Have you ever thought about your personality and whether it’s more or less destined to help you live a healthy life?

According to new research from the University of California at Davis that was published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (https://psyarxiv.com/prdnf/), some people have healthier personalities than others.

The team of researchers came up with a list of 30 different personality traits that were then organized into five broader categories, which then reveal whether or not your personality is essentially healthy.

These five categories included:

1. Extraversion
2. Agreeableness
3. Neuroticism
4. Conscientiousness
5. Openness.

The UC Davis study suggests you can reliably identify healthy personality profiles based on those five categories (or at least the 30 traits that all fall into one of those five categories).

As crazy and simplistic as it might sound that a personality can lend itself to a healthier life, this research isn’t alone. Existing research has also shown that personality traits are associated with various important life outcomes, inducing mental health, physical health, life satisfaction, meaning and purpose, and even longevity.

So what specific traits make up a “healthy personality?”

Some of the generally-agreed up healthy personality traits, agreed upon both by this research team and others from the past, including humanistic thinkers dating back to the 1950s and 1960s, such as Gordon Allport, Abraham Maslow, Karen Horney and Erich Fromm, are as follows:

-The ability to both experience and express emotions

-Confidence in one’s abilities

-Emotionally stable

-Resilient to stress

-Straightforward

-Self-acceptance

-Warm and authentic with others

-Friendly

-Genuine

After they came up with their list of 30 traits, the research team got to work putting together a personality test that anyone can take that spits out a score and lets you know how healthy your are.

To do this, they created a basic, generic personality profile that would become the prototype of a healthy individual. Then they looked at data from more than 3,000 participants. Each person was then analyzed to see how their personality profile matched the expert-generated profile of the “healthy personality.”

It’s obviously a little more complicated than that, so check out the research here (https://psyarxiv.com/prdnf/) if you’re curious to dig deeper.

If not, it’s time to find out if you have a healthy personality!

You can take the test here. It only takes a few minutes. (https://scottbarrykaufman.com/healthy-personality-scale/)

What was your score?

I’ll leave you with a million dollar question to ponder: Can you change your fundamental personality?