In a 29-year study of 6,203 individuals ranging in age from 41 to 96 years at initial assessment, we evaluated the relative and combined influence of 65 mortality risk factors, which included sociodemographic variables, lifestyle attributes, medical indices, and multiple cognitive abilities. Reductions in mortality risk were most associated with higher self-rated health, female gender, fewer years as a smoker, and smaller decrements in processing speed with age. Thus, two psychological variables—subjective health status and processing speed—were among the top predictors of survival. We suggest that these psychological attributes, unlike risk factors that are more narrowly defined, reflect (and are influenced by) a broad range of health-related behaviors and characteristics. Information about these attributes can be obtained with relatively little effort or cost and—given the tractability of these measures in different cultural contexts—may prove expedient for prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of conditions related to increased mortality risk in diverse human populations.

References

Aichele, S., Rabbitt, P., Ghisletta, P. ( 2015 ). Life span decrements in fluid intelligence and processing speed predict mortality risk . Psychology and Aging, 30, 598 – 612 .

Google Scholar Crossref | Medline | ISI

Anstey, K. J., Mack, H. A., von Sanden, C. ( 2006 ). The relationship between cognition and mortality in patients with stroke, coronary heart disease, or cancer . European Psychologist, 11, 182 – 195 .

Google Scholar Crossref | ISI

Bäckman, L., MacDonald, S. ( 2006 ). Death and cognition: Synthesis and outlook . European Psychologist, 11, 224 – 235 .

Google Scholar Crossref | ISI

Baddeley, A. D., Emslie, H., Nimmo-Smith, I. ( 1992 ). The Speech and Capacity of Language Processing (SCOLP) test. Bury St. Edmunds, England : Thames Valley Test Co .

Google Scholar

Baltes, P. B., Lindenberger, U., Staudinger, U. M. ( 2006 ). Life span theory in developmental psychology . In Lerner, R. M., Damon, W. (Eds.), Handbook of child psychology: Vol. 1. Theoretical models of human development ( 6th ed. , pp. 569 – 664 ). Hoboken, NJ : John Wiley & Sons .

Google Scholar

Batty, G. D., Shipley, M. J., Gale, C. R., Mortensen, L., Deary, I. ( 2008 ). Does IQ predict total and cardiovascular disease mortality as strongly as other risk factors? Comparison of effect estimates using the Vietnam Experience Study . Heart, 94, 1541 – 1544 .

Google Scholar Crossref | Medline | ISI

Bosworth, H. B., Siegler, I. C. ( 2002 ). Terminal change in cognitive function: An updated review of longitudinal studies . Experimental Aging Research, 28, 299 – 315 .

Google Scholar Crossref | Medline | ISI

Breiman, L. ( 2001 ). Random forests . Machine Learning, 1, 5 – 32 .

Google Scholar Crossref | ISI

Brodman, K., Erdmann, A. J., Wolff, H. G. ( 1949 ). Manual for the Cornell Medical Index, Health Questionnaire. New York, NY : Cornell University Medical College .

Google Scholar

Cattell, R. B., Cattell, A. K. S. ( 1960 ). The Individual or Group Culture Fair Intelligence Test. Champaign, IL : IPAT .

Google Scholar

Cores, E. V., Vanotti, S., Eizaguirre, B., Fiorentini, L., Garcea, O., Benedict, R. H., Cáceres, F. ( 2015 ). The effect of culture on two information-processing speed tests . Applied Neuropsychology: Adult, 22, 241 – 245 .

Google Scholar Crossref | Medline | ISI

Cox, D. R. ( 1972 ). Regression models and life tables (with discussion) . Journal of the Royal Statistical Society: Series B, 34, 187 – 220 .

Google Scholar

Deary, I. ( 2008 ). Why do intelligent people live longer? Nature, 456, 175 – 176 .

Google Scholar Crossref | Medline | ISI

Diggle, P. J., Heagerty, P., Liang, K.-Y., Zeger, S. L. ( 2002 ). Analysis of longitudinal data. Oxford, England : Oxford University Press .

