Which Character Strengths Are Most Predictive of Well-Being?
In 2004, Christopher Peterson and Martin Seligman came out with Character Strengths and Virtues: A Handbook and Classification . This volume was a significant contribution to psychology, a sort of antidote to the DSM 's focus on mental illness, and an important reminder to psychologists that humans aren't only full of illness. Humansalso have a lot of character.
The book laid out the following 24 character strengths:
In his book Flourish , Martin Seligman,the founder of the field of positive psychology (and my boss), argued that the five fundamental elements of well-being are:
As it so happens, in a fun collaboration with Spencer Greenberg , Susan Cain and the Quiet Revolution ,we collected such data on 517people ranging from 18-71 years of age (average age = 36) as part of a larger project to create a new scale of introversion .
So I did the analysis.
As it turns out, all five elements of PERMA were very strongly correlated with each other. People who tended to score higher on one of the elements (e.g., positiveemotions) tended to score higher on the other elements (e.g., engagement, positive relationships, meaning, and accomplishment) and those who tended to score lower on one of the elements also tended to score lower on the others.Since all five elements of PERMA were so strongly related to each other,I collapsed them all intoa single variable, reflecting the idea that well-being is a latent factor representing these five indicators.*
Interestingly, virtually every single oneof the 24 character strengths were individually correlated with well-beingat the p < .05 level of significance. Well, all except one: humility (r = .072, p = .124).See all correlations here .
The top three character strengths that were most strongly correlated with well-being were:
Hope (r= .359, p < .000)
Gratitude (r= .358, p <. 001)
Love (r= .332, p < .001)
The bottom three character strengths that were least strongly correlated with well-being (but were still statistically significant) were:
Prudence (r = .118, p < .01)
Judgment (r = .128, p < .01)
Self-Regulation (r= .127, p < .01)
So one of the core tenets of positive psychology is supported: developingyour character strengths ispredictive of well-being.
Next, I wondered which character strengths stood alone as predictors of well-being after taking into account the other strengths. After all, I noticed that many of these character strengths were related toeach other.
So to see which were the best independent predictors of well-being,I put them all into the same pot and ran a regression analysis :
Out of all 24 character strengths, the only significant independent positive predictors of well-being were gratitudeand love of learning.** Note that love, honesty, andhumor werevery close to being statistically significant independent positive predictors of well-being.
If you just put in gratitude and love of learning, you see they both hold up on their own as independent predictors of well-being:
The single best predictor of well-being was gratitude.
So there you have it. Not all character strengths seem to be equally predictive of well-being.Not to say that you should rule any of them out, of course. Humility and self-restraint areconsidered very valuable character strengths to have by most people, and areMUCH needed in our society and around the world. But they don't appear to be a very good predictor of well-being. Remember, well-being isn't everything there is to life. There are other human goods.
Nevertheless, if you do seek high well-being, your best bets are gratitude and love of learning.
Now go and flourish!
(C) 2015Scott Barry Kaufman, All Rights Reserved
You can take the free Character Strengths Survey here .
http://news360.com/digestarticle/nT-8jaAO1UKcQ712Bcekvg#
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Character traits that are predictive of well being - who knew?
John
Just when I think I have seen the most irrelevant, ignorant and misguided comment possible, you raise the bar
Congratulations you did it again
There is always hope and we all have these traits to varying degrees
I am inclined to agree with the findings . Thanks for posting this RiO .
This is an excellent article! Thanks for posting it!
Comment removed for being off topic. [ph]
Dear Friend Dowser; I concur.
Great read. Fascinating.
RIO, thanks for posting.
Gives us all food for thought.
E.
Dowser
I thought so as well
I am glad you liked it
Enoch
That is all that was intended - that people would read the article and think about the ideas it presented
I appreciate your feedback - thanks
Sometimes, on this site, I think that the greatest gift of well-being is the ability to ignore!
Sometimes, you just have to turn a blind eye to things-- even those things that make your skin crawl...
Dowser
Good insight - all I can say to that is YEP!