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Character Strengths and Virtues: A Handbook and Classification CHRISTOPHER PETERSON MARTIN E. P. SELIGMAN OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS Character Strengths and Virtues The work contained herein is that of the Values in Action Institute, a nonprofit initiative of the Manuel D. and Rhoda Mayerson Foundation...

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Character Strengths and Virtues: A Handbook and Classification

CHRISTOPHER PETERSON MARTIN E. P. SELIGMAN

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

Character Strengths and Virtues

The work contained herein is that of the Values in Action Institute, a nonprofit initiative of the Manuel D. and Rhoda Mayerson Foundation, directed by Dr. Neal H. Mayerson.

   Donald O. Clifton Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi Ed Diener Raymond D. Fowler Barbara L. Fredrickson Howard Gardner David Myers C. Rick Snyder Charles Spielberger Claude Steele Robert J. Sternberg George Vaillant Ellen Winner

Character Strengths and Virtues A Handbook and Classification

Christopher Peterson & Martin E. P. Seligman

1 2004

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Oxford New York Auckland Bangkok Buenos Aires Cape Town Chennai Dar es Salaam Delhi Hong Kong Istanbul Karachi Kolkata Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Mumbai Nairobi São Paulo Shanghai Taipei Tokyo Toronto

Copyright © 2004 by Values in Action Institute Published by American Psychological Association 750 First Street, NE, Washington, DC 20002-4242 www.apa.org and Oxford University Press, Inc. 198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016 www.oup.com Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Peterson, Christopher, 1950 Feb. 18– Character strengths and virtues : a handbook and classification / Christopher Peterson, Martin E. P. Seligman p. cm. Includes bibliographical references (p. ). ISBN 0-19-516701-5 1. Character—Handbooks, manuals, etc. 2. Virtues—Handbooks, manuals, etc. I. Seligman, Martin E. P. II. Title. BF818 .P38 2004 155.2'32—dc22 2003024320

9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper

Preface

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an we hold hope that positive psychology will be able to help people evolve toward their highest potential?” The classification described in this book began with this question, posed by Neal Mayerson to Martin Seligman in 1999. The Mayerson Foundation was concerned that inadequate progress was being made from well-worn problem-fixing approaches and that an approach based on recognizing people’s strengths and aspirations might prove more effective. Mayerson turned to Seligman to explore the intersection of the emerging field of positive youth development and Seligman’s new push to articulate a new positive psychology. It soon became clear that two prior questions needed to be answered: (1) how can one define the concepts of “strength” and “highest potential” and (2) how can one tell that a positive youth development program has succeeded in meeting its goals? These two concerns framed the classification project from its inception. The Manuel D. and Rhoda Mayerson Foundation created the Values in Action (VIA) Institute, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the development of a scientific knowledge base of human strengths. Seligman was the scientific director of the VIA Institute, and he asked Christopher Peterson to be its project director. In September 2000, Peterson temporarily relocated from the University of Michigan to the University of Pennsylvania. For the next three years, Seligman and Peterson, with the assistance of a prestigious array of scholars and practitioners, devised a classification of character strengths and virtues (addressing the “good” teenager concern) and ways of measuring them (addressing the program evaluation concern). This book describes the results of this collaboration. We remain greatly interested in positive youth development but now believe that the classification and measurement strategies we have created can be applied much more broadly. We have been helped mightily along the way. Our specal gratitude is of course expressed to the Manuel D. and Rhoda Mayerson Foundation for cre-