Google Scholar

French, D. J., Browning, C., Kendig, H., Luszcz, M. A., Saito, Y., Sargent-Cox, K., Anstey, K. J. ( 2012 ). A simple measure with complex determinants: Investigation of the correlates of self-rated health in older men and women from three continents . BMC Public Health, 12, 649 – 671 .

Google Scholar Crossref | Medline | ISI

Ghisletta, P., Aichele, S., Rabbitt, P. ( 2014 ). Longitudinal data mining to predict survival in a large sample of adults . In Gilli, M., González-Rodríguez, G., Nieto-Reyes, A. (Eds.), Proceedings of COMPSTAT 2014: 21st International Conference on Computational Statistics (pp. 167 – 175 ). Retrieved from http://www.compstat2014.org/auxil/Proceedings-COMPSTAT2014.pdf

Google Scholar

Ghisletta, P., McArdle, J. J., Lindenberger, U. ( 2006 ). Longitudinal cognition-survival relations in old and very old age: 13-year data from the Berlin Aging Study . European Psychologist, 11, 204 – 223 .

Google Scholar Crossref | ISI

Heim, A. W. ( 1970 ). AH4 Group Test of General Intelligence. Windsor, England : NFER-Nelson .

Google Scholar

Heistaro, S., Jousilahti, P., Lahelma, E., Vartiainen, E., Puska, P. ( 2001 ). Self rated health and mortality: A long term prospective study in eastern Finland . Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health, 55, 227 – 232 .

Google Scholar Crossref | Medline | ISI

Idler, E. L., Benyamini, Y. ( 1997 ). Self-rated health and mortality: A review of twenty-seven community studies . Journal of Health and Social Behavior, 38, 21 – 37 .

Google Scholar Crossref | Medline | ISI

Ishwaran, H., Kogalur, U. B. ( 2013 ). Random forests for survival, regression and classification (RF-SRC) (Version 1.4) [Software]. Retrieved from http://cran.r-project.org/package=randomforestsrc

Google Scholar

Ligthart, G. J., Corberand, J. X., Fournier, C., Galanaud, P., Hijmans, W., Kennes, B., . . . Steinmann, G. G. ( 1984 ). Admission criteria for immunogerontological studies in man: The SENIEUR protocol . Mechanisms of Ageing and Development, 28, 47 – 55 .

Google Scholar Crossref | Medline | ISI

Lindenberger, U. ( 2001 ). Lifespan theories of cognitive development . In Smelser, N. J., Baltes, P. B. (Eds.), International encyclopedia of the social & behavioral sciences (Vol. 13, pp. 8848 – 8854 ). Oxford, England : Elsevier .

Google Scholar Crossref

Lindenberger, U., Singer, T., Baltes, P. B. ( 2002 ). Longitudinal selectivity in aging populations: Separating mortality-associated versus experimental components in the Berlin Aging Study . The Journals of Gerontology, Series B: Psychological Sciences & Social Sciences, 57, 474 – 482 .

Google Scholar Crossref | ISI

Murata, C., Kondo, T., Tamakoshi, K., Yatsuya, H., Toyoshima, H. ( 2006 ). Determinants of self-rated health: Could health status explain the association between self-rated health and mortality? Archives of Gerontology and Geriatrics, 43, 369 – 380 .

Google Scholar Crossref | Medline | ISI

Ocampo, J. M. ( 2010 ). Self-rated health: Importance of use in elderly adults . Colombia Médica, 41, 275 – 289 .

Google Scholar ISI

Office of Population Censuses and Surveys . ( 1980 ). Classification of occupations 1980. London, England : Her Majesty’s Stationery Office .

Google Scholar

Pendleton, N., Clague, J. E., Horan, M. A., Rabbitt, P. M. A., Jones, M., Coward, R., . . . McInnes, L. ( 2004 ). Concordance of Cornell medical index self-reports to structured clinical assessment for the identification of physical health status . Archives of Gerontology and Geriatrics, 38, 261 – 269 .

