Certain personality traits may shape how we deal with cognitive decline. A study published in Alzheimer’s & Dementia investigated the link between dementia and the Big Five personality traits: conscientiousness, extraversion, openness to experience, neuroticism, and agreeableness. The research analyzed data on 44,000 people from eight longitudinal studies, of whom 1,700 developed dementia, and compared their personality scores with cognitive test scores and pathology data.
People who were conscientious, extroverted, and more agreeable had a lower risk of a dementia diagnosis compared to their more negative and neurotic peers. But the study found no link between personality traits and the neuropathology results in autopsies on people’s brains after death. One possibility, the study’s authors suggest, is that traits like conscientiousness help people perform better on cognitive tests, indicative of their ability to cope with the challenges of dementia
Leave a Reply