Personality and Risk of Frailty: the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing

There is evidence that the personality traits conscientiousness, extraversion and neuroticism are associated with health behaviours and with risk of various health outcomes. We hypothesised that people who are lower in conscientiousness or extraversion or higher in neuroticism may be at greater risk of frailty in later life.We used general linear models to examine the prospective relation between personality, assessed using the Midlife Development Inventory, and change in frailty, modelled by a frailty index, in 5314 men and women aged 60 to over 90 years from the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing.Men and women with higher levels of neuroticism or lower levels of extraversion or conscientiousness had an increased frailty index score at follow-up. After adjustment for potential confounding or mediating variables, including frailty index score at baseline, the frailty index score at follow-up-which potentially ranges from 0 to 1-was higher by 0.035 (95 % confidence interval 0.018, 0.052) for a standard deviation increase in neuroticism and lower by 0.061 (0.031, 0.091) or 0.045 (0.020, 0.071) for a standard deviation increase in extraversion or conscientiousness, respectively. There was some evidence that the association between extraversion and frailty may be due to reverse causation whereby poorer health affected responses to items in the personality inventory.Higher levels of neuroticism or lower levels of conscientiousness or extraversion may be risk factors for the onset or progression of frailty. Future studies need to replicate these observations in other populations and explore the mechanisms underlying these associations

The association of health literacy with adherence in older 2 adults, and its role in interventions: a systematic meta-review

Background: Low health literacy is a common problem among older adults. It is often suggested to be associated with poor adherence. This suggested association implies a need for effective adherence interventions in low health literate people. However, previous reviews show mixed results on the association between low health literacy and poor adherence. A systematic meta-review of systematic reviews was conducted to study the association between health literacy and adherence in adults above the age of 50. Evidence for the effectiveness of adherence interventions among adults in this older age group with low health literacy was also explored. Methods: Eight electronic databases (MEDLINE, ERIC, EMBASE, PsycINFO, CINAHL, DARE, the Cochrane Library, and Web of Knowledge) were searched using a variety of keywords regarding health literacy and adherence. Additionally, references of identified articles were checked. Systematic reviews were included if they assessed the association between health literacy and adherence or evaluated the effectiveness of interventions to improve adherence in adults with low health literacy. The AMSTAR tool was used to assess the quality of the included reviews. The selection procedure, data-extraction, and quality assessment were performed by two independent reviewers. Seventeen reviews were selected for inclusion. Results: Reviews varied widely in quality. Both reviews of high and low quality found only weak or mixed associations between health literacy and adherence among older adults. Reviews report on seven studies that assess the effectiveness of adherence interventions among low health literate older adults. The results suggest that some adherence interventions are effective for this group. The interventions described in the reviews focused mainly on education and on lowering the health literacy demands of adherence instructions. No conclusions could be drawn about which type of intervention could be most beneficial for this population. Conclusions: Evidence on the association between health literacy and adherence in older adults is relatively weak. Adherence interventions are potentially effective for the vulnerable population of older adults with low levels of health literacy, but the evidence on this topic is limited. Further research is needed on the association between health literacy and general health behavior, and on the effectiveness of interventions

Pathological gambling in Estonia: Relationships with personality, self-esteem, emotional states and cognitive ability

Abstract Due to changes in gambling accessibility during the last decade gambling has become more widespread in Estonia and the prevalence of pathological gambling has sharply increased. The present study attempts to identify psychological characteristics of Estonian pathological gamblers. It has been shown that a wide range of social, economic, and individual factors (e.g. personality traits and emotional states) predict the likelihood of becoming a pathological gambler. In the present study, pathological gamblers' (N = 33) personality traits, self-esteem, self-reported emotional states and cognitive ability were compared to the respective characteristics in a non-gambling control group (N = 42) matched for age, gender and educational level. It was found that compared to controls, pathological gamblers had higher scores on Neuroticism (especially on its immoderation facet) and lower scores on Conscientiousness (especially on its dutifulness and cautiousness facets) and on self-esteem scale. They reported more negative emotional states during the previous month (especially depression and anxiety). Finally, pathological gamblers had lower general cognitive ability. In a logistic regression model, the likelihood of being a pathological gambler was best predicted by high immoderation score and low cognitive ability

Personality traits below facets: The consensual validity, longitudinal stability, heritability, and utility of personality nuances

It has been argued that facets do not represent the bottom of the personality hierarchy-even more specific personality characteristics, nuances, could be useful for describing and understanding individuals and their differences. Combining 2 samples of German twins, we assessed the consensual validity (correlations across different observers), rank-order stability, and heritability of nuances. Personality nuances were operationalized as the 240 items of the Revised NEO Personality Inventory (NEO-PI-R). Their attributes were examined by analyzing item residuals, controlling for the variance of the facet the item had been assigned to and all other facets. Most nuances demonstrated significant (p < .0002) cross-method agreement and rank-order stability. A substantial proportion of them (48% in self-reports, 20% in informant ratings, and 50% in combined ratings) demonstrated a significant (p < .0002) component of additive genetic variance, whereas evidence for environmental influences shared by twins was modest. Applying a procedure to estimate stability and heritability of true scores of item residuals yielded estimates comparable with those of higher-order personality traits, with median estimates of rank-order stability and heritability being .77 and .52, respectively. Few nuances demonstrated robust associations with age and gender, but many showed incremental, conceptually meaningful, and replicable (across methods and/or samples) predictive validity for a range of interest domains and body mass index. We argue that these narrow personality characteristics constitute a valid level of the personality hierarchy. They may be especially useful for providing a deep and contextualized description of the individual, but also for the prediction of specific outcomes

