[Press release]Friends know how long you’ll live, study finds

Friends know how long you’ll live, study finds [University of Washington at St. Louis]

Peer estimates of your personality can predict longevity – January 20, 2015

By Gerry Everding

WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

Young lovers walking down the aisle may dream of long and healthy lives together, but close friends in the wedding party may have a better sense of whether those wishes will come true, suggests new research on personality and longevity from Washington University in St. Louis.“You expect your friends to be inclined to see you in a positive manner, but they also are keen observers of the personality traits that could send you to an early grave,” said Joshua Jackson, PhD, assistant professor of psychology in Arts & Sciences.

Jackson

Published Jan. 12 in an advance online issue of the journal Psychological Science, the study demonstrates that your personality at an early age (20s) can predict how long you will live across 75 years and that close friends are usually better than you at recognizing these traits.Male participants seen by their friends as more open and conscientious ended up living longer. Female participants whose friends rated them as high on emotional stability and agreeableness also enjoyed longer lifespans, the study found.

“Our study shows that people are able to observe and rate a friend’s personality accurately enough to predict early mortality decades down the road,” Jackson said. “It suggests that people are able to see important characteristics related to health even when their friends were, for the most part, healthy and many years from death.”

It’s no secret that a person’s personality traits can have an impact on health. Traits such as depression and anger have been linked to an increased risk of various diseases and health concerns, including an early death.

Men who are conscientious are more likely to eat right, stick with an exercise routine and avoid risks, such as driving without a seat belt. Women who are emotionally stable may be better at fighting off anger, anxiety and depression, Jackson suggests.

While other studies have shown that a person’s view of his or her own personality can be helpful in gauging mortality risk, there has been little research on whether a close friend’s personality assessment might also predict the odds of a long life.

To explore this question, Jackson and colleagues analyzed data from a longitudinal study that in the 1930s began following a group of young people in their mid-20s, most of whom were engaged to be married.

The longitudinal study included extensive data on participant personality traits, both self-reported and as reported by close friends, including bridesmaids and groomsmen in the study participants’ wedding parties.

Using information from previous follow-up studies and searches of death certificates, Jackson and colleagues were able to document dates of death for all but a few study participants. Peer ratings of personality were stronger predictors of mortality risk than were self-ratings of personality.

“There are two potential reasons for the superiority of peer ratings over self ratings,” Jackson said.

“First, friends may see something that you miss; they may have some insight that you do not. Second, because people have multiple friends, we are able to average the idiosyncrasies of any one friend to obtain a more reliable assessment of personality. With self reports, people may be biased or miss certain aspects of themselves and we are not able to counteract that because there is only one you, only one self-report.”

The study also revealed some gender differences in self-assessment: Men’s self-ratings of personality traits were somewhat useful in predicting their lifespans, whereas the self-reports of women had little predictive value.

Jackson suggests this gender difference in self-reporting may be a function of the era in which the study began, since societal expectations were different then and fewer women worked outside the home.

Young women seen as highly agreeable and emotionally stable may have increased odds for a long and happy life since their personalities were well suited for the role of a supportive and easy-going wife, which would have been the norm in the 1930s. It is likely that fewer gender differences would arise in more modern samples if we were able to wait 75 years to replicate the study, he said.

“This is one of the longest studies in psychology,” Jackson said. “It shows how important personality is in influencing significant life outcomes like health and demonstrates that information from friends and other observers can play a critical role in understanding a person’s health issues. For example, it suggests that family members and even physician ratings could be used to personalize medical treatments or identify who is at risk for certain health ailments.”

The study is co-authored by James J. Connolly, PhD, and Madeleine M. Leveille, PhD, of Connolly Consulting, Waterford, Connecticut; S. Mason Garrison of the Department of Psychology and Human Development, Vanderbilt University; and Seamus L. Connolly of College of Medicine, Touro University, California.

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• How Long Will You Live? Ask Your Friends, Study Says
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• Close friends know how long you’ll live: study

[Press release] Shared psychological characteristics that are linked to aggression between patients with Internet addiction and those with alcohol dependence | Full Text Reports…

Shared psychological characteristics that are linked to aggression between patients with Internet addiction and those with alcohol dependence | Full Text Reports….

