Abstract
Centenarians are statistical outliers — individuals who have survived to the extreme tail of the human lifespan. While genetics undoubtedly plays a role, it cannot explain the full picture: the heritability of longevity is estimated at roughly 25%, leaving substantial room for environmental, behavioral, and psychosocial contributions. Understanding what distinguishes centenarians from the general population — particularly factors that are potentially modifiable — can inform strategies for promoting healthy longevity at the population level.
This project, conducted in collaboration with Dr. Alex Bishop from the Human Development and Family Science department at Oklahoma State University, focused on Oklahoma centenarians as a study population. The goal was to investigate the demographic and psychosocial identifiers of extreme longevity — factors such as social engagement, personality traits, coping strategies, and life satisfaction — that may contribute to survivorship beyond 100 years.
The study identified demographic and psychosocial indicators associated with centenarian survivorship, with findings presented at the IEEE Conference on Service Operations and Logistics and Informatics (SOLI) / INFORMS Conference on Service Science (ICSS), where it received the Best Paper Award, First Place. The results contribute to a growing literature suggesting that psychosocial resilience — not merely the absence of disease — is a meaningful predictor of extreme longevity.