Changes in Personality Before and During Cognitive Impairment.
Antonio Terracciano, Martina Luchetti, Yannick Stephan and 3 others
PMID 37330217WHAT IT FOUND
Self-reported personality changes were small before cognitive impairment and larger during it.
Before impairment, extraversion, agreeableness and conscientiousness declined; neuroticism and openness showed little change. During impairment, neuroticism rose and the other four declined.
Key findings
01Before cognitive impairment, self-rated extraversion, agreeableness and conscientiousness declined, while neuroticism and openness showed little change.
02During cognitive impairment, neuroticism increased and the other four traits declined; for neuroticism, change over a decade was about d=.04 before and d=.1 during, and for most traits change during was roughly two to three times larger.
03When comparing dementia with cognitive impairment not dementia, larger personality change was found only for agreeableness.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for OTsWhat it means for RNs
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What it does not show
Cognitive status was based on brief telephone cognitive scores, not clinical diagnoses, so some people may have been misclassified. Personality was assessed only every four years, so the study could not identify the exact timing of change or test short-term changes. People with moderate to severe impairment were likely to drop out or be unable to self-report, so the findings mainly cover earlier stages of impairment. The study did not know dementia type, so changes may differ between Alzheimer, frontotemporal, vascular and other dementias. The sample was from the United States and used brief personality measures, so results may not generalise to other cultures or capture specific personality facets. There were no pre-registered hypotheses, and many traits were tested, although the authors used conservative statistical methods and focused on effect sizes.
Declared interests
The study was supported by NIH extramural research, and the authors reported no conflict of interest to disclose.
The easy way to misread this
Do not use personality change to screen for dementia. Before impairment, changes were small and inconsistent, and this study did not test whether personality change predicts who will develop impairment.