Just Released: New Findings on Character Strengths

Source: blueperfume/DepositPhotos

When a journal has a “special issue” dedicated entirely to a specific topic, it is a safe prediction that the topic area is thriving from a scientific perspective. This is certainly true for character strengths.

About 20 years ago, when the field of positive psychology was a newborn baby, psychologists Neal Mayerson and Martin Seligman (the founder of positive psychology) began classifying character strengths, creating the VIA Inventory of Strengths (VIA-IS). Over the subsequent two decades, hundreds of studies on the subject of character strengths have been published.

This catalyzed an idea in one of the leading researchers in character strengths, Hadassah Littman-Ovadia, who is a professor at Ariel University in Israel. I asked Dr. Littman-Ovadia why she wanted to do the special issue and she had this to say:

"Shortly before COVID happened, the idea to create a special journal issue for Frontiers in Psychology on character strengths jumped in my mind. I realized it had been about 20 years since the original VIA Classification project. I felt it was time to celebrate this newer area in the field of psychology. And, I wanted to invite colleagues who had been working in the area to celebrate this 20-year anniversary."

Littman-Ovadia then recruited additional editors to help her in attaining articles from leading character strengths researchers and to then shepherd these through the peer-review process. Philippe Dubreuil and Pavel Freidlin stepped up to help, as did Christina Meyers, an assistant professor in the Department of Human Resource Studies at Tilburg University in the Netherlands. Dr. Meyers added this:

"We thought this anniversary would be the perfect moment to highlight many of the great achievements of the past and to also look ahead to the potential avenues for character strengths science in the future. I felt very strongly about that. From time to time, I think it’s important to take a moment and stand still, to look back and to look forward."

New Directions in Character Strengths Research

Let’s take a closer look at the 15 articles. What follows are short highlights of each article. References for each can be found at the end. All the articles are fully accessible for free here.

Two articles set the stage for the special issue by looking back and forward. The editorial offered highlights on the importance of the VIA character strengths—the VIA Classification of character strengths and the VIA Inventory of Strengths—for the field of positive psychology. In considering all of the articles, the authors outline five future directions for the science of character strengths. These include:

1. further examination into character strengths criteria
2. establishing additional, causal links between character strengths and various outcome
3. exploring antecedents to character strengths and social/community outcomes of character strengths
4. examining long-term and short-term changes in character strengths through multi-level lenses;
5. further study on the use of character strengths at times of adversity, crisis, trauma, and hardship (Littman-Ovadia, Dubreuil, Meyers, & Freidlin, 2021).

This was followed by Neal Mayerson’s paper which argued for advancing population-wide psychological maturity around building character strengths collectively, especially in response to the exponential growth of technology. He, too, offered several future directions such as the areas of thriving (instrumentality, well-being, and collective good); surviving (resilience; modulating fight-or-flight responses); child-rearing; system dynamics; interpersonal dynamics; contextualizing character strengths; strengths-spotting; and character development across the lifespan (Mayerson, 2020).

Character Strengths and Adversity

The role of character strengths in adversity was the focus of a study during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown in Spain. All character strengths groupings/factors predicted an increase in mental health and positive emotions (with the exception of the strengths of restraint for the latter outcome). Character strengths of restraint and fortitude predicted a decrease in negative affect (Martinez-Marti et al., 2020).

Character Strengths and Morality

In the original VIA Classification text by Peterson and Seligman, there are 10 criteria that constitute qualification as a character strength. One of these criteria is that the character strengths be morally valued. This was examined in a study evaluating the 24 character strengths and whether they are morally valued in a German sample.

Spirituality Essential Reads

What Is "Healthy" Spirituality or Religion?

Spark of Potential: Buddhist Insights on Spiritual Teachers

Every strength was found to be positively morally valued, even when there were no set consequences of the strength use. Some strengths were more morally valued than others with the top five being judgment, honesty, kindness, fairness, and hope (Stahlmann & Ruch, 2020).

Character Strengths and Virtues

A handful of studies focused on character strength and virtues. One study looked at how the VIA Classification might advance the science of virtues. It reviews the three-dimensional model of cardinal virtues (moral, self-regulatory, and intellectual domains), dimensional vs. categorical characterization of virtue, evolution of adaptations underlying human capacity for using virtues, impact on both individual and communal levels, reciprocity among virtues, and practical wisdom (McGrath & Brown, 2020).

