Nice People Live Longer!

Julius Caesar learned this lesson the hard way, so did Hitler and Louis XVI.

Howard S. Friedman, distinguished professor of psychology, and graduate student Margaret L. Kern analyzed data from 20 studies that focused on conscientiousness-related traits and longevity, and involved more than 8,900 participants from the United States, Canada, Germany,Norway, Japan and Sweden.

“The major finding is that this conscientiousness aspect of personality is indeed reliably predictive of mortality risk across studies,” Friedman said. “This seems to be as important as most commonly assessed medical risk factors, few of which are psychological.”

Friedman said that although this combined analysis did not focus directly on explaining why conscientiousness is a predictor of longevity, his previous research suggests reasons that fit with this new study.

So there you go! Be nice to people and live longer!!!