How a growth mindset affects stress levels and health.
The trait can be increased using psychological exercises.
The trait can be increased using psychological exercises.
Optimistic people tend to sleep the best, research finds.
People who are hopeful about the future were 78 percent more likely to report very good quality sleep.
Positive people also reported getting a good amount of sleep: six to nine hours per night.
Finally, optimists were much less likely to report any symptoms of insomnia or daytime sleepiness.
The reason optimism is linked to better sleep could be that it promotes positive coping.
People who cope adaptively with stress in life tend to seek support from others, eat properly, exercise regularly and anticipate stressful episodes.
The good news is that optimism is not fixed in stone.
Exercises such as visualising your ‘best possible self‘ have been shown to increase optimism.
Inadequate sleep is linked to an increased risk of many chronic diseases, said Professor Rosalba Hernandez, the study’s first author, said:
“The lack of healthy sleep is a public health concern, as poor sleep quality is associated with multiple health problems, including higher risks of obesity, hypertension and all-cause mortality.
Dispositional optimism — the belief that positive things will occur in the future — has emerged as a psychological asset of particular salience for disease-free survival and superior health.”
The study included 3,548 people across three large US cities.
They completed measures of optimism and reported on their sleep quality.
People who are optimistic tend to agree strongly with statements like “I’m always optimistic about my future” and strongly disagree with statements like “I hardly expect things to go my way.”
Some participants were brought into the lab to have their sleep quality directly measured.
Professor Hernandez explained what the study found:
“Results from this study revealed significant associations between optimism and various characteristics of self-reported sleep after adjusting for a wide array of variables, including socio-demographic characteristics, health conditions and depressive symptoms.”
Optimism promotes adaptive coping, said Professor Hernandez:
“Optimists are more likely to engage in active problem-focused coping and to interpret stressful events in more positive ways, reducing worry and ruminative thoughts when they’re falling asleep and throughout their sleep cycle.”
The study was published in the journal Behavioral Medicine (Hernandez et al., 2019).
Your bedtime routines could reveal a lot about your personality traits, such as conscientiousness and the propensity to take risks.
People with this personality trait tend to have better health habits and more stable jobs and marriages.
People with this personality trait tend to have better health habits and more stable jobs and marriages.
People who are conscientious and careful live the longest lives, research finds.
Conscientious people tend to be self-disciplined and they aim for achievement.
Two aspects of conscientiousness have the strongest link to a long life:
Careful people are also less likely to smoke or drink and experience lower levels of stress.
In more bad news for people trying to enjoy their lives, happiness seems to have little connection with a long life.
The reason is that cheerful, laid-back people tend to be more careless about their health.
Persistent and conscientious people, though, get that check-up.
The conclusions come from an analysis of 20 different studies which included over 8,900 people in many countries.
Being more conscientious was consistently linked to living a longer life.
It is probably because conscientious people tend to have better health habits and more stable jobs and marriages.
Conscientiousness is one of the five major aspects of personality, along with agreeableness, extraversion, openness to experience and neuroticism.
Professor Howard S. Friedman, the study’s co-author, said:
“The major finding is that this conscientiousness aspect of personality is indeed reliably predictive of mortality risk across studies.
This seems to be as important as most commonly assessed medical risk factors, few of which are psychological.”
If you are not that conscientious, there is still hope, said Dr Margaret L. Kern, study co-author:
“There is some evidence that people can become more conscientious, especially as they enter stable jobs or good marriages.
We think our findings can challenge people to think about their lives and what may result from the actions they do.
Even though conscientiousness cannot be changed in the short term, improvements can emerge over the long run as individuals enter responsible relationships, careers and associations.”
The study was published in the Journal of Personality (Kern & Friedman, 2008).
The trait may encourage people to keep their mind active, which is a protective factor against dementia.
The trait may encourage people to keep their mind active, which is a protective factor against dementia.
People who are open to experience have a lower risk of developing dementia, research finds.
People who are open to experience are more likely to be imaginative, sensitive to their feelings, intellectually curious and seekers of variety.
Openness to experience is one of the five major aspects of personality.
Being more open to experience may encourage people to keep their mind active, which a protective factor against dementia.
People with higher openness to experience also tend to have higher levels of education, which also reduces dementia risk.
The second personality trait linked to dementia in the new study was neuroticism.
Being neurotic increased the risk of developing dementia by 6 percent, the researchers found.
The major personality trait of neuroticism involves a tendency towards worry and moodiness.
People who are neurotic are more likely to experience negative emotions like depression, anxiety, guilt and envy.
Other studies have found that being neurotic may double the risk of developing dementia later in life.
Neurotic people are particularly sensitive to chronic stress.
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, which includes eating properly and getting enough exercise.
Indeed, making four out of five critical lifestyle changes can reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s by 60 percent.
Keeping the mind active is thought to be important for reducing the risk of dementia.
Learning new activities, travel and deepening social relationships may all be beneficial.
The present study included 524 people who were given tests of personality and symptoms of pre-dementia.
Ms Emmeline Ayers, the study’s first author, explained:
“While more studies are needed, our results provide evidence that personality traits play an independent role in the risk for or protection against specific pre-dementia syndromes.
From a clinical perspective, these findings emphasize the importance of accounting for aspects of personality when assessing for dementia risk.”
The study was published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society (Ayers et al., 2020).
This personality trait can be boosted using simple exercises.
This personality trait can be boosted using simple exercises.
People who are optimistic tend to live longer, research finds.
In fact, being optimistic — a trait that can be boosted — can increase the odds of reaching 85-years-old by up to 70 percent.
Optimism has also been linked to better memory, psychological resilience and higher quality of life.
Optimistic people tend to expect positive outcomes in the future.
Critically, optimists believe they can control their lives and make improvements.
So, optimistic people may live longer partly because they develop healthier behaviours.
Psychological resilience is also a factor, said Dr Eric Kim, the study’s first author:
“While most medical and public health efforts today focus on reducing risk factors for diseases, evidence has been mounting that enhancing psychological resilience may also make a difference.
Our new findings suggest that we should make efforts to boost optimism, which has been shown to be associated with healthier behaviors and healthier ways of coping with life challenges.”
The study included 70,021 nurses, whose health was tracked over six years.
The results showed that the most optimistic women had a 30 percent lower risk of dying than the least optimistic women.
Among the reduced risks linked to optimism were:
The good news is that optimism is not fixed in stone.
Exercises such as visualising your ‘best possible self‘ have been shown to increase optimism.
Here is how I’ve previously explained the exercise:
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.
This exercise draws on the proven benefits of expressive writing.
The study was published in the American Journal of Epidemiology (Kim et al., 2016).
Study reveals society’s stereotypes about those who go against the grain.
The personality trait can be changed over the years.
Talking to others about imposterism can help to recalibrate a person’s estimation of their own abilities.
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, a study finds.
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).
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