Abstract
Personality plays an important role in determining human health and risk of earlier death. However, the mechanisms underlying those associations remain unknown. We moved away from testing hypotheses rooted in the activities of modern humans, by testing whether these associations are ancestral and one side of a trade-off between fitness costs and benefits. We examined personality predictors of survival in 283 captive western lowland gorillas (Gorilla gorilla gorilla) followed for 18 years. We found that of four gorilla personality dimensions--dominance, extraversion, neuroticism and agreeableness--extraversion was associated with longer survival. This effect could not be explained by demographic information or husbandry practices. These findings suggest that understanding how extraversion and other personality domains influence longevity requires investigating the evolutionary bases of this association in nonhuman primates and other species.
Highlights
A large body of literature indicates that who we are or our ‘character’ has major consequences related to our health [1]
Studies indicate that lower levels of neuroticism and higher levels of conscientiousness, agreeableness, openness to experience and aspects of extraversion linked to positive affect, and activity are related to reduced risk of all-cause mortality [1,2]
This finding did not reflect infant mortality or the deaths of very young gorillas. This finding is consistent with human studies [1,2] and suggests that the association between extraversion and longevity may have been present in the common ancestor shared by humans and gorillas
Summary
A large body of literature indicates that who we are or our ‘character’ has major consequences related to our health [1]. Studies of rhesus macaques found that ‘nervous temperament’ was associated with more neutrophils, lymphocytes and both CD4þ and CD8þ T cells [3], and that sociability was associated with better immune response directly or by moderating the effects of stressful situations [4] These and similar studies suggest that insights into personality evolution can be gained from studying personality and health outcomes in closely related species [5]. The first is not a measure of rank, but resembles dimensions associated with competitive prowess and labelled dominance or confidence in other primates [9] The latter three resemble dimensions labelled extraversion, neuroticism, and agreeableness, respectively, in humans, chimpanzees and orangutans [10 –12].1.
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