"innate characteristics" is a correct and usable phrase in written English.
It is used to refer to qualities that are inborn or natural, rather than learned or developed. For example, "He had an innate intelligence that was evident from an early age."
"Either it was the neighborhood that caused the problem, or the innate characteristics of the people themselves," Mr. Liebman said.
Dogs are born with certain innate characteristics that are evident from birth.
We fall prey to what the social psychologist Lee Ross called "the fundamental attribution error" — the tendency to ascribe success or failure to innate characteristics, even when context is overwhelmingly important.
Of course, no one need tell me that the assignments of race, especially the supposedly innate characteristics based on skin color and facial features, are mostly mean-spirited constructs serving the human lust for power.
It can be a rather trite stereotype, glossing over all sorts of complexities to claim that there are innate characteristics that make one set of people nice and another not nice.
For him as for many of his contemporaries food prepared plainly and with an eye to its innate characteristics thus formed part of a broader social program: that of restoring dignity to man as he was born, not as an unjust, artificial society had made him.
The lawlessness is not an innate characteristic – it's a visible trait, but not a genetic one.
You can't fight for equality on the basis of one innate characteristic without signing up to the precept that we're all born equal.
Having the "common touch" is a political skill that is learnt, not an innate characteristic - look at the "ordinary bloke" Charles Kennedy: MP at 23. Brian's devilish sense of humour failed to come across for much of the campaign and he was often accused of being stilted and boring, although his description of Kate Hoey as "bonkers" did increase the gaiety of the nation briefly.
Attempts to discover an innate characteristic that marks people out as potential leaders, popular half a century ago, fell out of fashion in the 1960s, when leadership came to be viewed more as a pattern of behaviour that can be learned.
The difficulty here is that scariness is partly an innate characteristic, and partly comes with seniority.
