Adopting a more active lifestyle today could have benefits for your personality decades from now

ByChristian Jarrett According to statistics published by the British Heart Foundation, we spend 76 days per year, on average, sitting. Indeed, the World Health Organisation describes physical inactivity as a “global public health problem” that contributes to millions of deaths each year. You might not be surprised to hear about the harmful health consequences of a sedentary lifestyle, but perhaps less obvious is that physical activity is also associated with unwelcome changes in personality over time. Previous research has documented these effects over periods of four and ten years. A new paper in the Journal of Research in Personality has extended this, finding that greater physical inactivity at baseline is associated with deterioration in personality two decades later, even after accounting for any differences in initial personality. As the researchers, led by Yannick Stephan at Université de Montpellier, point out, there is an upside: the findings suggest that even a moderate increase in your activity levels today could have positive implications for your personality decades from now. The researchers combined data from three long-running survey studies. Two involved over 6000 participants in Wisconsin, first recruited between 1992 and 1994, aged 53 on average, when they completed a personality questionnaire and answered questions about their physical activity levels. These same participants then repeated the personality questionnaire in 2011. The other study...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Tags: Health Personality Uncategorized Source Type: blogs