Everyone wants to live forever, but nobody wants to hear that the secret might be their personality. Unfortunately, that’s what the research is starting to suggest.
A study out of Sardinia—one of the world’s Blue Zones, a region with nearly 10 times as many centenarians per capita as the U.S.—found that the people living longest didn’t actually score higher on standard health quality-of-life measures than their neighbors outside the zone. What separated them was a personality trait: openness, meaning curiosity, intellectual engagement, and a willingness to try new things.
Researchers led by psychologist Maria Chiara Fastame of the University of Cagliari assessed 125 adults aged 71 to 101 on the Big Five personality traits, coping skills, leisure habits, and psychological well-being. People with higher openness spent more time on hobbies and reported better psychological well-being. Higher conscientiousness correlated with greater life satisfaction and stronger coping skills.
And on the flip side, higher neuroticism was associated with lower health-related quality of life.
The Secret to Living Longer Might Be Curiosity, New Research Suggests
The researchers are careful to note that openness probably doesn’t directly add years to your life. Rather, personality might shape the behaviors that make healthy aging more likely in the first place—someone curious about the world keeps learning, stays socially connected, picks up hobbies, stays active. The lifestyle follows the disposition. Which means the advice isn’t really “be more curious.” It’s more that curiosity was the thing driving every healthy behavior you’ve already been told to adopt.
This finding isn’t coming out of nowhere. Separate research has found that people high in openness have stronger cognitive reserve, offering protection against brain pathology, including Alzheimer’s disease. A 13-year longitudinal study found that people with higher openness maintained crystallized intelligence—general knowledge and abstract thinking—to a significantly older age than those with lower openness. The pattern holds across enough research that personality is hard to keep dismissing as a side factor.
The catch, of course, is that nobody knows how much personality can actually change in adulthood. So if you’re already the type of person who finds most things mildly irritating and has no particular interest in acquiring new hobbies, this study probably isn’t great news. The centenarians in Sardinia were curious about the world and kept engaging with it well into their second century.
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