Two other studies examined the categorization of each of the 24 strengths under their corresponding virtue. One of these examined data from 1,241 individuals and found that 22 out of the 24 character strengths correlated with their assigned virtue—with the exceptions of hope correlating highest with courage, and humor correlating highest with humanity. It also found that higher levels of reported “good character” occurred for those who either had one character strength in each virtue category or who had all the character strengths in at least one virtue category (Ruch, Heintz, & Wagner, 2020).

Another study found that behavioral examples of individuals’ highest character strengths in action were related to virtues, as opposed to behavioral examples of lowest strengths or non-excellent examples; results converged strongly (not perfectly) with the VIA Classification’s current arrangement of character strengths and corresponding virtues (Giuliani, Ruch, & Gander, 2020).

Character Strengths and Values

Many people ask about the connection between character strengths and values. I posit that “values” live in our head—our thinking and feeling—and we hold our values (e.g., value for hard work or value for our family) dear to us. Values, however, do not say something about our behavior, whether or not we actually put those thoughts/feelings into action. That’s where character comes in—the activation of our values.

One study took a look at the connection between values and character strengths. The researchers examined gratitude as a self-transcendence value and found it to be connected with prosocial behavior and peer acceptance in two samples of adolescents (Lavy & Benish-Weisman, 2021).

Domains of Life

The various domains of typical living were examined in one study, which found that different character strengths profiles emerged for each of the domains that people spend their time in—for example, work, education, leisure, personal relationships, and romantic relationships. Strengths-related behavior in the different domains of life was strongly connected to flourishing (Wagner, Pindeus, & Ruch, 2021).

In an article examining the character strengths profiles of medical professionals, the highest means among samples of medical students and physicians were fairness, honesty, judgment, kindness, and love. When comparing specialties, general surgeons had higher levels of honesty and prudence than psychiatrists (Huber et al., 2020).

Character Strengths in the Workplace

Two articles targeted character strengths in the workplace. In a study of 42 teams, relationships were found between specific team roles and character strengths to align with performance and work satisfaction. Those teams with more team roles represented on their teams had higher performance and teamwork quality and those teams averaging higher levels of teamwork and fairness (or more members scoring high on prudence and fairness) had higher teamwork quality. No negative effects of having too many team members with one particular character strength were found (Gander, Gaitzsch, & Ruch, 2020).

Another study examined the person-environment fit with character strengths and found higher levels of congruence between the character strengths of an individual and those in their occupational group and these correlated with higher current and future job satisfaction and life satisfaction. In other words, it is important for workers to fit their character strengths to their occupation (Gander, Hofmann, & Ruch, 2020).

Character Strengths and Spirituality

Two articles forged new territory by examining the sciences of character strengths and spirituality together. One article argued that the VIA Classification represents “the decoding of the human spirit.” It outlined six levels by which spirituality is already infused within the VIA Classification and offered wholeness as a superordinate virtue therein. It theorized how the fields of spirituality and character strengths can mutually enhance one another, outlining the grounding path (ways in which character strengths ground and enhance spirituality) and the sanctification path (ways in which spirituality enhances character strengths through the sacred) (Niemiec, Russo-Netzer, & Pargament, 2020).

Another article explored how character strengths can be viewed as pathways toward nonduality and that spirituality can be understood and practiced by using character strengths. It argued for the VIA Classification as an important lens for viewing the positive human spirit (Littman-Ovadia & David, 2020).

The Practice of Character Strengths

The practice of character strengths was made more systematic by bringing diffuse terms such as “strengths-based” and “strengths-based practitioner” into greater clarity with operational definitions, six guiding principles, and specificity on the various character strengths practices as are soaring, emerging, and ripe with potential. The same framework was offered for categorizing the current status of research domains in character strengths. A survey of 113 strengths-based practitioners is integrated into the discussion (Niemiec and Pearce, 2020).

Concluding Remarks

I asked two of the special editors what stood out to them most about the special issue. Dr. Littman-Ovadia noted:

"I like all 15 of the papers that were published in the special issue. Some of them are empirically based, some are theoretically based, and some visionary. I really like the two spirituality papers and the new directions noted in those and in other papers—new directions for the field."

Dr. Meyers commented:

"There were some fascinating new areas—such as those that linked character strengths and spirituality. Another was the examination of the mapping of the character strengths under the virtues and the potential for increasing virtuous behavior."

How about you? What are your favorite articles? Which offered the most interesting findings, insights, or directions for the field?