real life

This is the best personality you can have, according to science.

 

We’ve all done a magazine quiz (or 50) telling us what our favourite clothing item/ice cream flavour/pen choice says about our personality.

There was no ‘right answer’ in the results, just an interesting insight we either pushed back on or nodded in agreement with.

Which is perhaps why, up until now, we hadn’t really considered you could have a “best personality”.

Oh, but it turns out, you definitely can. And researchers at the University of California, Davis have concluded exactly what that is.

The team of researchers spoke to psychologists and regular folk to determine exactly what traits make up the most “healthy personality” a person can have.

Are you ready?

People with the healthiest personalities are friendly, self-assured, emotionally stable, able to express themselves and resilient.

Specifically, “the psychologically healthy person can be characterised as being capable to experience and express emotions, straightforward, warm, friendly, genuine, confident in their own abilities, emotionally stable, and fairly resilient to stress”.

According to the study, people with these traits were the most psychologically well-adjusted, had high self-esteem, were good at self-regulating, had an optimistic outlook on the world, and a clear, stable view of themselves. All the things that can make you a psychologically healthy person. (Which isn’t to say that if you are mentally unwell that there is anything wrong with your personality).

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“These individuals were low in aggression and meanness, unlikely to exploit others, and were relatively immune to stress and self-sufficient,” the study added.

Look, to be honest, we didn’t really think neurotic and mean was going to come out on top – but it’s interesting to know if you’ve nailed the healthy personality brief.

And if you don’t want to rely on your own self-assessment (but then, surely someone self-assured would?), you can take a quiz to find out where you sit on the healthy personality scale.

Does your personality match the definition of healthy? 

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