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WEDNESDAY, Nov. 21, 2018 (HealthDay News) – Does your teenager's personality really predict how long he will live?
Yes, says new research that reveals that high school students who tend to be calm, empathetic and intellectually curious are more likely to be alive 50 years later than their lesser peers.
The discovery does not prove that certain traits in adolescence make people live longer; it reveals only an association between the two.
But the conclusion comes from an in-depth analysis of personality surveys in 1960 of nearly 27,000 high school students in the United States. These results were then compared to all-cause deaths in almost 50 years.
"Essentially, we find that high school students who report adaptive personality characteristics – such as high levels of calm and low impulsivity – have a lower risk of death over the next half-century," he said. Author of the study, Benjamin Chapman. He is an Associate Professor in the Departments of Psychiatry and Public Health Sciences of the Medical Center at the University of Rochester in New York.
In addition to calm and impulsivity, the initial survey assessed the levels of social sensitivity of adolescent girls; direction; energy disposition; self-confidence; cleanliness; sociability; Intellectual curiosity; and maturity.
Chapman said his team "initially examined each trait one by one". This meant that calm was associated with a reduction in the risk of premature death, whether or not the same adolescent had other protective or risky characteristics.
Nevertheless, "teens who are more sociable also tend to have more self-confidence, and so on," he observed, suggesting that some traits tend to cluster in the same person.
Chapman also noted that personality traits were assessed on a spectrum, so that each teenager was characterized as having relatively high or low levels of a particular trait. And this meant that the degree of association of a teenage trait with a lower risk of premature death was also found in a continuum.
For example, very mature adolescents saw their long-term risk of premature death drop by about 6% for each statistically significant progression along the maturity spectrum; he dropped 8% for every noticeable bump of calm and energy.
According to the authors of the study, larger feature differences would likely produce even more dramatic protective benefits.
The results were published online on November 20 in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.
The initial personality survey asked more than 377,000 high school students to perform a battery of psychological tests in 1960.
Death registrations dating back to 2009 were obtained for nearly 27,000 of them. At this point, 13% had died. The team did not evaluate the specific causes of death.
And regardless of the ethnic or family background of a teenager, those whose level of energy, empathy, calm, cleanliness, intellectual curiosity and maturity were higher, as well as Lower impulsivity, faced a lower risk of death in 48 years. period.
"The interest of this work is that the features we think are not particularly helpful in adolescents for immediate results – like having good grades, entering the university, adapting socially and emotionally to everyday life – may actually have very long-term health consequences, "said Chapman.
"The good news is that people can and often change," he added. "Between high school and half a century later, there are many moments in life where chains of negative events can be stopped or reversed in one direction."
Kit Yarrow is Professor Emeritus of Psychology at Golden Gate University in San Francisco. She suggested that the results had an intuitive meaning.
"The human link is strongly correlated with health and happiness, so it's not surprising that those who have more empathy – our social glue – would come out better," he said. she said.
"In the meantime, impulsivity is dangerous," added Yarrow. "[And] People with stronger personal control are more likely to avoid irresponsible substances and irresponsible behaviors that are detrimental to health. "
On the other hand, "a calmer and more mature person will make better life choices that will have long-term consequences," she said.
William Chopik, an assistant professor of psychology at Michigan State University, agreed that personality is the driver of daily health decisions that impact longevity.
"Personality is ubiquitous in predicting everything about us," he said. "Who do we think we are, what we do, the type of work we have, how we deal with stress, if our relationships last, and now, with this and other research projects, how long we live."
More information
The National Institutes of Health of the United States of America offer more information on mental outlooks and health.
SOURCES: Benjamin Chapman, Ph.D., MPH, Associate Professor, Departments of Psychiatry and Public Health Sciences, University of Rochester Medical Center, Rochester, N.Y .; Dr. Yarrow, Ph.D., Professor Emeritus of Psychology, Golden Gate University, San Francisco; William Chopik, Ph.D., assistant professor of psychology at Michigan State University in East Lansing; November 20, 2018, Journal of Epidemiology and Community Healthonline
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