Google Scholar Crossref | Medline | ISI

R Development Core Team . ( 2014 ). R: A language and environment for statistical computing (Version 3.1.2) [Computer software]. Retrieved from https://www.r-project.org/index.html

Google Scholar

Rabbitt, P. M. A., McInnes, L., Diggle, P., Holland, F., Bent, N., Abson, V., . . . Horan, M. ( 2004 ). The University of Manchester Longitudinal Study of Cognition in Normal Healthy Old Age, 1983 through 2003 . Aging, Neuropsychology, and Cognition: A Journal on Normal and Dysfunctional Development, 11, 245 – 279 .

Google Scholar Crossref | ISI

Rabbitt, P., Scott, M., Lunn, M., Thacker, N., Lowe, C., Pendleton, N., . . . Jackson, A. ( 2007 ). White matter lesions account for all age-related declines in speed but not in intelligence . Neuropsychology, 21, 363 – 370 .

Google Scholar Crossref | Medline | ISI

Raven, J. C. ( 1965 ). The Mill Hill Vocabulary Scale. London, England : H. K. Lewis .

Google Scholar

Roberts, B. A., Der, G., Deary, I. J., Batty, G. D. ( 2009 ). Reaction time and established risk factors for total and cardiovascular disease mortality: Comparison of effect estimates in the follow-up of a large, UK-wide, general-population based survey . Intelligence, 37, 561 – 566 .

Google Scholar Crossref | ISI

Rubin, D. ( 1987 ). Multiple imputation for nonresponse in surveys. New York, NY : Wiley .

Google Scholar Crossref

Salthouse, T. A. ( 1993 ). Speed mediation of adult age differences in cognition . Developmental Psychology, 29, 722 – 738 .

Google Scholar Crossref | ISI

Savage, R. D. ( 1984 ). Alphabet coding task-15. Unpublished manuscript, Murdoch University , Perth, Western Australia, Australia .

Google Scholar

Schafer, J. L., Graham, J. W. ( 2002 ). Missing data: Our view of the state of the art . Psychological Methods, 7, 147 – 177 .

Google Scholar Crossref | Medline | ISI

Spiro, A., Brady, C. B. ( 2011 ). Integrating health into cognitive aging: Toward a preventive cognitive neuroscience of aging . The Journals of Gerontology, Series B: Psychological Sciences & Social Sciences, 66( Suppl. 1 ), i17 – i25 .

Google Scholar Crossref | Medline | ISI

Spratt, M., Carpenter, J., Sterne, J. A. C., Carlin, J. B., Heron, J., Henderson, J., Tilling, K. ( 2010 ). Strategies for multiple imputation in longitudinal studies . American Journal of Epidemiology, 172, 478 – 487 .

Google Scholar Crossref | Medline | ISI

Strobl, C., Malley, J., Tutz, G. ( 2009 ). An introduction to recursive partitioning: Rationale, application and characteristics of regression trees, bagging, and random forests . Psychological Methods, 14, 323 – 348 .

Google Scholar Crossref | Medline | ISI

Therneau, T. ( 2014 ). survival: Survival analysis (Version 2 .37–7) [Software]. Retrieved from http://cran.r-project.org/package=survival

Google Scholar

Van Buuren, S., Groothuis-Oudshoorn, K. ( 2011 ). mice: Multivariate imputation by chained equations in R . Journal of Statistical Software, 45, 1 – 67 . Retrieved from http://www.jstatsoft.org/v45/i03/

Google Scholar

Walker, J. D., Maxwell, C. J., Hogan, D. B., Ebly, E. M. ( 2004 ). Does self-rated health predict survival in older persons with cognitive impairment? Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, 52, 1895 – 1900 .

Google Scholar Crossref | Medline | ISI

Wechsler, D. ( 1986 ). The Wechsler Adult Intelligence Test–Revised. New York, NY : Psychological Corp .

Google Scholar