The Healthy Personality from a Basic Trait Perspective
Wiebke Bleidorn, University of California, Davis
Christopher J. Hopwood, University of California, Davis
Robert A. Ackerman, The University of Texas at Dallas
Edward A. Witt, Chicago, IL
Christian Kandler, University of Bremen & Medical School Berlin
Rainer Riemann, Bielefeld University
Douglas B. Samuel, Purdue University
& M. Brent Donnellan, Michigan State University
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Wiebke Bleidorn, Department of
Psychology, University of California Davis, One Shields Avenue, Davis, CA, 95616, United States. E-mail:
wiebkebleidorn@gmail.com
Please cite this preprint as: Bleidorn, W., Hopwood, C. J., Ackerman, R. A., Witt, E. A., Kandler, C.,
Riemann, R., Samuel, D. B., & Donnellan, M. B. (in press). The healthy personality from a basic trait
perspective. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
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Abstract
What basic personality traits characterize the psychologically healthy individual? The purpose of
this paper was to address this question by generating an expert-consensus model of the healthy person
in the context of the 30 facets (and five domains) of the Revised NEO Personality Inventory (Costa &
McCrae, 1992) system of traits. In a first set of studies, we found that the healthy personality can be
described, with a high level of agreement, in terms of the 30 facets of the NEO-PI-R. High levels of
Openness to Feelings, Positive Emotions, and Straightforwardness, together with low levels on facets of
Neuroticism were particularly indicative of healthy personality functioning. The expert-generated
healthy personality profile was negatively correlated with profiles of pathological personality functioning
and positively correlated with normative personality functioning. In a second set of studies, we matched
the NEO-PI-R profiles of over 3,000 individuals from seven different samples with the expert-generated
healthy prototype to yield a healthy personality index. This index was characterized by good retest
reliability and cross-rater agreement, high rank-order stability, and substantial heritability. Individuals
with high scores on the healthy personality index were psychologically well-adjusted, had high self-
esteem, good self-regulatory skills, an optimistic outlook on the world, and a clear and stable self-view.
These individuals were low in aggression and meanness, unlikely to exploit others, and were relatively
immune to stress and self-sufficient. We discuss the results in the light of their implications for both
research and theory on healthy personality functioning.
Keywords: Health; Personality; Big Five; Traits; Virtues
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What basic personality traits characterize the psychologically healthy individual? Although
contemporary researchers have used basic trait models such as the Five Factor Model/Big Five domains
to characterize personality disorders (e.g., Lynam & Widiger, 2001), little attention has been paid to the
characterization of healthy personality from a basic trait perspective. This gap exists despite
considerable interest in describing healthy persons in the history of personality psychology and
extensive validation of Big Five traits for characterizing normal-range and maladaptive aspects of
personality functioning. This paper fills this gap by generating an expert-consensus model of the healthy
person in the context of the 5 domains and 30 facets of the Revised NEO Personality Inventory (Costa &
McCrae, 1992) system of traits. We describe the results of several studies designed to develop and
provide initial validity evidence for an expert-consensus personality profile of the psychologically healthy
person. Specifically, we determine how well lay people and experts in positive psychology agreed with
trait experts regarding the healthy personality, identify correlations with pathological personality
profiles, examine the heritability and psychometric characteristics of the healthy personality, and
determine how much the healthy personality profile overlaps with a normative personality profile.
Historical Accounts of the Healthy Personality
Scholars have been interested in characterizing a healthy personality prototype since the
beginning of the scientific study of personality. The father of modern personality trait theory, Gordon
Allport (1955), distinguished the “mature person” based on their intentional pursuit of long-term goals.
He argued that healthy people a) extend aspects of themselves into other activities, people, or ideas, b)
relate warmly to others, c) are self-accepting and emotionally secure, d) are realistic in their perceptions
of the world and other people, e) show responsibility through industrious work, f) possess self-insight,
and g) approach life with directedness and unified identity.
