Character Strengths& Virtues - Positive Psychology & Storytelling - Module 7

 Character Strengths & Virtues

Video - https://youtu.be/-aCKzuIGp2g (Links to an external site.)

Story 7– The Boy and the Star Fish

 

 

Story Reflection Task:

What do you think is the greatest strength of the Young Boy?

 

VIRTUES:

Virtues is considered as the quality of being morally good. The word Virtue comes from the Latin root of Virtus, which refers to all the excellent qualities of man. The study of virtues is seen extensively in almost all ancient cultures. Plato, Aristotle and the Romans discussed and classified Virtues.

The Tamil poet and philosopher Thiru Valluvar has described Virtues as Aram ( dharma) or divine virtue. Living by our virtue in Tamil culture is considered as "a way of life" and "not a spiritual observance". The Kural literature gives many definitions and explanations for living a virtuous life through poetic couplets that in traditional Tamil culture was learnt by heart. 

Fredrich Neitzsche and Immanuel Kant are modern philosophers who have given their views on virtues and its role in society.

Seligman & Peterson after 3 years of study, where they analyzed existing texts and works by these great philosophers and masters, put together 24 character traits and 6 Virtues. They found considerable similarity across cultures and were able to distill all this information into a concise manner and called it Character Strengths and Virtues. This is known as Values in Action (VIA ) - Character Strengths.

 

Knowing Strengths – Character Strengths

Character Strength is a positive trait or quality which is morally good in itself but also helps promote individual and collective well-being.

In 2004, Martin Seligman and Christopher Peterson set out to create a way to identify, organise and measure Character. Peterson and Seligman examined different sources, religious, philosophical, and cultural texts to arrive at important traits (which was a compilation of Virtues known to man which they called Values in Action.)

This Values in Action (VIA) is a way in which to classify positive human strengths. Considering that until then human weakness was classified and described in detail (called DSM – Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders), this VIA is a huge step taken by Positive Psychology.

Unlike Values, Character Strengths are not freely chosen, they reflect our brain development, personality and skills. So character strengths are pre-existing traits that guides our feelings, thoughts and behaviours.

Seligman et al,  identified 6 core Virtues of Wisdom & Knowledge, Courage, Humanity, Temperance, Justice and Transcendence.

 

Within these 6 Virtues domains, are contained 24 character strengths that have been identified as universal.

(Take a moment to look at the image above and read each of the character strength given. Make a subjective assessment of  which ones really connect with you. I have not explained each character strength here - it will probably need another course!)

Research has found Zest, Curiosity, Gratitude and Hope as highly related to well being and life satisfaction.

Other studies have also shown that students who focused on character strengths and other positive psychology concepts have reported boost in life meaning and decrease in loneliness. (Smith et al 2020). These research studies can be accessed from the website of VIA Character.org.

Click on link below:

https://www.viacharacter.org/survey/account/register (Links to an external site.)

The website above provides a free service to register and find your Character Strength.

So please go to the website, register and answer the questions to find your top 3 character strengths.

Find your top 3 Strengths 

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Forgiveness, Gratitude, Humility have been most researched in the field of Positive Psychology.

You can read this article to gain a better understanding of these key strengths:

https://nobaproject.com/modules/positive-psychology (Links to an external site.)

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Highlights of this Module:

1) Virtues refer to the excellent qualities of man

2) extensively studied and classified by ancient philosophers

3) Seligman & Peterson ( 2004) put together 24 Character Strengths & 6 Virtues

4) Character Strengths are positive traits that are morally good and help develop individual and collective well being.

5) Find your top 3 Character strengths from VIA website

 

Topic Reflection Task:

1) Identify which core Virtues (that is given above) has the maximum character strengths that you connect to.

eg: I feel most connected to the virtue of Wisdom and Knowledge and my second choice would be Transcendence.

2) Take any one of your top Strengths and write about a time where the strength helped you face the situation.
eg: Creativity and Appreciation of Beauty and Excellence are two things that I feel have been my driving character strengths. Even when I am in very emotionally difficult situations, if I am engaged in a creative task like reading, drawing, dancing, singing, taking photographs, stitching etc, I feel a sense of calm and peace.

I feel happier when I am deeply involved in doing something creative. So Creativity and Appreciation of beauty has become a character strength that drives my behavior.

 

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Research:

Emmons, R. A. (2021). Positive psychology. In R. Biswas-Diener & E. Diener (Eds), Noba textbook series: Psychology. Champaign, IL: DEF publishers. Retrieved from ht (Links to an external site.)tp://noba.to/9z4jf5xe

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtue

http://goodmedicine.org.uk/stressedtozest/2016/08/strengths-character-head-heart-gut