Being kind and cooperative may make you pleasant company, but it does not appear to add years to your life. A large review of long-term studies found no link between agreeableness and the risk of dying, while conscientious, outgoing people lived longer and neurotic people died sooner.
The preregistered systematic review and meta-analysis was led by Máire McGeehan and Páraic S. O’Súilleabháin of the University of Limerick, with colleagues at Florida State University, West Virginia University and Northwestern University. It was published online in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology on December 8, 2025.
Six million person-years of follow-up
The team pooled 158 effect sizes from 28 longitudinal studies published between 2002 and 2024, covering 569,859 people on four continents. Together they represent 5,997,667 person-years of follow-up and 43,851 deaths.
Every included study measured the five classic personality traits: neuroticism, extraversion, openness, agreeableness and conscientiousness. All controlled for age, and most used national death records to confirm who had died. The participants came from the UK, Sweden, Denmark, Germany, the United States, Canada, Australia and Japan, with a mean age of 61.
Conscientiousness had the strongest protective link
Conscientiousness, the trait tied to order and self-discipline, showed the largest effect: a hazard ratio of 0.90, or roughly 10% lower mortality risk. The link held after correcting for small-study bias and removing outliers, but it faded to non-significance in the few studies that adjusted for biological markers such as BMI.
Extraversion was linked to about 3% lower risk (HR 0.97), though only in North American and Australian samples, not in British, European or Japanese ones.
Neuroticism, the tendency toward worry and emotional instability, raised mortality risk by about 3% (HR 1.03). The effect survived adjustment for publication bias and was stronger in people under 65 than in older adults. It weakened, but stayed significant, in studies that controlled for health behaviours, biological markers or other illnesses.
Agreeableness and openness came up empty
Agreeableness had a hazard ratio of 0.98 with a confidence interval spanning 0.95 to 1.02, meaning no significant association. The authors had predicted this in their preregistration.
Openness at first looked protective, but the effect did not survive adjustment for small-study bias and disappeared when all five traits were analysed together. Neuroticism, extraversion and conscientiousness each kept their effects in that combined model, and the five-factor model explained mortality risk more parsimoniously than other trait groupings the team tested.
The authors note that the data came from high-income countries with mostly White samples, and that only English-language studies were included. They also say more studies are needed to test moderators with enough statistical power, and that sample size and follow-up length may matter for agreeableness and openness.
One detail stands out: in the agreeableness studies, longer follow-up and a higher share of deceased participants were tied to slightly lower risk, a pattern the authors flag for closer examination.
Study Details:
- Title: Personality and Mortality Risk: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Longitudinal Data
- Authors: Máire McGeehan, Angelina R. Sutin, Stephen Gallagher, Antonio Terracciano, Nicholas A. Turiano, Elayne Ahern, Emma M. Kirwan, Martina Luchetti, Eileen K. Graham, Páraic S. O’Súilleabháin
- Journal: Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
- Publication Date: December 8, 2025
- DOI: 10.1037/pspp0000577