Why can certain people walk into a room and have everyone respect them as if it’s automatic? 

While some people are lauded for their laid-back, fun-loving, and humorous attitudes toward life, others command a different type of respect. 

The type of person I’m talking about isn’t the type of person you respect merely from familiarity or because you’ve shared many memories together. Rather, something intrinsic in their character simply calls you to respect them. 

You might call it stoicism, or you might call it natural in-born integrity. But what does psychology say about these types of people? 

If we were to put their personalities under a microscope, what are we likely to see?

In this article, I’ll take a deep dive into five personality factors characteristic of those strong people we all respect and love so much. 

Let’s see what differentiates them from everyone else.

1) The honesty-humility factor

The honesty-humility factor is derived from the well-known Big Five personality inventory. 

Overall, the Big Five has been well-researched and it’s been proven to be an accurate tool for measuring personality. 

Psychology defines honesty-humility as “the tendency to be fair and genuine in dealing with others, in the sense of cooperation with others even when one might exploit others without suffering retaliation.” 

A simple way of saying it is — they’re just genuinely nice people!

While someone who scores low in honesty-humility might use deception more often, or gravitate towards being manipulative and self-seeking, people who are high in this trait might be what we call “saints.” 

They don’t put themselves before others. And they always tell the truth. 

They’re also:

• Less likely to judge you negatively
• More likely to listen to your problems than want to talk about their own
• Less likely to gossip about you behind your back

If we’re honest, we might admit that most of us fall somewhere in the middle of the spectrum. 

While we try our best, we sometimes fall short, right? 

But people who are really high in honesty-humility find it almost impossible to undercut others. 

It would quite literally tear them up on the inside. 

They’d have a really difficult time forgiving themselves. 

Even the smallest transgressions can leave them sitting up for days wanting nothing more than to clean the slate, get things off their chest, and restore their natural inner equilibrium of peace, honesty, and fairness. 

Is this starting to sound like someone you know? 

Now, I’m not saying that the rest of us are snakes in the grass and bad all the way through. 

But the reality is there’s a pretty wide spectrum. And it’s more common to be somewhere in the middle of that spectrum than it is to be on the extreme end — on either side. 

You might say that these people are too good for this world. 

And their unrelenting kindheartedness often causes them to be the target of exploitation. 

Even though they would always rather be on the receiving end of exploitation — for integrity reasons — they also need a lion’s resilience to keep bouncing back when less honest people undercut or hurt them. 

2) The lion’s resilient heart

Resilience is a widely studied phenomenon in the psychological arena.

Researchers have been asking interesting questions about it for decades. 

Where does it come from? 

Why do some people have more of it than others? 

Are resilient people more likely to score high in honesty-humility and other key personality factors? 

Plenty of research supports the idea that having a difficult childhood can lead you to be more resilient later in life. 

While it’s true that trauma during childhood certainly has the capacity to leave you broken, it can also strengthen your personality — if you manage to overcome and come to terms with it. 

Resilience isn’t just a benefit for the people who are blessed with it, it’s also great for the people around them. 

Highly resilient people are less likely to shy away in times of crisis. 

And having dealt with so many of them — you know they’ll be prepared for almost anything that comes at them.

Not only are they wonderful people to have around in tough situations because they have the mental tools to handle them, but these types of people almost always have a strong sense of duty — that’s the conscientiousness factor. 

3) Conscientiousness — an inner sense of duty

The factor of conscientiousness is also derived from the Big Five personality inventory. 

It’s a fascinating construct because it’s so strongly related to many crucial elements in life, including:

• Career success
• Intelligence
• Happiness

So what exactly is conscientiousness? 

In a word — dutifulness. 

Conscientious people are dutiful people. 

Of course, there are longer and fancier explanations than that but dutifulness is really at the heart of it. 

People who are conscientious are well-respected and hailed as solid rocks because you’ll rarely hear them saying things like: 

• “Maybe I’ll get it done”
• “Sorry, I didn’t have time to do what I promised” 
• “I just can’t make any commitments right now” 

Highly conscientious people do not shy away from commitment — they actually thrive on it. 

For them, it’s a chance to show people what they’re made of — and they’re made of pretty good stuff. 

You know this instinctively, right? 

People who are reliable and dutiful command a special respect that others don’t. 

It’s not always easy to stick to your word. And when life gets in the way, it can be extremely tempting to dip out of things we promised to do — even when we know it hurts other people. 

But that’s what makes conscientious people so respectable. 

They’ll pretty much always follow through on promises, regardless of how they’re feeling and what other things are getting in the way.

4) Nonjudgmental forgiveness

As humans, we naturally evaluate everything we see. 

To make sense of the world around us, we form judgments about things in our environments. 

This helps us navigate our way through life in the safest and most effective way possible. 

Our power of evaluation helps us distinguish between friends and enemies.

But this handy evolutionary tool also has a dark side. 

It can also cause us to be prejudiced against others and judge them negatively when they don’t fit into the personal frameworks we create. 

When people behave in ways that we personally wouldn’t, it often leads to us casting judgments on them and evaluating them negatively — and often unfairly. 

This type of judgment stems from both a place of narcissism and a lack of understanding. 

And even though we don’t like to admit it, many of us are guilty of doing it regularly — or at least from time to time. 

It’s often easier to just judge people negatively than it is to identify problems in our own mental framework. 

How many of us ask questions like “What’s wrong with me that I feel the need to be so judgmental?” or “What gives me the right to judge this person?”

But asking yourself these questions is easier said than done. 

And people who are naturally forgiving, understanding, and nonjudgmental should be leading the way when it comes to how to treat other people. 

5) Born to lead

While people like this are natural-born leaders, their intrinsic humility often causes them to shy away from leadership roles. 

After all, they’re not putting on an act — they really are humble and feel genuinely troubled by the idea that anyone should follow them. 

The sorry fact of life is that people who want to be leaders often make the worst leaders. 

And those who would really make a difference as leaders don’t feel drawn to having power. 

However, because of their conscientiousness, people like this will take on whatever role they have to — as long as it’s for the greater good. 

They put aside their own likes and dislikes to help out their community, country, or family. 

Even if they don’t want to do it — they were born to lead. 

Last thoughts

We’re all familiar with those people who walk into a room and you can almost feel everyone bowing their heads in respect — even if they don’t do it physically. 

I’ve always been interested in what makes a person deserving of respect. 

Early on, I recognized that it wasn’t just age that made people command respect from others. 

After all, you don’t have to go far to find foolish elderly people and wise young people. And while it is more likely that people get wiser as they get older, not everyone starts from the same place. 

It’s also true that not everyone thinks deeply enough to derive wisdom from all of their life experiences. 

So if it isn’t age, what is it? 

In this article, I took a deep dive into five key personality factors that are deserving of the natural respect they command. 

Among the characteristics discussed were humility, conscientiousness, nonjudgmental forgiveness, and resilience. 

While this wasn’t intended to be a comprehensive list, it does cover the basis of the most commonly respected personality we come across in daily life.