Does Your Personality Put You At a Higher Risk of Dying?

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TThe study of personality type is probably as old as humanity. The Greek scholar Hippocrates attributed differences in temperament to imbalances in the body’s constituent fluids, the four humors: blood, yellow bile, black bile, and phlegm.

Today we have what are called the Big Five personality traits, developed by psychologists in the 1990s: neuroticism, extroversion, openness, agreeableness, and conscientiousness. But what do these personality traits have to do with our health, if anything? A group of researchers took this question to the logical extreme, asking how they might influence our risk of death.

To answer this question, they analyzed pre-existing data on the big five personality traits of more than half a million people on four continents, representing a total of almost 6 million years of life and more than 40,000 deaths. Certain traits were clearly more closely associated with early death than others. They published their findings in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

“Our work shows that the way we think, feel and behave is not only linked to life satisfaction and social relationships, but also to the length of our lives,” co-author Máire McGeehan, a psychology researcher at the University of Limerick, said in a statement.

Read more: »How to know if you are dead»

According to their results, higher neuroticism – anxiety, worry and emotional instability – could be associated with early death, but this effect appears to be stronger in younger people. In contrast, greater conscientiousness or a tendency to be organized and self-disciplined was associated with a lower risk of death. The same was true for extroversion, a preference for social engagement and activity, but primarily in Australia and North America. Openness and friendliness didn’t have much impact anyway.

“Importantly, these effects are similar in magnitude to those of commonly considered public health determinants, such as socioeconomic status,” McGeehan said.

There are many ways personality could influence our health and risk of death, researchers point out, given the documented links between personality and health-related behaviors, coping processes, stress responses and other biological processes. A person’s neuroticism and conscientiousness, for example, may influence whether they smoke or exercise regularly, try drugs, schedule preventive health exams, eat a healthy diet, or drink a lot of alcohol. Personality traits have also been associated with specific biological and clinical markers of inflammation, hormonal balance, and cardiovascular health, all of which are essential for longevity, they note. And in fact, the associations they found between death risk and neuroticism and conscientiousness were partly explained by health-related factors such as smoking and cardiovascular health – the size of the effect was reduced when these factors were taken into account.

But why would extroversion only help Australians and North Americans ward off the cold grip of death? The authors suggest that this might have something to do with the way certain cultures reward different types of behavior. In more individualistic cultures, for example, this could lead to greater social integration and higher economic rewards.

In particular, given these cultural differences, one limitation of the study is that it only includes samples from the United Kingdom, Europe, North America, Australia, and Japan, and therefore represents primarily high-income countries with predominantly white populations. Countries in Asia, Africa and South America have been excluded. Future studies could extend the analysis to these other parts of the world and also examine how personality changes over the lifespan influence mortality risk, they suggest.

Fortunately, plenty of research suggests that personality is not as static as once thought. The results therefore do not condemn anyone to a fixed fate, but they could help some people find a better way of behaving and living.

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• Kristen French

  Published on December 19, 2025

  Kristen French is an associate editor at Nautilus. She has worked in science journalism since 2013, reporting and writing articles and news for publications such as Wired, Backchannel, The Verge, And New York Review. She holds a master’s degree in science journalism from Columbia University.