Your personality in high school may help predict your risk of dementia decades later. Researchers reached this conclusion using a 150-item personality inventory given to a national sample of teenagers in 1960. The survey assessed character traits — sociability, calmness, empathy, maturity, conscientiousness, self-confidence and others — using scores ranging from low to high. Lower socioeconomic status, which often increases chronic stress, may negate the apparent benefits of those personality traits. “Most likely these traits lead to all kinds of other things over 50 years that culminate in a diagnosis of dementia.

Source: New York Times October 17, 2019 15:33 UTC