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 ating the VIA Institute, which supported this work. Thanks in particular are due to Neal Mayerson for his vision and encouragement. Thanks are also due more generally to the other benefactors and boosters of positive psychology. Don Clifton of the Gallup Organization, along with Martin Seligman, convened a meeting of scholars to begin a delineation of the strengths. Much of what follows builds on this beginning. The late Robert Nozick as well as Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi, George Vaillant, Daniel Robinson, Kathleen Hall Jamieson, and Ed Diener were the heavyweights at this meeting. Three subsequent meetings were held as well, and we thank those in attendance for their important contributions to this project: Bonnie Bernard, Alan Blankstein, Robert Blum, Dale Blyth, Jack Burke, Gaye Carlson, Sonia Chessen, Reginald Clark, Joseph Conaty, Katherine Dahlsgaard, Lucy Davidson, Ed Diener, Elizabeth Dunn, Thaddeus Ferber, Raymond Fowler, Carissa Griffing, Daniel Hart, Derek Isaacowitz, Terry Kang, Robert Kendall, Nicole Kurzer, Kenneth Maton, Donna Mayerson, Neal Mayerson, Richard McCarty, Peter Nathan, Heather Johnston Nicholson, Joyce Phelps, Karen Pittman, Jane Quinn, Gordon Raley, Mark Rosenberg, Peter Schulman, David Seligman, Andrew Shatté, Myrna Shure, Susan Spence, Peter Stevens, Philip Stone, Constancia Warren, Alan Williams, Steve Wolin, and Nicole Yohalem. The Atlantic Philanthropies, the John Marks Templeton Foundation, the Annenberg/Sunnylands Trust Foundation, and the Department of Education all funded aspects of this project and by supporting positive psychology generously created an atmosphere in which our classification project could be seen as a worthy one. Individual chapters in Section II of this book were drafted by expert social scientists—see the list of contributors (pp. xiii–xiv)—commissioned by us to review what was known about the various character strengths in the classification. We were fortunate that virtually all of our first choices were able to write these drafts. In a few cases, we commissioned two separate drafts for a given character strength, and these drafts were then melded. All the drafts were thoughtful and thorough, and we think that a fine book would have resulted simply from gathering them together, even without our editing. However, we took a further step and rewrote each draft for consistency in organization and tone. Our editing was deliberately heavy-handed, and the contributors should not be held responsible for any resulting errors. We were also fortunate to have the advice of distinguished senior social scientists—see the Board of Advisors (p. ii)—while we worked on this project. In particular, the wisdom and support of George Vaillant kept us on track. Very early chapter drafts were reviewed by youth development experts— Bonnie Bernard, Robert Blum, Reginald Clark, Daniel Hart, Heather Johnston Nicholson, and Kenneth Maton—in a process coordinated by Nicole Yohalem and Karen Pittman of the International Youth Foundation. Later chapter drafts were reviewed by Donald K. Freedheim, Jerold R. Gold, William C. Howell,

 Thomas E. Joiner, Randy J. Larsen, and Lee B. Sechrest, and we thank them for their thoughtful suggestions. We want to thank Gary VandenBos of the American Psychological Association and Joan Bossert of Oxford University Press—both organizations are great friends of positive psychology—for working together to publish this book. We also want to thank Marion Osmun of the American Psychological Association for her editorial work and Susan Ecklund for her thorough copyediting. We are grateful to Peter Schulman, Terry Kang, Linda Newsted, Chris Jenkins, and Patty Newbold for their help behind the scenes. Lisa Christie and Jennifer Yu brought their sharp eyes and good humor to early drafts of the manuscript. Ilona Boniwell, Tiffany Sawyer, Lauren Kachorek, Tracy Steen, Angela Lee Duckworth, Rachel Kellerman, Robert Biswas-Diener, Emily Polak, Adam Cohen, and Derek Isaacowitz helped with some of the research described here. Katherine Dahlsgaard identifed the six core virtues—wisdom, courage, humanity, justice, temperance, and transcendence—used to organize the specific character strengths in the classification. Nansook Park has been a valued collaborator. We thank Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi, Ed Diener, Kathleen Hall Jamieson, and George Vaillant for their leadership on the Positive Psychology Steering Committee. We are grateful as well to Don Clifton, Jim Clifton, and Marcus Buckingham of the Gallup Organization for pioneering work on strengths and showing us that a psychology of human strengths was possible. And we of course want to thank the more than 150,000 individuals who completed versions of our measures during the past 3 years. Last, but certainly not least, our families and friends deserve special mention for embodying the strengths that constitute the classification. Virtue may be its own reward, but we too reaped the benefits.

