Here is a self-assessment scale that yields some insight into the relationship between moody worrying and longevity.
Are you very affected by praise or blame?
3 – Yes
2 – ?
1 – No
Do you often feel just miserable?
3 – Yes
2 – ?
1 – No
Are you touchy on certain topics?
3 – Yes
2 – ?
1 – No
Does some particularly useless thought keep coming into your mind to bother you?
3 – Yes
2 – ?
1 – No
Are you frequently burdened by a sense of remorse or regret?
3 – Yes
2 – ?
1 – No
Do you worry too long over humiliating experiences?
3 – Yes
2 – ?
1 – No
Do your feelings alternate between happiness and sadness without apparent reason?
3 – Yes
2 – ?
1 – No
Are your feelings easily hurt?
3 – Yes
2 – ?
1 – No
Are you moody?
3 – Yes
2 – ?
1 – No
Do you tend to be quite emotional?
3 – Yes
2 – ?
1 – No
To score this quiz, do the following. For each of the ten questions, assign a score of 3 for “yes,” 1 for “no,” and 2 for any question mark that you circled. Now add up your total score. The lowest possible score is 10 and highest possible is 30. If you scored 18 or below you are clearly a relaxed, laid-back kind of person—you are in the bottom quartile of this neuroticism scale, based on our data. If your score is 23 or above, however, you’re something of a neurotic (you are scoring in the upper quartile).
The term “neurotic” here isn’t being used in the clinical sense but rather to describe a normal personality characteristic that everyone possesses to one degree or another. If you scored in the middle, you are probably rather high-strung at times and appear a bit neurotic, but at other times you are more calm and serene.
When It’s Okay to Worry
As young and middle-aged adults, the Terman participants were asked whether they were generally in a good mood, calm and relaxed, and satisfied with their lives. We also knew whether, late in life, they reported declining health, a heart condition, cancer, or difficulty in completing daily tasks without assistance. Emma (who was serious as a child), for example, was retired and living alone, but said she was happy—at the time of her report she estimated that she had been “fairly cheerful” and “fairly relaxed” over the prior couple of months. She had successfully battled breast cancer not long after her retirement, remained energetic, and even did a bit of traveling from time to time. Her health story was typical of some but contrasted with other Terman subjects, who needed considerable help to care for themselves, were anxious and depressed, or saw their lives as “not too happy.”
When we homed in on adult personality, later-life happiness, and health and longevity, we found that the Terman women who were worriers in young adulthood went on to later report being sicker and unhappier; and they were more likely to die at a younger age. This was especially true if they were not prudent and conscientious. If the women were conscientious and in control of their lives and had a good group of friends, then their worrying proved to be much less of a health threat.
For men, the results were dramatically different. The Terman men who were worriers in young adulthood went on to later report being sicker and unhappier on average, but they were less likely to die. If the neurotic individuals were also conscientious, things got even better. The men who were conscientious and neurotic, like James, did quite well as they aged—at least in terms of their length of life. Older men who are neurotic worriers may be especially motivated to take care of themselves, in part due to a preoccupation with bodily symptoms. Rather than fretting themselves to death, they are concerned enough to keep themselves alive.
At first we were a bit suspicious of this clear but unexpected benefit to neurotic men, though it is hard to argue with death certificates. But then two studies by other researchers appeared, finding the same pattern. One showed that elderly men (over age seventy) who were neurotic were less likely to die during the next four years, and the other, a study of elderly Medicare patients, found that neuroticism was health protective.23 We also became believers when we saw that our discovery was especially true of the Terman men who were widowed—a time when it becomes especially important to take care of oneself.
We will come back to the dramatic differences we found between men and women, especially bereaved men and women, later on in the book. The lesson for now is that there are definitely times when it is very healthy to be a worrier.
Are You Agreeable?
If you are friendly, cooperative, trusting, and kind, then psychologists would label your personality as agreeable. This dimension—agreeableness—does a good job of summarizing the differences people have in how supportive and helpful they are. To measure the Terman participants in this way, we turned to questions they had answered about themselves in young adulthood—things like whether they tried to avoid arguments, were not critical of others, avoided hurting others’ feelings, paid attention to the feelings of others, and didn’t always try to get their own way. When describing herself in 1940, Emma indicated that she was not likely to “upbraid a workman who fail[ed] to have work done on time” nor was she likely to lose her temper, criticize others, or ignore their feelings. Instead, she saw herself as someone who was “easy to get on with.” She scored quite high on our measure of agreeableness.
While our study confirmed what other good research has shown—that agreeable, altruistic people are happier and tend to remain that way—simply being agreeable was not a secret to long life. There was certainly indication that agreeable folks stayed healthier, especially in terms of having good social relationships. But it was the social relationships themselves that turned out to be more important to physical health and long life. Being agreeable predisposed Emma to make friends and do for others but was not a direct link to her health. We’d discovered yet another case of how the importance of happiness to health is often overstated or misinterpreted. People involved in social and altruistic activities tend to be happy. But making a person happy and cheery will not necessarily make them altruistic and involved in charitable activities.
Just as worrying is not necessarily bad for your health, being agreeable is not always good for your health; it all depends on where you are on your life’s pathway and what situations you’re currently facing. That’s not to say that emotions aren’t relevant to health; rather it means you have to be a little more sophisticated and do a little more thinking about how these emotions matter for your individual case.
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For more information on the first study we mention on the protective effect of neuroticism, see A. E. Korten, A. F. Jorm, Z. Jiao, L. Letenneur, P. A. Jacomb, A. S.Henderson, H. Christensen, and B. Rodgers, “Health, Cognitive, and Psychosocial Factors as Predictors of Mortality in an Elderly Community Sample,”