SynthesisThe journals of gerontology. Series B, Psychological sciences and social sciences2023
Five-Factor Model Personality Traits and the Trajectory of Episodic Memory: Individual-Participant Meta-Analysis of 471,821 Memory Assessments from 120,640 Participants.
Synthesis in The journals of gerontology. Series B, Psychological sciences and social sciences, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 27 papers, 3 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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Who cites it
27 citing papers in PubMed, 3 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Personality and mortality risk: A systematic review and meta-analysis of longitudinal data.Journal of personality and social psychology · 2026Pooled it
- Personality traits and polypharmacy: meta-analysis of five samples.Psychology & health · 2025Pooled it
- Personality and Risk of Arthritis in Six Longitudinal Samples.The journals of gerontology. Series B, Psychological sciences and social sciences · 2024Pooled it
- Personality and cognitive resilience to accelerated epigenetic aging.Journal of psychiatric research · 2026Article
- Association of Adverse Childhood Experiences and Cognitive Health in Older Adults: Rush Memory and Aging Project.The American journal of geriatric psychiatry. Open science, education, and practice · 2026Article
- Inhibition of return mediates the relationship between openness to experience and visuospatial ability.PeerJ · 2026Article
- Juvenile delinquency and cognitive function in adulthood: Differentiating violent and nonviolent behaviors and exploring multiple mechanisms.Journal of research on adolescence : the official journal of the Society for Research on Adolescence · 2025Article
- Personality and epigenetic aging: A multi-cohort and multi-clock study.Psychoneuroendocrinology · 2025Article
- Association of neuroticism with incident dementia and cognitive function: 26-year follow-up of EPIC-Norfolk study.Age and ageing · 2025Article
- Personality as mechanism: An integrative model of five-factor model personality traits as a mechanism between earlier life factors and cognitive aging.Current opinion in psychology · 2025Review
- Personality nuances and cognition: A multi-cohort and multi-method approach.Journal of psychiatric research · 2025Article
- Five-factor model personality traits and cognition in the Harmonized Cognitive Assessment Protocol sub-study of the Survey of Health, Ageing, and Retirement in Europe.International journal of personality psychology · 2025Article
- Personality traits and social frailty in older adults: exploring the mediating effect of perceived loneliness.Frontiers in public health · 2025Observational
- The mediational role of hearing acuity in the association between personality and memory: Evidence from the health and retirement study and the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing.Journal of psychosomatic research · 2024Article
- Personality and Transition From Mild Cognitive Impairment to Normal Cognition vs Dementia.Journal of the American Medical Directors Association · 2024Observational
- Physical, cognitive, and social activities as mediators between personality and cognition: evidence from four prospective samples.Aging & mental health · 2024Article
- The Cross-Cultural Validation of Neuropsychological Assessments and Their Clinical Applications in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy: A Scoping Analysis.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2024Review
- Testing of significant changes in big-five personality factors over time in the presence and absence of memory impairment and life-related stress.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Psychiatric Disease as a Potential Risk Factor for Dementia: A Narrative Review.Brain sciences · 2024Review
- Personality and cognitive errors in the Healthy Aging in Neighborhoods of Diversity across the Life Span study.Journal of research in personality · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
Abstract
objectivesFive-factor model (FFM) personality traits are associated with concurrent memory function and risk of incident dementia but are less consistently associated with the change in episodic memory. The present research analyzes multiple large-scale studies with a consistent analytic approach to evaluate the association between personality and change in episodic memory over time.
methodAcross nine public longitudinal data sets, 120,640 participants provided 471,821 memory assessments over up to 26 years (age range 18-108). FFM traits were tested as predictors of the average level (intercept) and change over time (slope) of episodic memory. Results from the individual samples were meta-analyzed to summarize the associations.
resultsConsistent with expectations for the intercept, higher neuroticism was associated with worse memory performance, whereas higher openness and conscientiousness were associated with better performance; extraversion and agreeableness were also associated with better performance. Higher neuroticism and lower conscientiousness were related to declines in memory only in samples with more than two assessments of memory. The other three traits were unrelated to memory slope. The pattern was similar when participants with dementia were excluded from the analysis, and the association with the slope was not moderated by age. DISCUSSION: FFM traits have a robust association with average memory performance. Higher neuroticism and lower conscientiousness were associated with declines in memory performance only among samples with more than two memory assessments. The heterogeneity across studies suggests that multiple memory assessments are needed to reliably detect change over time, which may be one reason for past inconsistencies across studies.
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