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Contents

Contributors

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 : BACKGROUND 1 Introduction to a “Manual of the Sanities” 3 2 Universal Virtues?—Lessons From History 33 3 Previous Classifications of Character Strengths 53

 : STRENGTHS OF CHARACTER Strengths of WISDOM AND KNOWLEDGE Introduction

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4 Creativity [Originality, Ingenuity] 109 5 Curiosity [Interest, Novelty-Seeking, Openness to Experience] 125 6 Open-Mindedness [Judgment, Critical Thinking] 143 7 Love of Learning 161 8 Perspective [Wisdom] 181

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 Strengths of COURAGE Introduction 197 9 Bravery [Valor] 213 10 Persistence [Perseverance, Industriousness] 229 11 Integrity [Authenticity, Honesty] 249 12 Vitality [Zest, Enthusiasm, Vigor, Energy] 273 Strengths of HUMANITY Introduction 291 13 Love

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14 Kindness [Generosity, Nurturance, Care, Compassion, Altruistic Love, “Niceness”] 325 15 Social Intelligence [Emotional Intelligence, Personal Intelligence] 337 Strengths of JUSTICE Introduction 355 16 Citizenship [Social Responsibility, Loyalty, Teamwork] 369 17 Fairness 391 18 Leadership 413 Strengths of TEMPERANCE Introduction 429 19 Forgiveness and Mercy 445 20 Humility and Modesty 461

 21 Prudence

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22 Self-Regulation [Self-Control] 499 Strengths of TRANSCENDENCE Introduction

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23 Appreciation of Beauty and Excellence [Awe, Wonder, Elevation] 537 24 Gratitude

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25 Hope [Optimism, Future-Mindedness, Future Orientation] 569 26 Humor [Playfulness] 583 27 Spirituality [Religiousness, Faith, Purpose] 599

 : CONCLUSIONS 28 Assessment and Applications 625

References 645 Index of Names 763 Subject Index

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Contributors

Roy F. Baumeister (Humility and Modesty; Self-Regulation) Marvin W. Berkowitz (Fairness) Jessey H. Bernstein (Vitality) W. Keith Campbell (Humility and Modesty) Katherine Dahlsgaard (Lessons from History) Lucy Davidson (Integrity) Robert A. Emmons (Gratitude) Julie Juola Exline (Humility and Modesty) Constance A. Flanagan (Citizenship) Jonathan Haidt (Appreciation of Beauty) Andrew C. Harter (Persistence) Pamela S. Hartman (Perspective) Nick Haslam (Prudence) Cindy Hazan (Love) Thomas E. Joiner (Humility and Modesty) Lauren V. Kachorek (Humility and Modesty) Todd B. Kashdan (Curiosity) Dacher Keltner (Appreciation of Beauty) Joachim I. Krueger (Humility and Modesty) Jacqueline S. Mattis (Spirituality) xiii

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 John D. Mayer (Social Intelligence) Michael E. McCullough (Forgiveness and Mercy; Kindness) Nansook Park (Assessment and Applications) Elizabeth Pollard (Integrity) Stephen G. Post (Kindness) K. Ann Renninger (Love of Learning) Willibald Ruch (Humor) Richard M. Ryan (Vitality) Peter Salovey (Social Intelligence) Carol Sansone (Love of Learning) Kennon M. Sheldon (Integrity) Stephen A. Sherblom (Fairness) Dean Keith Simonton (Creativity) Jessi L. Smith (Love of Learning) Tracy A. Steen (Bravery) Dianne M. Tice (Persistence) Kathleen D. Vohs (Self-Regulation) Harry M. Wallace (Persistence) Monica C. Worline (Bravery) Stephen J. Zaccaro (Leadership)

Section i

Background

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1. Introduction to a “Manual of the Sanities”

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he classification of strengths presented in this book is intended to reclaim the study of character and virtue as legitimate topics of psychological inquiry and informed societal discourse. By providing ways of talking about character strengths and measuring them across the life span, this classification will start to make possible a science of human strengths that goes beyond armchair philosophy and political rhetoric. We believe that good character can be cultivated, but to do so, we need conceptual and empirical tools to craft and evaluate interventions. In recent years, strides have been made in understanding, treating, and preventing psychological disorders. Reflecting this progress and critically helping to bring it about are widely accepted classification manuals—the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) sponsored by the American Psychiatric Association (1994) and the International Classification of Diseases (ICD) sponsored by the World Health Organization (1990)—which have generated a family of reliable assessment strategies and have led to demonstrably effective treatments for more than a dozen disorders that only a few decades ago were intractable (Nathan & Gorman, 1998, 2002; Seligman, 1994). Lagging behind but still promising in their early success are ongoing efforts to devise interventions that prevent various disorders from occurring in the first place (e.g., M. T. Greenberg, Domitrovich, & Bumbarger, 1999). Consensual classifications and associated approaches to assessment provide a common vocabulary for basic researchers and clinicians, allowing communication within and across these groups of professionals as well as with the general public. Previous generations of psychiatrists and psychologists had no certainty, for example, that patients in London who were diagnosed with schizophrenia had much in common with patients in Topeka receiving the same diagnosis. They had no reason to believe that an effective psychological or 3

