Abstract
Two studies examined the assumption that character strengths enable virtues and facilitate the good life. Study 1 validated a “layperson’s excellent enactment of highest strengths paradigm”. This paradigm states that more appropriate assignments of character strengths to virtues are obtained when based on descriptions of highest character strengths enacted in an excellent way, than when based on lowest character strengths, or typical enactments. A sample of N = 230 German-speaking participants provided descriptions of situations in which they enacted their highest and lowest strengths excellently and typically and rated these situations on the degree of the six core virtues, strength expression, fulfillment, and intellectual and moral quality. Behavior examples of highest strengths excellently enacted were rated higher and with higher differentiation in the dependent variables than typical enactments or lowest strengths, thus confirming the paradigm. In Study 2, we applied the paradigm: A second sample of N = 113 German-speaking participants rated a selected subset of strengths–behaviors of layperson’s excellent enactment of highest strengths collected in Study 1 in regard to their degree of the six core virtues. Results confirmed previous convergent and discrepant findings with the theoretical VIA classification. We can conclude that the excellent enactment of highest strengths does indeed reveal virtues. Future studies should use the paradigm and examine culturally diverse samples with different methods for further examining the VIA classification.
Highlights
Specialty section: This article was submitted to Personality and Social Psychology, a section of the journal Frontiers in PsychologyReceived: 29 January 2020 Accepted: 09 June 2020 Published: 22 July 2020Citation: Giuliani F, Ruch W and Gander F (2020) Does the Excellent Enactment of Highest Strengths Reveal Virtues?Front
Modeled on the Linnaean classification of species, the VIA classification is composed of three conceptual levels ranging from the abstract to the specific: (1) virtues, which are defined as core characteristics valued by moral philosophers and religious thinkers, are the most abstract entries of the classification; (2) character strengths, morally valued traits that define the virtues; and (3) situational themes, specific habits that allow people to manifest given character strengths in present situations
Moral quality was positively related to all core virtues, except for courage
Summary
Specialty section: This article was submitted to Personality and Social Psychology, a section of the journal Frontiers in PsychologyReceived: 29 January 2020 Accepted: 09 June 2020 Published: 22 July 2020Front. They searched for culturally and historically ubiquitous virtues and found six universal virtues (Dahlsgaard et al, 2005), which are wisdom and knowledge, courage, humanity, justice, temperance, and transcendence They generated and defined character strengths by applying up to 12 criteria (Peterson and Seligman, 2004; Ruch and Stahlmann, 2019): the trait must (1) be ubiquitous, (2) contribute to various fulfillments, (3) be morally valued in its own Strengths Enactment and Virtues right, (4) not diminish other people, (5) have a non-felicitous opposite, (6) be trait-like in that it is stable over time and across situations, (7) measurable, (8) be distinct from other positive traits, (9) be embodied in consensual paragons, (10) have observable prodigies, (11) be possibly non-existent in some people, and (12) be sustained in the larger society by institutions and rituals intended to cultivate it. Character strengths of a virtue share a common function: wisdom and knowledge, for example, is composed of “cognitive strengths that entail the acquisition and use of knowledge” (pp. 29–30)
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