Associations of personality traits with actigraphic sleep in middle-aged and older adults

Although prior studies have examined associations of personality traits with sleep, most have investigated self-reported sleep, been cross-sectional, and focused on younger and middle-aged adults. We investigated associations of personality with actigraphic sleep parameters and changes in sleep in 398 cognitively normal adults aged 40-95 years (M ± SD = 70.1 ± 12.0) in the Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging. Participants completed the Revised NEO Personality Inventory (NEO-PI-R) and 6.61 days +/-1.01 nights of wrist actigraphy at the same study visit. Participants with wrist actigraphy at multiple study visits had actigraphy data at 3.11 ± 1.52 visits (follow-up = 2.35 ± 0.70 years). Adjusting for age, sex, race, education, depressive symptoms, comorbidities and interactions of these variables with time, greater extraversion was associated with higher sleep efficiency. After further adjustment for BMI, sleep medication use, and sleep apnea symptoms, greater extraversion was associated with shorter total sleep time, and greater openness was associated with shorter average wake bout length. We observed numerous interactions of personality with sex and age, with stronger personality-sleep associations generally present at younger ages (i.e., aged 50-60 vs. 70-80) and sex differences in associations. Middle-aged and older adults higher in extraversion and lower in openness may be more vulnerable to poor sleep and may benefit from screening for sleep disturbances.