Personality predicts mortality risk: An integrative data analysis of 15 international longitudinal studies

•Neuroticism is associated with higher risk of mortality.•Extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness are associated with lower mortality.•Smoking has a small mediating effect on the neuroticism-mortality association.•These effects are consistent across 15 long term longitudinal studies.•Baseline age and country-of-origin partially explain heterogeneity in effects.

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.