to one's life. The Big Five personality traits also predict positive health outcomes. In an elderly Japanese sample, conscientiousness, extraversion, and openness were related to lower risk of mortality. Higher conscientiousness is associated with lower obesity risk. In already obese individuals, higher conscientiousness is associated with a higher likelihood of becoming non-obese over a five-year period. Effect of personality traits through life Education Academic achievement Personality plays an important role in academic achievement. A study of 308 undergraduates who completed the Five Factor Inventory Processes and reported their GPA suggested that conscientiousness and agreeableness have a positive relationship with all types of learning styles (synthesis-analysis, methodical study, fact retention, and elaborative processing), whereas neuroticism shows an inverse relationship. Moreover, extraversion and openness were proportional to elaborative processing. The Big Five personality traits accounted for 14% of the variance in GPA, suggesting that personality traits make some contributions to academic performance. Furthermore, reflective learning styles (synthesis-analysis and elaborative processing) were able to mediate the relationship between openness and GPA. These results indicate that intellectual curiosity significantly enhances academic performance if students combine their scholarly interest with thoughtful information processing. A recent study of Israeli high-school students found that those in the gifted program systematically scored higher on openness and lower on neuroticism than those not in the gifted program. While not a measure of the Big Five, gifted students also reported less state anxiety than students not in the gifted program. Specific Big Five personality traits predict learning styles in addition to academic success. GPA and exam performance are both predicted by conscientiousness neuroticism is negatively related to academic success openness predicts utilizing synthesis-analysis and elaborative-processing learning styles neuroticism negatively correlates with learning styles in general openness and extraversion both predict all four learning styles. Studies conducted on college students have concluded that hope, which is linked to agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, and openness, has a positive effect on psychological well-being. Individuals high in neurotic tendencies are less likely to display hopeful tendencies and are negatively associated with well-being. Personality can sometimes be flexible and measuring the big five personality for individuals as they enter certain stages of life may predict their educational identity. Recent studies have suggested the likelihood of an individual's personality affecting their educational identity. Learning styles Learning styles have been described as "enduring ways of thinking and processing information". In 2008, the Association for Psychological Science (APS) commissioned