As our graduate students looked over the initial statistical findings on personality and long life, they gasped and laughed as they read the results: "Howard, that sounds like you!" The findings clearly revealed that the best childhood personality predictor of longevity was conscientiousness – the qualities of a prudent, persistent, well-organized person, like a scientist-professor – somewhat obsessive and not at all carefree.
It was not cheerfulness and it was not having a sociable personality that predicted long life across the ensuing many decades. Certain other factors were also relevant, but the prudent, dependable children lived the longest. The strength of this finding was unexpected, but it proved to be a very important and enduring one.
We had worried that perhaps nothing at all would foretell long life. This first finding demonstrated to us that a trait from childhood could be relevant to health many years later. Now we knew that questions Dr. Terman had asked parents and teachers back in 1922 could in fact predict health and longevity many decades into the future. We celebrated and raised our glasses to the Terman subjects, living and departed.
Assess Yourself
As we noted in the introduction, almost everyone seems to want to see where they fit into the long life picture. Do you match the profiles of the long-lived? We need to reiterate that the ability to predict health and longevity in any individual case is imperfect. But individuals often do recognize healthy or unhealthy patterns in themselves, their friends, or their families. To provide a deeper understanding of our ideas and to encourage movement toward healthier pathways, we offer relevant measures and risk assessments.
Let's start with a personality scale that we developed based on both Dr. Terman's questions and scaled and our own research, drawing on excellent work done at the Oregon Research Institute by measurement expert Dr. Lew Goldberg, who oversees a personality "collaboratory." Some of the items here are nearly the same as the ones Terman participants used in assessing themselves in young adulthood.
Self-Assessment: A Key Personality Component
To assess a core aspect of personality, decide how well each of the following statements describes you. Be honest, thinking about yourself as you usually are, compared to others who are the same sex and about the same age.
1. I am always prepared.
1 — very inaccurate
2 — moderately inaccurate
3 — neither accurate nor inaccurate
4 — moderately accurate
5 — very accurate
2. I leave my belongings around.
1 — very inaccurate
2 — moderately inaccurate
3 — neither accurate nor inaccurate
4 — moderately accurate
5 — very accurate
3. I actually get cold when I think of something cold.
1 — very inaccurate
2 — moderately inaccurate
3 — neither accurate nor inaccurate
4 — moderately accurate
5 — very accurate
4. I enjoy planning my work in detail.
1 — very inaccurate
2 — moderately inaccurate
3 — neither accurate nor inaccurate
4 — moderately accurate
5 — very accurate
5. I make a mess of things.
1 — very inaccurate
2 — moderately inaccurate
3 — neither accurate nor inaccurate
4 — moderately accurate
5 — very accurate
6. I get chores done right away.
1 — very inaccurate
2 — moderately inaccurate
3 — neither accurate nor inaccurate
4 — moderately accurate
5 — very accurate
7. I have sometimes had to tell a lie.
1 — very inaccurate
2 — moderately inaccurate
3 — neither accurate nor inaccurate
4 — moderately accurate
5 — very accurate
8. I often forget to put things back in their proper place.
1 — very inaccurate
2 — moderately inaccurate
3 — neither accurate nor inaccurate
4 — moderately accurate
5 — very accurate
9. I like order.
1 — very inaccurate
2 — moderately inaccurate
3 — neither accurate nor inaccurate
4 — moderately accurate
5 — very accurate
10. I shirk my duties.
1 — very inaccurate
2 — moderately inaccurate
3 — neither accurate nor inaccurate
4 — moderately accurate
5 — very accurate
11. I follow a schedule.
1 — very inaccurate
2 — moderately inaccurate
3 — neither accurate nor inaccurate
4 — moderately accurate
5 — very accurate
12. I am persistent in the accomplishment of my work and ends.
1 — very inaccurate
2 — moderately inaccurate
3 — neither accurate nor inaccurate
4 — moderately accurate
5 — very accurate
How to compute the total score:
Each item scores from 1 to 5. But for items 2, 5, 8, and 10, you need to reverse the scores. So if you said that "I leave my belongings around" was "very inaccurate" in describing you (a 1), change your score to its opposite, which is a 5. If you gave yourself a 2 you would change this to a a 4 and so on. If you said this was neither accurate nor inaccurate, you would leave your score as it is — a 3.
Then eliminate item 3 and item 7. Item 3 ("I actually get cold when I think of something cold") is an irrelevant filler item. Item 7 is a lie scale, in more than one sense of the term. For the remaining ten items, simply sum your scores.
A total score will fall somewhere between 10 and 50. This scale is a good measure of conscientiousness. Total scores between 10 and 24 indicate very low conscientiousness (the lowest quartile or 25 percent in a recent sample of adults). Scores between 37 and 50 suggest exceptionally high conscientiousness.
Another way to understand your own conscientiousness and to make it a more valid assessment is to get the viewpoint of someone else who knows you well. (Remember that in 1921 and 1922, Dr. Terman didn't ask the children about their personalities. Instead he asked their parents and teachers.) People who know you well are generally good judges of your personality, and sometimes the perspective of someone else can be enlightening, helping us to see ourselves more objectively. So use the same scale, but this time, have a friend rate you.
Excerpted from The Longevity Project by Howard S. Friedman and Leslie R. Martin. Courtesy of Hudson Street Press.
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