Practice low neuroticsim and high concienceousness to be in the mental framework for maintaining a healthy weight.
The researchers, from the National Institute on Aging, looked at data from a longitudinal study of 1,988 people to determine how personality traits are associated with weight and body mass index. Their conclusions were published online in the APA's Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
"To the best of our knowledge, we are the first to examine whether personality is associated with fluctuations in weight over time," they wrote. "Interestingly, our pattern of associations fits nicely with the characteristics of these traits."
Participants were drawn from the Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging, an ongoing multidisciplinary study of normal aging administered by the National Institute on Aging. Subjects were generally healthy and highly educated, with an average of 16.53 years of education. The sample was 71 percent white, 22 percent black, 7 percent other ethnicity; 50 percent were women. All were assessed on what's known as the "Big Five" personality traits -- openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism -- as well as on 30 subcategories of these personality traits. Subjects were weighed and measured over time. This resulted in a total of 14,531 assessments across the 50 years of the study.
Although weight tends to increase gradually as people age, the researchers, led by Angelina R. Sutin, PhD, found greater weight gain among impulsive people; those who enjoy taking risks; and those who are antagonistic -- especially those who are cynical, competitive and aggressive.
"Previous research has found that impulsive individuals are prone to binge eating and alcohol consumption," Sutin said. "These behavioral patterns may contribute to weight gain over time."
Among their other findings: Conscientious participants tended to be leaner and weight did not contribute to changes in personality across adulthood.
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