14 DAY TRIAL // People have noticed since the earliest days that the type of life someone leads, as in happy, sad, depressed, ecstatic, neurotic, and so on, may be a clear indicator of that person's life span. Now, new scientific studies come to add to this belief. One of these papers reveals that personality and psychological traits such as happiness, mellowness, anger, and the social-interaction ability may have an ultimate influence on everyone's life and health. The research, conducted by experts at the Purdue University in Indiana (PU), focused mostly on men. Details appear in the latest issue of the Journal of Research in Personality.
Despite only conducting their investigation on males, the research team, led by PU Professor of Child Development and Family Studies Daniel Mroczek, believes that the results can be applied to women as well, though they admit follow-up studies are required if they are to say that for certain. Its investigation adds to a growing number of studies that reveal a worrying trend – people who are more neurotic than others, as in agitated, worried, anxious and prone to depression, tend to die prematurely.
Despite knowing this, it remained a mystery for researchers why this happened. Now, at the end of a 30-year study started in 1975, and conducted on 1,800 men aged around 51 at the beginning of the scientific observations, they believe they may have found the answer, LiveScience informs. In the study, participants were asked to answer questions like, “Are you sometimes sad without any particular reason?,” by rating them with attributes from “not at all” to “very.” The test subjects were then included in a ten-point scale that ranged from very calm to highly neurotic.
The study showed that neurotic people tended to engage in a riskier behavior than their peers, consuming more alcohol and tobacco. “It may be the case that smoking and other bad health behaviors help alleviate those feelings of being stressed out, those feelings of worry. It may ease those feelings of worry and anxiety, but it may kill you in the end if you stay smoking for say 30 years,” Mroczek says. The investigation also revealed that there was a five-percent increase in the risk of premature death for every line up the ten-point scale.
“It's very exciting that there are things about our character, our personality, that influence our physical health and how long we live. For example, programs that target people high in neuroticism may get bigger bang for the buck than more widespread outreach efforts,” the expert adds. Funding for the research came largely from the National Institute on Aging (NIA) and the US Department of Veterans Affairs.