Conscientious Individuals Live Longer
Personality traits such as conscientiousness, emotional stability, and an internal locus of control significantly influence one's lifestyle and longevity. Not only can personality traits influence health through beneficial and harmful habits but can also have a direct effect on mortality. Higher conscientiousness reduces the risk of premature death by 20 percentage points, while higher neuroticism increases it by 12 percentage points. These are the findings from a new study by Ksenia Rozhkova, Junior Research Fellow at the Laboratory for Labour Market Studies of the HSE Faculty of Economic Sciences.
Scientists have long been interested in the factors that influence life expectancy and mortality. While the impact of healthy and harmful habits and lifestyles on health has been extensively studied and is generally well understood, the influence of personality traits has only been recognised in recent years. Today, an increasing number of studies focus on the role of the so-called non-cognitive skills. They are personality traits which, while not directly related to intellectual abilities, significantly influence a person's life and behaviour. The conventional set of traits for research has been the Big Five: agreeableness, conscientiousness, extraversion, openness to experience, and neuroticism (or emotional instability). Another important factor is the locus of control, which refers to whether a person attributes their successes or failures to internal or external factors. These characteristics are significantly related to various aspects of life, including job satisfaction and even alcohol consumption.
Ksenia Rozhkova, Junior Research Fellow at the HSE Faculty of Economic Sciences, decided to investigate how non-cognitive skills impact life expectancy. To accomplish this, she analysed data on more than 10,000 participants in the Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey (RLMS-HSE), examining how the Big Five traits and locus of control influence self-assessed health, lifestyle, and the risk of premature death.
She found that non-cognitive skills indeed predict various aspects of a person's health. Thus, more conscientious people tend to enjoy better health, assessing their health as poor 1.5% less often than those with lower conscientiousness. In contrast, emotionally unstable individuals often experience significantly poorer health. Thus, a one standard deviation increase in neuroticism reduces the likelihood of good self-assessed health by 4 percentage points. Other Big Five traits appear to be less significant. Additionally, a person's perception of their health depends on how they typically attribute their successes and failures. People with an internal locus of control—those who take responsibility for what happens in their lives—are 4 percentage points more likely to assess their health as good.
The study also revealed a significant link between non-cognitive skills and lifestyle. Conscientiousness and openness to experience increase the likelihood of exercising and decrease the likelihood of smoking, whereas neuroticism has the opposite effect. Openness to experience increases the probability of physical activity by 3 percentage points for men and 5 percentage points for women. Conscientiousness in men decreases the probability of smoking by 3 percentage points and the probability of drinking alcohol by 2 percentage points. For women, this effect is insignificant. Extroverts, both men and women, drink by 1.5-2% more often. Emotional instability increases the likelihood of smoking by 2 percentage points for men and 1 percentage point for women. The internal locus of control proved to be one of the most significant factors in assessing habits. An internal locus of control is positively associated with physical activity in both genders (increasing the probability by 2-3 percentage points) and negatively associated with smoking in men (reducing the probability by 4 percentage points).
The Big Five traits also affect life expectancy, all else being equal, when considering both beneficial and harmful habits. Conscientiousness and neuroticism were found to have the most significant effects. A one standard deviation increase in conscientiousness lowers the risk of death by 20 percentage points for men and 12 percentage points for women. Openness to experience has a significant positive effect for women: a one standard deviation increase reduces the mortality risk by 13 percentage points. For men, neuroticism has emerged as the most significant factor reducing life expectancy: a one standard deviation increase in neuroticism raises the risk of mortality by 12 percentage points. However, this trait does not affect life expectancy in women. An internal locus of control is associated with reduced mortality risks for both men (by 11 percentage points) and women (by 10 percentage points).
According to the author, a person's attitude toward health depends on their non-cognitive skills. It is not just that more conscientious, open-minded, and emotionally stable individuals tend to adopt healthier habits (such as exercising more frequently). Conscientious people generally put more effort into both their work and everyday life: they take better care of their health, consult with healthcare professionals more frequently, and follow their advice.
Ksenia Rozhkova
'Commitment to a healthy lifestyle is the most obvious link between non-cognitive skills and health. Other factors include investment in education: research consistently shows that more educated individuals tend to live longer, and that non-cognitive skills (such as conscientiousness, openness to experience, neuroticism, and locus of control) influence whether a person pursues education. Various behavioural patterns beyond lifestyle also affect one's health—for example, emotional stability correlates with attitudes toward vaccination, including in the context of the recent pandemic.'
Neurotic individuals are more likely to experience stress and less likely to seek medical advice, which can contribute to premature death. Understanding this connection could transform the traditional approach to investing in human capital. 'Factors that shape non-cognitive skills during childhood have far-reaching consequences in adulthood, affecting not just health but also other aspects of life. There is an extensive body of research exploring the relationship between non-cognitive skills and various areas such as the labour market, education, social mobility, and more. When productive skills are developed early, individuals are more likely to complete their schooling, pursue higher education, obtain a degree, secure good jobs, and gain access to high-quality medical services, among other benefits. Developing non-cognitive skills is a long-term endeavour, and health is a crucial component in the broader mosaic of social well-being,' Rozhkova concludes.
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