Do you experience an eternal anguish about what to do, how to do, when to do, if you do?...
All about your surroundings, from partner to colleagues and the job, makes you nervous?
Well, that's bad, 'cause you are not gonna live long.
Psychologists say that personality traits are best described by the "Big Five": extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional stability, and openness to experience.
Each category can be distributed into smaller ones, but as a whole, they make our
personhood.
When you characterize someone as "steady" or "flaky" or "gloomy" or "daring," in fact you assess the sum of these traits.
Looking at what drives a healthy personality, psychologists found that at least two of these five traits seem to prepossess our well being and longevity: emotional stability and conscientiousness.
Wellness seems to be linked to how these traits shape over time.
For example, the negative emotional stability is the neuroticism, the tendency toward hand wringing and negative thinking.
Neurotic people do not handle stress well, and are often anxious and moody.
This genetic tendency has been linked to increased mortality by many approaches.
Now Purdue University psychologist Daniel Mroczek investigated if people suffering from neuroticism can change their wellness.
He tracked more than 1600 men over 12 years, assessing their neuroticism at the start of the research and how their condition evolved, to more or less neurotic over time but also, he focused on their mortality risk over an 18-year span.
Those who increased their neuroticism over time were more prone to a premature death.
These men, all middle age or older to begin with, got older earlier, amongst other effects.
They got increasingly stressed, worried or fretful, and this tendency raised their risk for dying, mostly from cancer and heart disease.
But those who managed for whatever reason or method to calm down a bit over time, presented survival rates equal to those of emotionally stable men.
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