Evaluations of a Previous Day as a Pathway Between Personality and Healthy Cognitive Aging

Abstract

Objective: To examine the association between Five-Factor Model personality traits and how individuals evaluate a recent day in their lives (yesterday) and whether these evaluations mediate personality and cognitive function over time. Methods: Participants were a subsample from the Health and Retirement Study who completed personality measures in 2008/2010, the day evaluation in 2011, and cognitive tasks in 2012 ( N = 3,454). Results: Lower Neuroticism and Higher Extraversion, Openness, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness were associated with a more engaging day, fewer negative feelings, better subjective health, and less time spent alone. Active engagement and subjective health were associated with cognitive function and mediated the prospective associations between Neuroticism, Openness, and Conscientiousness and cognitive function. Discussion: Personality is associated with how individuals evaluated their previous day, which contributes to cognition over time. The present research contributes to a mechanistic model that aims to identify pathways through which personality contributes to cognitive aging.

The association between facets of conscientiousness and performance‐based and informant‐rated cognition, affect, and activities in older adults

“…In contrast, responsibility is linked to better cognition through more time spent engaging in cognitive activities. This pattern is broadly similar to previous research that found that self-reported affect and daily active engagement are mechanisms between the facets and maintaining cognitive function in older adulthood (Sutin et al, 2019). It is important to note, however, that the cognitive tasks and the informant-rated affect and activities were assessed at roughly the same time (the facets were assessed six-to-eight years earlier).…”

“…An individual's daily affect and activities may be mechanisms that support healthier cognitive aging. Individuals who experience less negative affect (Korthauer et al, 2018) and those involved in more engaging activities (Sutin et al, 2019) tend to maintain their cognitive function in older adulthood. Previous research has shown that individuals high in conscientiousness tend to experience more positive affect and less negative affect on average (Fayard et al, 2012).…”

“…Individuals high in conscientiousness, for example, are invested in their work (Lodi-Smith & Roberts, 2007) and also spend time volunteering (Mike et al, 2014), cleaning and doing upkeep around the house (Jackson et al, 2010), and are physically active (Wilson & Dishman, 2015) and less likely to spend time in sedentary activities, such as watching TV (Sutin et al, 2016). Daily active engagement may be one mechanism that helps support cognitive health over time (Sutin et al, 2019). Similar to affect, this research has been primarily at the domain level and has relied primarily on self-reports.…”

Protective roles of meditation practice and self‐esteem on cognitive functions over time: findings from the Midlife in the United States study

“…Further, we found no significant association between meditation practice and self-esteem in each of the two models. Although some earlier studies found positive correlations between mindfulness and self-esteem, [29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48] others did not. 48,49 This negative finding in our study may be due to a wide variety of meditation practice techniques, a long gap between survey waves, categorizing all frequencies of practice in the same group, or the lack of a long-term effect for meditation on certain psychological states and cognitive activities.…”

Five-Factor Model Personality Domains and Facets Associated With Markers of Cognitive Health

“…Specifically, part of the definition of conscientiousness includes a tendency to be responsible to others that is inherently interpersonal. A growing literature indicates that interpersonal facets, specifically responsibility and dutifulness, are associated with better cognitive health, from performance on cognitive tasks (Sutin, Stephan, Aschwanden, et al, 2020) to risk of Alzheimer’s disease (Terracciano et al, 2014) and dementia (Sutin et al, 2018; Terracciano et al, 2022). The results of the current sample are consistent with this growing literature and highlight the importance of this interpersonal facet to cognitive health.…”