- Graham, Eileen;
- Rutsohn, Joshua;
- Turiano, Nicholas;
- Bendayan, Rebecca;
- Batterham, Philip;
- Gerstorf, Denis;
- Katz, Mindy;
- Reynolds, Chandra;
- Sharp, Emily;
- Yoneda, Tomiko;
- Bastarache, Emily;
- Elleman, Lorien;
- Zelinski, Elizabeth;
- Johansson, Boo;
- Kuh, Diana;
- Barnes, Lisa;
- Bennett, David;
- Deeg, Dorly;
- Lipton, Richard;
- Pedersen, Nancy;
- Piccinin, Andrea;
- Spiro, Avron;
- Muniz-Terrera, Graciela;
- Willis, Sherry;
- Schaie, K;
- Roan, Carol;
- Herd, Pamela;
- Hofer, Scott;
- Mroczek, Daniel
This study examined the Big Five personality traits as predictors of mortality risk, and smoking as a mediator of that association. Replication was built into the fabric of our design: we used a Coordinated Analysis with 15 international datasets, representing 44,094 participants. We found that high neuroticism and low conscientiousness, extraversion, and agreeableness were consistent predictors of mortality across studies. Smoking had a small mediating effect for neuroticism. Country and baseline age explained variation in effects: studies with older baseline age showed a pattern of protective effects (HR<1.00) for openness, and U.S. studies showed a pattern of protective effects for extraversion. This study demonstrated coordinated analysis as a powerful approach to enhance replicability and reproducibility, especially for aging-related longitudinal research.