Psychoanalytic authors have also articulated the characteristics of healthy individuals. Erik
Erikson (1950) famously claimed that Sigmund Freud described the healthy person as someone who can
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“love and work” (Elms, 2001). Erich Fromm (1955) argued that the central challenge of being human was
overcoming the human inevitabilities of loneliness and insignificance through union with nature, other
people, and the diverse aspects of the self. Individuals who meet this challenge are able to satisfy basic
needs for a) relatedness to others, b) creative transcendence over ennui and lethargy, c) rootedness in
some personally meaningful aspect of society, d) a secure and stable sense of identity, and e) reasonable
as opposed to superstitious inferences about the environment. For Fromm, healthy people are
productive, happy, and self-directed.
Conceptualizing optimal functioning was a central preoccupation of humanistic personality
theorists. Abraham Maslow (1970) famously hypothesized that individuals self-actualize only when their
basic physical and psychological needs are met. Unlike the vast majority of people who live in states of
becoming in which they focus on reducing internal tensions related to unmet basic needs, “self-
actualizers” live in states of being focused on increasing tension by pursuing new challenges. Maslow
described self-actualizing people as accepting, spontaneous, focused on the outside world, autonomous,
socially interested, moral, funny, creative, immune to social pressure, and prone to peak experiences in
which there is a mystical and blissful connection with the world. Carl Rogers (1961) asserted that healthy
functioning is the natural outcome of removing barriers to health. “Fully functioning” people, he argued,
are characterized by an a) uninhibited openness to experience and b) creative spontaneity, c) live in the
here and now, d) have faith in their internal experience, and e) choose behaviors that accord with their
inner standards. Viktor Frankl (1962), who survived two Nazi concentration camps, emphasized the
pursuit of meaning in life as a distinguishing indicator of healthy personality functioning. He argued that
people whose lives have meaning can endure difficult situations because life is worth living. Meaning is
obtained by pursuing goals and interests that lie outside of one’s own personal interest. In his scheme,
healthy persons are a) free to choose their own course of action, b) responsible for the choices they
make, c) focused on pursuing personally meaningful goals, d) in conscious control of their behavior, e)
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creative, f) attentive to concerns beyond self-preservation, g) future-oriented, and h) capable of giving
and receiving love.
As should be evident, significant points of divergence exist among these classic theorists.
Whereas psychoanalytic theorists were mostly interested in the balance of conflicts between society
and self or between different aspects of the self, humanistic theorists were more concerned with
intrapsychic processes of individuation that culminate, under ideal developmental conditions, in human
uniqueness and fulfillment. Yet, three similarities stand out. First, each of these otherwise competing
visions of human personalities defined healthy functioning in terms of a specific personality prototype.
Second, each of these perspectives interpreted the healthy prototype as a profile of certain personality
characteristics. Third, across theories, the identified prototypes generally included the preponderance of
positive as opposed to negative emotions, interpersonal warmth and connection, rationality and self-
awareness, personal responsibility and achievement, and creative openness.
A limitation of these early accounts of healthy personality functioning is that many of them were
not operationalized and systematically tested (Gable & Haidt, 2005). Despite some efforts to assess
healthy personality functioning (e.g., Block, 1961; Cartwright & Morey, 1988; McLain, 1970; Sieglman,
Block, Block, & von der Lippe, 1970; Wagner & Morse, 1975 Westen & Shedler, 1998), as of yet, existing
measures have not contributed to a coherent and systematic body of knowledge about the nature of the
healthy personality. The dearth of integrative models and the lack of consensus about the most
appropriate tools to assess the healthy personality led to moratorium on empirical research on this
topic. This situation has changed, however, with the emergence of positive psychology and its focus on
human virtues and character strengths over the last few decades.
Positive Psychology
Positive psychology, whose origins lie in the humanistic movement of the 1950s, focuses on
three domains of human strength and flourishing: positive subjective experience, positive character