Background
Internet addiction (IA) is considered as one of behavioral addictions. Although common neurobiological mechanisms have been suggested to underlie behavioral addiction and substance dependence, few studies have directly compared IA with substance dependence, such as alcohol dependence (AD).

Methods
We compared patients with IA, AD, and healthy controls (HC) in terms of the Five Factor Model of personality and with regard to impulsiveness, anger expression, and mood to explore psychological factors that are linked to aggression. All patients were treatment-seeking and had moderate-to-severe symptoms.

Results
The IA and AD groups showed a lower level of agreeableness and higher levels of neuroticism, impulsivity, and anger expression compared with the HC group, which are characteristics related to aggression. The addiction groups showed lower levels of extraversion, openness to experience, and conscientiousness and were more depressive and anxious than the HCs, and the severity of IA and AD symptoms was positively correlated with these types of psychopathology.

Conclusions
IA and AD are similar in terms of personality, temperament, and emotion, and they share common characteristics that may lead to aggression. Our findings suggest that strategies to reduce aggression in patients with IA are necessary and that IA and AD are closely related and should be dealt with as having a close nosological relationship.

[Reblog] Anger or gratefulness it’s up to you

From the 15 August 2012 article at Health Services Authors

Gratefulness could be the best way to happiness and to avoid child’s mental health problems in case of a pathogenic infancy. In France our psychologists developed the concept of resilience. Anglo-Saxon world put the accent on gratefulness as a tool for resilience, paving the way for the happening of a state of mind conducive to happiness. Listen to how Nancy Floy, an acupuncturist from Chicago, got through a very difficult childhood thank to her grand mother’s teaching of gratefulness for yet being still alive after a night of alcoholic chaos perpetrated by her own genitors.
Gratefulness is a very good way of conducting once life, don’t you think? Anyway my three dogs already behave according to this precept: they manifest energetically their joy, eyes full of gratefulness whatever the littlest good I do for them (like for example just giving them a little cup of water when they are thirsty, or appearing in the evening after a full day of absence, nothing more than that makes them very happy 

Thanks to the media HUMANKIND for broadcasting such interesting programs.

The interview of Nancy Floy

The public radio HUMANKIND.

Related articles

• The Top 10 Habits of Grateful People…Even In Tough Times (lifehack.org)
• Being Grateful (wordznerd.wordpress.com)

Uncontrollable Anger Prevalent Among U.S. Youth: Almost Two-Thirds Have History of Anger Attacks

Although not addressed in this study, I couldn’t help but wonder if anger is “fed” by factors not easily determined as how we think about and treat people on an everyday basis.
This morning on Facebook, a friend posted an item about snarkiness and how this affects one’s productivity.  However, I think snakiness not only affects oneself but the thoughts and actions of others.I couldn’t help but think that maybe snarky attitudes can somehow draw out anger in others. Yes, we are all ultimately responsible for our actions and thoughts. But we are also “our brother’s keeper”.

This article made me more aware of how I think and act towards teens, and how I need to rethink my thoughts and actions.

 

From the 2 July 2012 ScienceDaily article

Nearly two-thirds of U.S. adolescents have experienced an anger attack that involved threatening violence, destroying property or engaging in violence toward others at some point in their lives. These severe attacks of uncontrollable anger are much more common among adolescents than previously recognized, a new study led by researchers from Harvard Medical School finds.

The study, based on the National Comorbidity Survey Replication Adolescent Supplement, a national face-to-face household survey of 10,148 U.S. adolescents, found that nearly two-thirds of adolescents in the U.S. have a history of anger attacks. It also found that one in 12 young people — close to six million adolescents — meet criteria for a diagnosis of Intermittent Explosive Disorder (IED), a syndrome characterized by persistent uncontrollable anger attacks not accounted for by other mental disorders.

The results were published July 2 inArchives of General Psychiatry.
[Full Text of the Report here] 

IED has an average onset in late childhood and tends to be quite persistent through the middle years of life. ..

