New Delhi: Longevity has long been tied to eating clean and exercising, but a new study suggests that personality may also have a role to play here. Researchers from Italy’s University of Cagliari say that the way people respond to challenges and engage with their surroundings can decide how long they will live.
For the research, published in International Journal of Applied Positive Psychology on 3 July, psychologist Maria Chiara Fastame and her team from the University of Cagliari studied people in Italy’s Sardinia, home to one of the world’s five ‘blue zones’, where people live longer than the global average.
The team examined if personality traits had anything to do with psychological well-being and health-related quality of life (HRQoL), a concept used to measure an individual’s wellbeing.
The study was conducted on 125 adults aged between 71 and 101, out of which 55 were from the Blue Zone and 70 from a community outside it. The ones from outside the Blue Zone had similar socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds, and also had access to the same healthcare facilities.
Participants were made to undergo tests, interviews, and questionnaires to analyse their mental and physical health, lifestyle, and personality traits — openness, agreeableness, extraversion, neuroticism, and conscientiousness.
Also read: Wimbledon’s iconic towels are made in Gujarat
Openness is the key
It turned out that those in the Blue Zone didn’t have an exceptionally healthy life. But what made them stand out was their openness. They showed higher interest in learning new things, were more curious, and appeared willing to engage in new ideas.
Besides this, the Blue Zone residents also had higher emotional competence, better coping skills, and were more engaged in mentally and physically stimulating activities.
“These findings suggest that the combination of adaptive personality traits and coping resources promotes a more active lifestyle, providing insights into the mechanisms of successful aging,” the researchers said in the study.
Of all the people studied, researchers said the ones with higher openness appeared to invest more time in hobbies, leading to better psychological well-being. Those with higher conscientiousness, meanwhile, showed greater life satisfaction, and people with higher neuroticism reported lower health-related quality of life.