Age Differences in Personality Structure

Most investigations in the structure of personality traits do not adequately address age, as few studies look at the structure of personality traits a-theoretically, instead presupposing a theoretical structure e.g., Big Five. As a result, the relationship among indicators within a trait (coherence) are often highlighted but relationships across traits (differentiation) are not thoroughly examined. Using a large-scale sample of 369,151 individuals ranging in age from 14 to 90, the present study examines whether personality indicators show differential relationships as a function of age. Results indicate that coherence shows few changes across the lifespan, while differentiation weakens across adulthood into old age. These finding suggest that Big Five indicators only parallel the Big Five structure among young but not older adults. Thus, using standard Big Five personality trait assessments in older adults may, at best, not reflect reality and, at worse, undermine the predictive utility of personality traits.

Predictive utility of mortality by aging measures at different hierarchical levels and the response to modifiable lifestyle factors:Implications for geroprotective programs

Background: Aging, as a multi-dimensional process, can be measured at different hierarchical levels including biological, phenotypic, and functional levels. The aims of this study were to: 1) compare the predictive utility of mortality by three aging measures at three hierarchical levels; 2) develop a composite aging measure that integrated aging measures at different hierarchical levels; and 3) evaluate the response of these aging measures to modifiable lifestyle factors. Methods: Data from National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 1999-2002 were used. Three aging measures included telomere length (TL, biological level), Phenotypic Age (PA, phenotypic level), and frailty index (FI, functional level). Mortality information was collected until Dec. 2015. Cox proportional hazards regression and multiple linear regression models were performed. Results: A total of 3249 participants (20-84 years) were included. Both accelerations (accounting for chronological age) of PA and FI were significantly associated with mortality, with HRs of 1.67 (95% confidence interval [CI] = 1.41-1.98) and 1.59 (95% CI = 1.35-1.87), respectively, while that of TL showed nonsignificant associations. We thus developed a new composite aging measure (named PC1) integrating the accelerations of PA and FI, and demonstrated its better predictive utility relative to each single aging measure. PC1, as well as the accelerations of PA and FI, were responsive to several lifestyle factors. Conclusion: The findings, for the first time, provide a full picture of the predictive utility of mortality by three aging measures at three hierarchical levels and the response to modifiable lifestyle factors, with important implications for geroprotective programs.

Assessing reproducibility and utility of clustering of patients with type 2 diabetes and established CV disease (SAVOR -TIMI 53 trial)

Objective To assess the reproducibility and clinical utility of clustering-based subtyping of patients with type 2 diabetes (T2D) and established cardiovascular (CV) disease. Methods The cardiovascular outcome trial SAVOR-TIMI 53 (n = 16,492) was used. Analyses focused on T2D patients with established CV disease. Unsupervised machine learning technique called “k-means clustering” was used to divide patients into subtypes. K-means clustering including HbA1c, age of diagnosis, BMI, HOMA2-IR and HOMA2-B was used to assign clusters to the following diabetes subtypes: severe insulin deficient diabetes (SIDD); severe insulin-resistant diabetes (SIRD); mild obesity-related diabetes (MOD); mild age-related diabetes (MARD). We refer these subtypes as “clustering-based diabetes subtypes”. A simulation study using randomly generated data was conducted to understand how correlations between the above variables influence the formation of the cluster-based diabetes subtypes. The predictive utility of clustering-based diabetes subtypes for CV events (3-point MACE), renal function reduction (eGFR decrease >30%) and diabetic disease progression (introduction of additional anti-diabetic medication) were compared with conventional risk scores. Hazard ratios (HR) were estimated by Cox-proportional hazard models. Results In the SAVOR-TIMI 53 trial based dataset, the percentage of the clustering-based T2D subtypes were; SIDD (18%), SIRD (17%), MOD (29%), MARD (37%). Using the simulated dataset, the diabetes subtypes could be largely reproduced from a log-normal distribution when including known correlations between variables. The predictive utility of clustering-based diabetic subtypes on CV events, renal function reduction, and diabetic disease progression did not show an advantage compared to conventional risk scores. Conclusions The consistent reproduction of four clustering-based T2D subtypes can be explained by the correlations between the variables used for clustering. Subtypes of T2D based on clustering had limited advantage compared to conventional risk scores to predict clinical outcome in patients with T2D and established CV disease.