Related articles

• Uncontrollable anger prevalent among U.S. youth: Almost two-thirds have history of anger attacks (sciencedaily.com)
• Uncontrollable anger prevalent among US youth (medicalxpress.com)
• Warning over youth anger ‘disorder’ (bigpondnews.com)
• Uncontrollable anger prevalent among US youth (eurekalert.org)
• Teen rage: Anger-related disorders on the rise (vancouversun.com)
• The age of rage: psychiatrists battle over teen anger diagnosis (theprovince.com)
• The age of rage: psychiatrists battle over teen anger diagnosis (canada.com)
• One in 12 teens have ‘intermittent explosive disorder,’ study finds (news.nationalpost.com)
• Harvard Researchers Study “Intermittent Explosive Disorder” (IED); Aggression in Adolescents (madinamerica.com)
• Does your teen have a severe anger disorder? (thechart.blogs.cnn.com)

The Brain Acts Fast To Reappraise Angry Faces

Image via Wikipedia

From the 17 November 2011 Medical News Today article

…They found that, once people had adjusted their attitude toward someone, they weren’t disturbed by that person’s angry face the next time it appeared. On the other hand, when participants were told to just feel the emotions brought on by an angry face, they continued to be upset by that face. In a second study, the researchers recorded electrical brain activity from the scalp and found that reappraising wiped out the signals of the negative emotions people felt when they just looked at the faces.

Psychologists used to think that people had to feel the negative emotion, and then get rid of it; this research suggests that, if people are prepared, it’s actually a much faster and deeper process.

“If you’re trained with reappraisal, and you know your boss is frequently in a bad mood, you can prepare yourself to go into a meeting,” says Blechert, who also works as a therapist. “He can scream and yell and shout but there’ll be nothing.” But this study only looked at still pictures of angry faces; next, Blechert would like to test how people respond to a video of someone yelling at them.

Read this article

Related articles

• How we can forgive people who are being rude to us (news.bioscholar.com)

• Controlling Anger before it Controls You (APA)
• Want to Successfully Manage Your Emotions? Be Flexible (psychologytoday.com)
• Emotion Regulation: Emotional Intelligence for Personal Growth (davemsw.com)
• Reappraising the Situation and Its Impact on Aggressive Behavior (psp.sagepub.com)
• Jokes help us cope with horrifying images (scienceblog.com)
• Distract yourself or think it over? Two ways to deal with negative emotions (scienceblog.com)
• Daily Recovery Reading – November 17, 2011 (12stepsthinkaboutit.org)
• Adolescence and the Anger Prone Parent (my.psychologytoday.com)

High Blood Pressure May Lead To Missed Emotional Cues

 

Image via Wikipedia

From the 6 November 2011 Medical News Today article

A recently published study by Clemson University psychology professor James A. McCubbin and colleagues has shown that people with higher blood pressure have reduced ability to recognize angry, fearful, sad and happy faces and text passages.

“It’s like living in a world of email without smiley faces,” McCubbin said. “We put smiley faces in emails to show when we are just kidding. Otherwise some people may misinterpret our humor and get angry.”

Some people have what McCubbin calls “emotional dampening” that may cause them to respond inappropriately to anger or other emotions in others.

“For example, if your work supervisor is angry, you may mistakenly believe that he or she is just kidding,” McCubbin said. “This can lead to miscommunication, poor job performance and increased psychosocial distress.” …

Read the entire article

 

Could Anger Make People Want Things More?

From a November 3, 2010 Health Day news item

By Robert Preidt

WEDNESDAY, Nov. 3 (HealthDay News) — Anger can be a potent motivator in increasing a person’s desire to obtain things, a new study finds.

While people generally regard anger as a negative emotion, it activates an area on the left side of the brain that is associated with many positive emotions. And like positive emotions, anger can drive people to go after something, explained the researchers at Utrecht University in the Netherlands.

“People are motivated to do something or obtain a certain object in the world because it’s rewarding for them. Usually this means that the object is positive and makes you happy,” first author Henk Aarts said in an Association for Psychological Science news release….

…..The study was released online and published in the October print issue of the journal Psychological Science.

[Access to this article is only through paid subscription. Ask a reference librarian at any public, academic, or medical library for access to and availability of this article. The library may charge a fee for this article]

SOURCE: Association for Psychological Science, news release, Nov. 1, 2010

 

 

Anger Spurs Surprising Changes in the Body

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Researchers believe it boosts testosterone and heart rate, but decreases stress hormone levels.