In romantic comedies, bachelors are constantly portrayed as cat lovers with a penchant for ice cream – but beyond the big screen stereotypes, it turns out that there CURRENT personality traits possessed by those who forget love.
In a new study published in the journal Psychological Science, researchers have identified three key traits that could potentially indicate whether someone is destined to fly solo for the rest of their lives.
Overall, lifelong singles were determined to be less withdrawn, less conscientious and less outgoing than those who were married or in a relationship, according to the study.
“There are differences between people who stay single throughout their lives and people who become partners,” said study author Julia Stern, a senior researcher at the University of Bremen in Germany.
The team, which hailed from Germany, Canada and Switzerland, sought to uncover some personality patterns among lifelong singles amid a global rise in singles. Their goal was to create better ways to help this ever-growing demographic.
“We need to take more care of these people,” Stern said.
To shed light on possible signs of ultimate non-relationship, researchers enrolled more than 77,000 people over the age of 50 and divided them into five groups: currently partnered, never lived with a partner, never married or never experienced any long term experience. relationship.
Participants then completed surveys about life satisfaction as well as the top 5 personality traits. These included openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism.
They found that participants who had never been in a long-term relationship scored lower on extroversion, openness, and conscientiousness than their counterparts who were currently single but had been in a long-term relationship or married in the past.
They also experienced less life satisfaction on average.
Researchers have not yet determined whether the differences in personality are because certain personality types may be more likely to start relationships or because long-term relationships shape personalities.
However, scientists suspect that the former certainly plays a role in this romantic debate between the chicken and the egg.
“For example, people who are more extroverted are more likely to get into a relationship,” Stern said.
The research team also found that single women were happier than single men, older people were happier flying solo than middle-aged people, and that singleness resulted in lower happiness scores in countries with higher marriage rates.
To help perennial singles, Stern advocates developing singles programs that take these personality differences into account and connect older singles with like-minded people.
“If they have people taking care of them or taking care of them regularly, that can help,” she said.
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