Diagnostic and Predictive Utility of Serum Interleukin-37 in Rheumatoid Arthritis: A Case-Control Study

Background: Rheumatoid arthritis is the most common cause of inflammatory polyarthritis. Interleukin‐37 (IL-37) has been found to play an important regulatory role in the development of inflammatory diseases. Objectives: To assess serum IL-37 level in rheumatoid arthritis (RA) patients compared to controls, to evaluate its diagnostic and predictive utility in RA patients and to investigate IL-37 level correlation with demographic and clinical characteristics of RA. Methods: Eighty subjects, 40 RA patients aged between 23-63 years and 40 healthy controls aged between 28-67 years were evaluated. An enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) was used to analyze the serum IL-37 levels. Results: Serum IL-37 was significantly higher in RA patients compared to healthy controls. At optimum cut off value of >58.275 pg/ml, serum IL-37 had 100% accuracy, positive predictive value, negative predictive value, sensitivity, and specificity. Serum IL‐37 level was not significantly related to Disease Activity Score of 28 joints‐erythrocyte sedimentation rate (DAS28‐ESR), also not correlated with C-reactive protein(CRP), rheumatoid factor(RF) and anti-cyclic citrullinated peptide antibody (Anti-CCP). Also there was no correlation between the level of IL-37 and treatment. Conclusions: IL-37 was significantly higher in RA patients compared to healthy controls with a high diagnostic and predictive ability, and may be a potential biomarker for diagnosis and prediction of RA.

The Roles of Social-Emotional Skills in Students’ Academic and Life Success: A Multi-Informant, Multi-Cohort Perspective

Although social-emotional skills are more malleable than cognitive skills and have potential benefits for a range of academic and life outcomes, previous studies on the topic have suffered from many issues (e.g., consideration of only a small subset of skills, single-informant and single-cohort design). To address these limitations, this study used a multi-informant (self, teacher, and parent) and multi-cohort (ages 10 and 15 from Finland, N = 5,533) perspective to study the association between social-emotional skills and 20 educational (e.g., school grades and engagement), psychological (e.g., life satisfaction, social relationships), and health outcomes (e.g., eating habits, sleep trouble). Results showed that (a) there was a modest level of inter-rater agreement on social-emotional skills, with the highest agreement between students and parents (mean r = .41); (b) inclusion of multi-informant ratings substantially enhanced the ability of social-emotional skills in predicting outcome variables, with parent- and self-rated skills playing important, unique roles; (c) by modeling skills at the facet-level rather than at the domain-level, we identified the key skills for different outcomes and found significant variation in facets’ predictive utility even within the same domain; (d) although the old cohort showed lower levels of most social-emotional skills (9/15), there were only very minor changes in the inter-rater agreement and predictive utility on outcomes. Overall, Self-Control, Optimism, Trust, and Energy were found among the four most important skills for academic and life success. We further identifed unique contribution of each skill for certain outcomes, which points the way to effective and precise interventions.

Emotional recovery following divorce: Will the real self-compassion please stand up?

Self-compassion is a positive psychological construct associated with heightened well-being, but the construct is largely measured via self-report. In a study of divorcing adults ( N = 120), we sought to replicate and extend prior research on the association between self-rated and observed self-compassion, the linguistic cues associated with self-rated and observed self-compassion, and the predictive utility of observed self-compassion. Untrained observers rated participants’ stream-of-consciousness recordings about their marriage and separation experience. We found adequate consensus among raters of observed self-compassion and a significant, positive association between self-rated and observed self-compassion. Greater self- and observer-rated self-compassion were associated with less distress at baseline; however, only observed self-compassion was associated with less distress at the final study assessment. Discussion centers on the cues observers use to perceive self-compassion in others and the extent to which behavioral manifestations of affect may shape such ratings.