The Gaussian graphical model in cross-sectional and time-series data

We discuss the Gaussian graphical model (GGM; an undirected network of partial correlation coefficients) and detail its utility as an exploratory data analysis tool. The GGM shows which variables predict one-another, allows for sparse modeling of covariance structures, and may highlight potential causal relationships between observed variables. We describe the utility in 3 kinds of psychological datasets: datasets in which consecutive cases are assumed independent (e.g., cross-sectional data), temporally ordered datasets (e.g., n = 1 time series), and a mixture of the 2 (e.g., n > 1 time series). In time-series analysis, the GGM can be used to model the residual structure of a vector-autoregression analysis (VAR), also termed graphical VAR. Two network models can then be obtained: a temporal network and a contemporaneous network. When analyzing data from multiple subjects, a GGM can also be formed on the covariance structure of stationary means---the between-subjects network. We discuss the interpretation of these models and propose estimation methods to obtain these networks, which we implement in the R packages graphicalVAR and mlVAR. The methods are showcased in two empirical examples, and simulation studies on these methods are included in the supplementary materials.Comment: Accepted pending revision in Multivariate Behavioral Researc

Personality nuances and cognition:A multi-cohort and multi-method approach

There is substantial evidence for an association between the Five-Factor Model personality domains and cognition across adulthood. Examining the items that compose each of the five domains, known as nuances, can provide novel insight into the aspects of the traits most connected to cognitive outcomes. This study tested the association between personality nuances and cognition (memory performance, subjective memory, informant-rated cognition) in five community-based cohorts. Participants (N &gt; 28,000, age range: 32–104 years) were administered the Midlife Development Inventory (MIDI) to assess personality nuances, immediate and recall tasks to assess memory performance, and a subjective memory measure. Ratings of cognitive functioning from a knowledgeable informant were available in two samples. There was a strong pattern of replicability between personality items and cognitive outcomes across samples and cognitive measures. Meta-analyses indicated that higher neuroticism nuances (particularly the nervous and worry items) were related to lower memory performance, worse subjective memory, and worse informant-rated cognition. Higher conscientiousness (particularly the organized and responsible items), extraversion (particularly the active item), and openness (particularly the intelligent item) nuances were consistently associated with better memory performance, better subjective memory, and better informant-rated cognition across samples. To a lesser extent, higher agreeableness nuances (helpful, warm, sympathetic) were associated with better memory and subjective memory. This research adds to the existing literature by providing novel evidence of replicable associations between personality nuances and cognition

Most people’s life satisfaction matches their personality traits:True correlations in multi-trait, multi-rater, multi-sample data

Despite numerous meta-analyses, the true extent to which life satisfaction reflects personality traits has remained unclear due to overreliance on a single method to assess both and insufficient attention to construct overlaps. Using data from three samples tested in different languages (Estonian, N = 20,886; Russian, N = 768; English, N = 600), we combined self- and informant-reports to estimate personality domains’ and nuances’ true correlations (rtrue) with general life satisfaction (LS) and satisfactions with eight life domains (DSs), while controlling for single-method and occasion-specific biases and random error, and avoiding direct construct overlaps. The associations replicated well across samples. The Big Five domains and nuances allowed predicting LS with accuracies up to rtrue ≈.80–.90 in independent (sub)samples. Emotional stability, extraversion, and conscientiousness correlated rtrue≈.30–.50 with LS, while its correlations with openness and agreeableness were small. At the nuances level, low LS was most strongly associated with feeling misunderstood, unexcited, indecisive, envious, bored, used, unable, and unrewarded (rtrue ≈.40–.70). Supporting LS’s construct validity, DSs had similar personality correlates among themselves and with LS, and an aggregated DS correlated rtrue ≈.90 with LS. LS’s approximately 10-year stability was rtrue =.70 and its longitudinal associations with personality traits mirrored cross-sectional ones. We conclude that without common measurement limitations, most people’s life satisfaction is highly consistent with their personality traits, even across many years. So, satisfaction is usually shaped by these same relatively stable factors that shape personality traits more broadly

Personality traits below facets:The consensual validity, longitudinal stability, heritability, and utility of personality nuances

Mõttus R, Kandler C, Bleidorn W, Riemann R, McCrae RR. Personality Traits Below Facets: The Consensual Validity, Longitudinal Stability, Heritability, and Utility of Personality Nuances. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 2016;112(3):474-490

January 31, 2019

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