Let’s Talk About Your Extroverted Grandpa
Do you tend to be more talkative in social settings? How about in school, are you quite organized? Or perhaps you feel constant anxiety, preferring comfortable environments that hide you from possible stressful experiences? These are all aspects of personality, which is a complex part of yourself that consists of your characteristics and the resulting behaviors that you perform throughout your life. Your personality is filled with different passions, values, behaviors, emotions, and more, but to simplify it I introduce to you the Big-5.
What are the Big-5? The Big-5 are the five most basic dimensions of personality. These include neuroticism, openness, extraversion, conscientiousness, and agreeableness. Neuroticism refers to a person’s level of emotional instability and negative affect. If one is high in neuroticism they tend to experience more negative emotions such as stress, anger, and depression. With high neuroticism one tends to be more worried and self-conscious. In opposition, someone low in neuroticism may tend to feel more stable and less anxious in their endeavors. Openness refers to a person’s level of curiosity, creativeness, and willingness to try new things. When one is high in openness they tend to be more adventurous and eager to learn and try new experiences. When one is low in openness they tend to be more rigid, struggling to leave their comfort zone in behaviors and knowledge. Next there is extraversion which refers to how social and assertive a person is. This means that if someone is high in extraversion they are more likely to be social, confident, and talkative. On the other hand, when someone is low in extraversion they tend to enjoy solitude more and in social situations be more quiet and less energetic. As for conscientiousness, this refers to how thoughtful and goal-oriented someone is. This means that if someone is high in conscientiousness they will tend to be more organized, more punctual, and more hard-working. In opposition, someone with low conscientiousness might be more lazy, disorganized, and late to events. And the final personality trait is agreeableness, referring to how trusting and altruistic a person is. Someone who is high in agreeableness tends to be more warm-hearted, kind, and lenient. Alternatively, someone who is low in agreeableness tends to be more rude, cross, and critical.
But how does this have to do with age-related changes in relation to cognition? Personality traits actually have a hefty influence on cognitive decline in older adults. Personality largely depicts how someone responds to stressful situations, their inclination to participate in healthy habits, how they cope, and many other behaviors that can impact an older adult’s rate of cognitive decline. Certain personality traits can not only affect the rate of cognitive decline but overtime can cause deleterious effects to the brain structure and function. Contrarily, other personality traits can have positive effects on cognitive decline, promoting positive coping, social, and other health behaviors that bolster healthy cognitive aging. Additionally, the Big-5 can predict many outcomes such as subjective well-being, psychopathology, physical health, and longevity of life. This is why research in this field is necessary, allowing psychologists to predict the rate of cognitive decline in individuals based on their personality traits. This in turn can allow for the development of interventions in order to reduce the rate of cognitive decline before it starts, thus supporting a successful cognitive aging process.
A review of research on the Big-5 personality traits and older adults presents information on the correlation between each personality trait and age-related declines. The review aims to compile many recent studies in the area and examine patterns, inconsistencies, and potential future research designs. In assemblage of the data, the authors Curtis et al. (2014) conclude that there are many consistent findings between studies of openness and conscientiousness, yet the findings of studies for the other personality traits bear more inconsistent results.
As for the consistent findings, the authors conclude that openness strongly correlates with increased engagement in stimulating activities and better coping strategies. This means that older adults that have higher levels of openness are more willing to and actively engage more in activities that promote stable cognitive ability, reserve, and functioning. Cognitive reserve consists of strategies to partake in tasks in order to intervene against cognitive decline. With conscientiousness, one is more likely to have a stable or increasing cognitive reserve resulting in better abilities to cope with cognitive decline. Additionally, in constantly exercising their cognitive abilities while partaking in new experiences, older adults will experience slower cognitive decline. This is described as the “use it or lose it” theory, insinuating that if older adults spend more time utilizing their cognitive functions they will be less likely to lose them at a faster pace.
Conscientiousness also aligns with positive effects on cognitive functioning and speed of cognitive decline. The studies within the review show how conscientiousness is positively related to older adults’ cognitive functioning due to its effect on willingness to partake in healthy behaviors, such as eating healthy and exercising, that can be protective against age-related declines in the brain. Additionally, better cognitive functioning allows for older adults to maintain levels of conscientiousness. Finally, the studies show a positive relationship between conscientiousness and ability to achieve goals using alternate methods that compensate for losses in cognitive function with aging.
As for the less consistent results, agreeableness tends to show very differing correlations with cognitive ability in older adults. Reviewing all of the studies, the authors conclude that not enough reliable evidence exists in order to conclude a relationship between agreeableness and cognitive ability in older adults. Assembling all of the results, the review determines that more effective systematic approaches are necessary in order to establish a significant relationship between agreeableness and age-related effects on cognitive functioning.
Next, results from studies on neuroticism show a slight correlation between cognitive ability and the personality trait neuroticism. Some studies within the review conclude that those high in neuroticism are more affected by anxiety, negatively influencing their cognitive test results due to the distractions that come with worry-related thoughts. Other studies conclude that neuroticism is negatively related to cognitive ability in older adults due to the effects of chronic stress, which leads to a greater decline in brain volume with age. Despite these found correlations, the studies all together provide inconsistent results and high interindividual variability, therefore compelling the authors to conclude that no significant findings can be declared from the results.
Finally, the review of extraversion studies show that again there is a lack of consistent results between studies. Some studies provide results that insinuate that older adults with higher extraversion have less impairment on cognitive test performance due to higher assertiveness, higher speed of response, and lower arousal. These all stem from the basic principles of high extraversion, being more confident, thus faster, in their responses and less anxious about their performance. Additionally, it is hypothesized that older adults may experience less cognitive decline if they are higher in extraversion due to their increased social stimulation, thus practicing the cognitive functions required in these scenarios.
Other studies add on to the result from the Curtis et al. review (2014) including that of Maldonato et al. (2017). The authors of this study utilize a large amount of nationally-representative elderly individuals as their sample population. The results of this study show that extraversion, conscientiousness and openness are all positively correlated with long-term retrieval. This means that older adults that have higher levels of these personality traits tend to find it easier to store and retrieve information from their memory, whether information from minutes, hours, or years ago. Alternatively, the results show that neuroticism and agreeableness are negatively associated with cognitive functions. Neuroticism is specifically related to lower levels of active problem solving and a reluctance to try beneficial cognitive strategies, resulting in more rapid cognitive decline. This study also delves into gender differences, noting that women tend to be higher in agreeableness, are more emotionally responsive, and have higher prosocial behavior levels than men.
So go sit down and take a personality test! Or maybe even reread my cog blog post. What personality traits do you think you are high and low in? What cognitive strategies can you start using right now to eventually slow down your cognitive decline?
References
Maldonato, N. M., Sperandeo, R., Dell’Orco, S., Cozzolino, P., Fusco, M. L., Iorio, V. S., Albesi, D., Marone, P., Nascivera, N., & Cipresso, P. (2017). The relationship between personality and neurocognition among the American elderly: An epidemiologic study. Clinical Practice and Epidemiology in Mental Health, 13. https://doi.org/10.2174/1745017901713010233
Rachel G. Curtis, Tim D. Windsor & Andrea Soubelet (2015) The relationship between Big-5 personality traits and cognitive ability in older adults – a review, Aging, Neuropsychology, and Cognition, 22:1, 42-71, DOI: 10.1080/13825585.2014.888392
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