Openness Declines in Advance of Death in Late Adulthood

Openness to experience has been found to be a correlate of successful aging outcomes yet also has been found to decline from middle age onward. We hypothesized that decline in openness would be associated with death. Using longitudinal data from the Swedish Adoption/Twin Study of Aging (SATSA), the analytic sample encompassed 1954 individuals, approximately two-thirds of whom were deceased. We tested whether openness declines across late adulthood and, central to our hypothesis, whether the decline correlated with age at death. Multivariate modeling adjusted for age at study entry, sex, education, as well as the time-varying effects of physical illness, depressive symptoms, and cognitive ability. Correlations between change in neuroticism and extraversion and death were modeled for comparison. A follow-up cotwin control analysis adjusted for genetic and environmental familial confounders. Significant mean-level change was identified in all personality traits, but only for openness was change correlated with age at death, in support of our hypothesis. The findings were not explained by health factors or cognition. Cotwin control analyses indicated that the twin who died earlier showed a greater drop in openness prior to death, compared with their cotwin measured at the same time points. There was no cotwin finding for neuroticism or extraversion. We suggest that declines in openness may reflect a change in goal orientation due to the experience of a shortened time horizon, leading to an optimized selection of experiences as people approach the end of life.