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section i: Background pharmaceutical treatment of ostensible depressives in Johannesburg would be useful for supposed depressives in Kyoto. With recent incarnations of the DSM and ICD, matters have begun to change, but only for half of the landscape of the human condition. We can now describe and measure much of what is wrong with people, but what about those things that are right? Nothing comparable to the DSM or ICD exists for the good life. When psychiatrists and psychologists talk about mental health, wellness, or well-being, they mean little more than the absence of disease, distress, and disorder. It is as if falling short of diagnostic criteria should be the goal for which we all should strive. Insurance companies and health maintenance organizations (HMOs) reimburse the treatment of disorders but certainly not the promotion of happiness and fulfillment. The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) should really be called the National Institute of Mental Illness because it devotes but a fraction of its research budget to mental health. This handbook focuses on what is right about people and specifically about the strengths of character that make the good life possible. We follow the example of the DSM and ICD and their collateral creations by proposing a classification scheme and by devising assessment strategies for each of its entries. The crucial difference is that the domain of concern for us is not psychological illness but psychological health. In short, our goal is “a manual of the sanities” (Easterbrook, 2001, p. 23). We write from the perspective of positive psychology, which means that we are as focused on strength as on weakness, as interested in building the best things in life as in repairing the worst, and as concerned with fulfilling the lives of normal people as with healing the wounds of the distressed (Seligman, 2002). The past concern of psychology with human problems is of course understandable and will not be abandoned anytime in the foreseeable future. Problems always will exist that demand psychological solutions, but psychologists interested in promoting human potential need to pose different questions from their predecessors who assumed a disease model of human nature. We disavow the disease model as we approach character, and we are adamant that human strengths are not secondary, derivative, illusory, epiphenomenal, parasitic upon the negative, or otherwise suspect. Said in a positive way, we believe that character strengths are the bedrock of the human condition and that strength-congruent activity represents an important route to the psychological good life. What distinguishes positive psychology from the humanistic psychology of the 1960s and 1970s and from the positive thinking movement is its reliance on empirical research to understand people and the lives they lead. Humanists were often skeptical about the scientific method and what it could yield yet were unable to offer an alternative other than the insight that people were good. In contrast, positive psychologists see both strength and weakness as authentic and as amenable to scientific understanding.

chapter 1: Introduction to a “Manual of the Sanities” There are many good examples of ongoing psychological research that fit under the positive psychology umbrella (see collections by Aspinwall & Staudinger, 2003; Cameron, Dutton, & Quinn, 2003; Chang, 2001; Gillham, 2000; Keyes & Haidt, 2003; R. M. Lerner, Jacobs, & Wertlieb, 2003; Snyder, 2000b; Snyder & Lopez, 2002), but this new field lacks a common vocabulary that agrees on the positive traits and allows psychologists to move among instances of them. We imagine that positive psychology as a whole would be benefited—indeed, shaped and transformed—by agreed-upon ways for speaking about the positive, just as the DSM and ICD have shaped psychiatry, clinical psychology, and social work by providing a way to speak about the negative. We believe that the classification of character presented here is an important step toward a common vocabulary of measurable positive traits. Our project coincides with heightened societal concern about good character (Hunter, 2000). After a detour through the hedonism of the 1960s, the narcissism of the 1970s, the materialism of the 1980s, and the apathy of the 1990s, most everyone today seems to believe that character is important after all and that the United States is facing a character crisis on many fronts, from the playground to the classroom to the sports arena to the Hollywood screen to business corporations to politics. According to a 1999 survey by Public Agenda, adults in the United States cited “not learning values” as the most important problem facing today’s youth. Notably, in the public’s view, drugs and violence trailed the absence of character as pressing problems. But what is character? So long as we fail to identify the specifics, different groups in our society—despite their common concern for human goodness—will simply talk past one another when attempting to address the issue. For instance, is character defined by what someone does not do, or is there a more active meaning? Is character a singular characteristic of an individual, or is it composed of different aspects? Does character—however we define it—exist in degrees, or is character just something that one happens, like pregnancy, to have or not? How does character develop? Can it be learned? Can it be taught, and who might be the most effective teacher? What roles are played by fami...