Personality and intelligence impacts longevity

Emotionally stable, intelligent men live longer than neurotic, less intelligent men.

Neurotisim can be defined as a tendency to experience negative emotional states. Individuals who score high on neuroticism are more likely to experience anxiety, anger, guilt, and clinical depression.

It's known that people who are neurotic tend to be tense, anxious, and prone to depression and are more likely to smoke and be in poorer health than people who are not neurotic. However, the effects of these traits may be lessened among more intelligent people, who may be more likely to have intelligence and economic resources to deal with health problems as they arise.

To determine whether neuroticism predicted mortality, researchers from UK followed 4200 Vietnamese men for 15 years. A total of 234 men died during follow up. The participants took part in telephone interviews as well as medical and psychological evaluations, to test for signs of neuroticism.

After accounting for the influence of age and other factors, ethnicity, marital study and other factors, high neuroticism and low cognitive ability were both found to be linked to the likelihood of dying earlier than others. It was also found that men with neurotic traits, a tendency to worry and to experience emotional ups and downs and low mental ability were at greater risk of dying over a decade earlier or so than men without these traits.

These findings support past studies that have linked personality traits to life span.