Associations between personality traits, leisure activities and cognitive levels and decline across 12 years in older adults

The engagement in cognitively stimulating activities has been found to be associated with slower rates of cognitive decline in old age. In which type of activities people engage in arguably depends partly on their personality traits, which thus might have an impact on later cognitive fitness. To study these potential associations, we examined the associations between Neuroticism, Extraversion and Openness, different types of leisure activities (e.g., social, mental, physical), and cognitive ability levels and decline in older adults. Analyses were based on a sample of young-old (60 to 72 years old; n = 1,609) and old-old (78 years or older; n = 1,085) adults from the Swedish National Study on Aging and Care in Kungsholmen (SNAC-K), who participated in up to five repeated measurements of cognitive abilities spanning 12 years. We used latent growth curve models to estimate cognitive levels and decline, as well as the associations with initial personality trait levels and leisure activity engagement. In both groups, lower Neuroticism, higher Extraversion and higher Openness levels were moderately associated with stronger engagement in all types of activities. Lower Neuroticism, higher Extraversion and a more activity lifestyle were weakly to moderately associated with slower cognitive decline in the old-old age group. There, personality traits and activities explained 9.3% of the variance in cognitive decline after controlling for age, sex, education and chronic diseases (which explained 9.0%). Taken together, this study provides further evidence for the associations of personality traits and activity engagement with later cognitive decline in old age.