Extraverts Have Better Immune Systems

People who like people are the luckiest people in the world, in part because they appear to have stronger immune systems than people who don’t like people. (It remains unclear if people who don’t like people are the least lucky people in the world.) Futurity reports that when researchers at the University of Nottingham used microarray technology to examine relationships between the five major human personality traits and two groups of genes active in human white blood cells (leukocytes): one involving inflammation, and another involving antiviral responses and antibodies, they found that differences in immune cell gene expression are related to a person’s degree of extraversion and conscientiousness. What does that mean? Study leader Kavita Vedhara says ‘extraversion’ was found to be “significantly associated” with an increased expression of pro-inflammatory genes and that ‘conscientiousness’ was linked to a reduced expression of pro-inflammatory genes. “In other words,” she says, “people who we would expect to be exposed to more infections as a result of their socially orientated nature (i.e., extraverts) appear to have immune systems that we would expect can deal effectively with infection, and people who may be less exposed to infections because of their cautious/conscientious dispositions have immune systems that may respond less well.” Which came first, personality or immune system? Vedhara says more research is needed.