societies found a linear relationship with average life expectancy.

In other words, the more people shared, the longer they lived.

People in France and Japan, for example, share over two-thirds of their lifetime income with others and both countries have the lowest mortality rates.

In comparison, people in China and Turkey share less than half their income and their risk of dying in the coming year is doubled.

Some countries, though, did not follow the overall pattern.

People in the US and the UK also shared less than half of their annual income, but their risk of dying is closer to more generous countries, like France and Japan.

Australia is another outlier, with people being even less generous than the US and the UK, but living longer.

The data come from 34 countries on six continents.

The amount that people earned was compared with the amount that they gave to others.

Dr Fanny Kluge, study co-author, said:

“What is new about our study is that for the first time we have combined transfer payments from state and family and evaluated the effect.”

The results showed that societies in Western Europe tend to share a lot of their resources and they also live longer.

Countries in sub-Saharan Africa like Senegal had the lowest rates of sharing and the highest mortality rates.

Despite being richer than other African nations, South Africans share little of their resources and also die earlier.

Dr Kluge said:

“Our analyses suggest that redistribution influences the mortality rate of a country, regardless of the per capita gross domestic product.”

Generosity can be individual or societal — both are linked to a boost in longevity, said Dr Kluge:

“What I find particularly interesting is that the relationship between generosity and lifetime income that we described does not depend on whether the benefits come from the state or from the wider family.”

The study was published in the journal PNAS (Vogt et al., 2020).

Better mental and physical functioning among people high in this personality trait.

Optimists report higher levels of mental and physical functioning than pessimists.

Not only that, but optimists also live longer.

Dr Toshihiko Maruta, the study’s first author, said:

“The wellness of being is not just physical, but attitudinal.

How you perceive what goes on around you and how you interpret it may have an impact on your longevity, and it could affect the quality of your later years.”

Researchers studied 447 people who were followed over 30 years.

Their personality was assessed, along with their physical and mental functioning.

It turned out that pessimists had a lower quality of life, on average.

Dr Maruta said:

“Our study provides documentation for beliefs commonly held by patients and health care practitioners about the importance of optimistic and pessimistic attitudes.

However, questions remain about the practical significance of these findings for health care practitioners.”

Naturally, though, the study cannot tell us if optimism causes these benefits or is a result of it.

Dr Maruta said:

“Explanatory style may have implications for prevention, intervention, health care utilization and compliance with treatment regimens.

Well formulated studies are essential to warrant the extra time, effort and costs associated with efforts to intervene in a patient’s explanatory style or to personalize the care specific to explanatory style.”

Previous research has also revealed that both extroverts and optimists are more likely to live longer than introverts and pessimists.

As I have written elsewhere:

“Optimists have healthier hearts than pessimists.

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 published in the journal Mayo Clinic Proceedings (Maruta et al., 2012).

…and this is the personality trait that keeps you thin…

People with impulsive personalities have the highest chance of being overweight, research carried out over 50 years finds.

Those who score in the top 10 percent for impulsivity are, on average, 22 lbs. heavier than those in the bottom 10 percent.

People who are high in neuroticism and low in conscientiousness are more likely to go through cycles of gaining and losing weight.

The researchers write:

“Individuals with this constellation of traits tend to give in to temptation and lack the discipline to stay on track amid difficulties or frustration.

To maintain a healthy weight, it is typically necessary to have a healthy diet and a sustained program of physical activity, both of which require commitment and restraint.

Such control may be difficult for highly impulsive individuals.”

The conclusions come from data on 1,988 people followed for 50 years.

The results showed that people generally got heavier with age, but those who gained the most were impulsive, enjoyed taking risks and were competitive and aggressive.

Dr Angelina R. Sutin, who led the study, said:

“Previous research has found that impulsive individuals are prone to binge eating and alcohol consumption.

These behavioral patterns may contribute to weight gain over time.”

People who stayed the thinnest were likely to be high on conscientiousness, a personality trait linked to being careful and precise.

Dr Sutin said:

“The pathway from personality traits to weight gain is complex and probably includes physiological mechanisms, in addition to behavioral ones.

We hope that by more clearly identifying the association between personality and obesity, more tailored treatments will be developed.

For example, lifestyle and exercise interventions that are done in a group setting may be more effective for extroverts than for introverts.”

The study was published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (Sutin et al., 2011).

These are the healthiest personality traits, as rated by psychologists.

The healthiest personality traits include stable emotions, openness to feelings, the experience of positive emotions and being agreeable.

People with these traits tend to have higher self-esteem, be more optimistic and find it easier to regulate their emotions.

The conclusions come from a survey of both professional psychologists and college students, totalling in the thousands.

Both gave surprisingly similar answers to what constitutes a healthy personality, said Dr Wiebke Bleidorn, the study’s first author:

“People in general, no matter whether they are experts or not, seem to have quite a clear idea of what a healthy personality looks like.”

The study revealed that people with the healthiest personalities have the following traits:

1. Straightforwardness
2. Competence
3. Openness to feelings
4. Warmth
5. Positive emotions
6. Low depression
7. Low anxiety
8. Low impulsivity
9. Low stress vulnerability
10. Low anger hostility

Naturally, those with healthy personalities also scored lower in narcissism and exploitativeness.

However, they scored higher in more healthy aspects of narcissism, such as self-sufficiency and grandiosity.

Similarly, on tests of psychopathy, healthy people scored lower on negative traits like disinhibition, but higher on positive traits like boldness.

The study’s authors concluded:

“Individuals with high scores on the healthy personality index were psychologically well-adjusted, had high self-esteem, good self-regulatory skills, an optimistic outlook on the world, and a clear and stable self-view.

These individuals were low in aggression and meanness, unlikely to exploit others, and were relatively immune to stress and self-sufficient.”

The study was published in PsyArXiv (Bleidorn et al., 2018).