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Emotionally healthy people – new study identifies 3 traits



Sigmund Freud described an emotionally healthy person as someone who can ‘love and work.’ Abraham Maslow said an emotionally healthy person takes full advantage of their talents while being aware of their limitations.

In a new study, researchers from the University of California Davis (UC Davis) have identified the specific traits that a psychologically well-adjusted person tends to possess.

The report, published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, asked 214 psychologists to describe a psychologically healthy individual based on the extent to which they exhibited 30 traits. The researchers also asked two groups of undergraduate psychology students (500 of them) to rank the same traits.

The participating psychologists and students were in agreement that the emotionally healthy person possesses three particular traits: 
1.  capable of experiencing and expressing emotions;
2.  straightforward, warm, friendly, genuine, confident in their own abilities; and 
3.  emotionally stable (low in neuroticism) and fairly resilient to stress.

“We might speculate that energetic, active healthy people who exhibit pro-social values are considered more likely to impact the world in positive ways,” UC Davis professor Wiebke Bleidorn, the lead author of the report, told HuffPost. 

Bleidorn emphasized that even though personality traits tend to be fairly stable throughout life, people can work on becoming a healthier person.

“We know from other research that although personality is relatively stable, it can also change with interventions such as psychotherapy,” she said. “We hope these traits can now be targeted in future research on interventions designed to improve behaviours related to these traits.”


MARTINA NICOLLSis an international aid and development consultant, and the authorof:- Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom(2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).


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