These Personality Traits Make People Happiest

Being enthusiastic and difficult to discourage are two of the personality traits linked to the highest well-being, research finds.

Enthusiastic people tend to have more fun in life and experience fewer negative emotions.

Being difficult to discourage is related to more positive growth, self-acceptance and greater achievement in life.

These were not the only personality factors linked to well-being.

People who are industrious, compassionate and intellectually curious are also happier, but in different ways.

Industrious people, for example, work harder towards long-term goals and are very achievement-oriented.

Compassionate people tend to feel more positive emotions and have better relationships with others.

The intellectually curious are open to new ideas and they enjoy thinking deeply and benefit from greater personal growth.

The conclusions come from a survey of 706 US adults, who were asked about their personality and different aspects of their well-being.

The study demonstrates that there are different paths to happiness.

Positive emotions are good, but so is feeling satisfied with your life, being independent, reaching life goals and experiencing personal growth.

Personality psychologists typically identify high extroverts who are low in neuroticism as the happiest people No, they argue, being a non-neurotic extravert is not the only way to be happy.

If you look more closely at personality, it turns out there are multiple paths to happiness.

In other words, it’s possible to be a happy, neurotic, introvert.

It’s just a kind of happiness reached via a different route.

The study was published in the Journal of Personality (Sun et al., 2018)

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