Personality traits reinforce longevity
Children of parents, who lived more than 100 years, will live long is predicted.
The reasons for this have been given as personal characters seen in such children, both male and female.
Compare to other children, it has been found that these children are less susceptive to early mortality than other children, whose parents lived short. Percentage wise it is 120 percent lower mortality for these children than others.
Diseases like heart attacks, hypertension, and diabetes occurred late in these children generally.
With the hereditary components seen in the children of
centenarians, researchers theorized that
personality features are important for healthy aging for offspring of centenarians.
246 (121 females, 125 males) subjects of average age of 75 years were given the NEO-Five-Factor-Inventory (NEO-FFI) questionnaire for measuring neuroticism (tendency for negative emotions), openness, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and extraversion (gregariousness). It was found the offspring of centenarians are in the low score range of neuroticism, and high in extraversion. Only in agreeableness, women scored high; otherwise both men and women were in the same range. The interesting fact is that though males and females differed in personality characteristics, their offspring did not inhibit the same, and this is a strong reason to believe that the effects of personality traits clearly indicate health, ageing, and longevity, said Thomas Perts, Boston School of Medicine as well as director of Centenarian Study, Boston.
The scientists of National Institute of Aging were also involved in the study, which was available online in the journal of the American Geriatrics Society.