What are your signature strengths?

What are your greatest strengths, and how can you make the most of them?

Are you socially intelligent? A critical thinker? Are you someone who perseveres?  Do you bring people together?  How do you regard honesty, fairness, spirituality and love?

The VIA Institute on Character has created a list of 24 signature strengths, grouped into six categories called “virtues” -- the Virtue of Wisdom, of Courage, of Humanity, of Justice, of Temperance and of Transcendence (see below for details). And the Institute’s primary goal is simple: to help you create the best life possible by understanding, and accessing, your greatest strengths.  They offer a fascinating (and free) online survey (www.viacharacter.org), which has been taken by more than 1.3 million people worldwide.  The survey is currently offered in 17 languages.

Explains the Institute: “We aim to fill the world with greater virtue – more wisdom, courage, humanity, justice, temperance and transcendence.” If you take the survey, it will reveal your top five, then share specific recommendations on how best to implement those in your life.

Writing for www.psychcentral.com earlier this year, author and psychologist Ryan Niemiec pointed out that “It’s all too common for people to underuse their strengths.”  One of Niemiec’s examples was particularly powerful. Said Niemiec:

“Janet discovered her highest strength is prudence. Prudence gets a bad rap. It is often lumped with being a ‘prude’ or someone who doesn’t have fun. In reality, prudence can be seen as ‘cautious wisdom,’ thinking before one speaks, and being careful about one’s choices.

“All her life, Janet had beaten herself up for not being enough of a risk-taker, not living life fully, and always holding back when new situations arose. But, when viewed as her signature strength, it turns out prudence has served her well. Janet is a successful businesswoman and project manager and sees how this naturally-occurring prudence strength has helped her become who she is today. She is conscientious, goal-oriented, and is well-organized – all common characteristics of a prudent person.

“Janet realized that she actually had been living life fully and did take risks, but her approach was to give pause to reflect a bit before taking action. Seeing this, her appreciation for herself deepened.”

Below are the Institute's 24 signature strengths:

The Virtue of Wisdom
· Creativity: original, adaptive, ingenuity
· Curiosity: interest, novelty-seeking, exploration, openness to experience
· Judgment: critical thinking, thinking things through, open-minded
· Love of Learning: mastering new skills & topics, systematically adding to knowledge
· Perspective: wisdom, providing wise counsel, taking the big picture view

The Virtue of Courage
· Bravery: valor, not shrinking from fear, speaking up for what’s right
· Perseverance: persistence, industry, finishing what one starts
· Honesty: authenticity, integrity
· Zest: vitality, enthusiasm, vigor, energy, feeling alive and activated

The Virtue of Humanity
· Love: both loving and being loved, valuing close relations with others
· Kindness: generosity, nurturance, care, compassion, altruism, “niceness”
· Social Intelligence: aware of the motives/feelings of oneself & others

The Virtue of Justice
· Teamwork: citizenship, social responsibility, loyalty
· Fairness: just, not letting feelings bias decisions about others
· Leadership: organizing group activities, encouraging a group to get things done

The Virtue of Temperance· Forgiveness: mercy, accepting others’ shortcomings, giving people a second chance
· Humility: modesty, letting one’s accomplishments speak for themselves
· Prudence: careful, cautious, not taking undue risks
· Self-Regulation: self-control, disciplined, managing impulses & emotions

The Virtue of Transcendence· Appreciation of Beauty and Excellence: awe, wonder, elevation
· Gratitude: thankful for the good, expressing thanks, feeling blessed
· Hope: optimism, future-mindedness, future orientation
· Humor: playfulness, bringing smiles to others, lighthearted
· Spirituality: religiousness, faith, purpose, meaning

How long do you think you’ll live? (it’s not just an idle inquiry)

Research out of Queen’s University in Canada maintains that major life decisions – e.g., marriage, divorce, having children, pursuing educational degrees – may be subconsciously guided by perceived mortality, that is, how long you think that you’re going to live.  For decades it’s been known that perceived mortality is a strong predictor of actual mortality, but the Queen’s University research now indicates that it may influence much more.

Lead researcher Daniel Krupp, as quoted in the Global News, explained: “I found precisely what I was looking for: as life expectancy increased, people married and began reproducing later.  They were also more likely to divorce or have an abortion, and they invested more in their own education.” In the study, Krupp, a research psychologist and biologist by training, controlled for measures of affluence and income. And he found no statistical difference between men’s and women’s decisions.

Krupp’s research speaks to a branch of evolutionary theory known as “life history theory” which predicts behavior based on age.  In a piece written for psychcentral.com, Rick Nauert explained: “This theory has been used to explain animal behaviors that schedule key events to produce the largest possible number of surviving offspring (for example the famous run of the Pacific salmon).” When applied to humans, the theory suggests that those who anticipate living longer delay milestones such as marriage and having babies, and instead invest more time in school. Those who believed their lives are shorter may be less likely to divorce since there’s limited time to find a new partner.

So if our subconscious is influencing our decisions, what factors do we consider? Some prominent questions include: how healthy are we? Do we have a risky job? Are my parents or grandparents still alive? Is there a history of disease in the family?

And the larger question: are these innate, subconscious signals?

Said Krupp: “It is possible that an increase in life expectancy will lead to a continued increase in the ages of marriage and reproduction . . . however it is also possible that these effects will weaken beyond a certain point,” Krupp said.

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Women vs. Men – Part II: Cooperation, Self-Esteem and the “L” word

Women vs. Men – who’s more cooperative?  Who’s happier to hear the words “I love you?” Who has more self-esteem in youth and early adulthood?  And who’s more motivated by cute baby faces? You may be surprised by the latest research results.  Let’s start with love.     

“I Love You”

Who’s quicker to say those three magic words?  It’s the guys, not the gals, according to Penn State psychologist Marissa Harrison who recently studied the matter.  According to a write up in The Telegraph, the study suggests that “women tend to be more pragmatic about love than society tends to believe, perhaps not always rushing fool-heartedly into a relationship.”

Harrison, summarizing her findings, said that “Men reported falling in love sooner and three times as many men as women said 'I love you' first to their partners.” She pointed out: “It can be argued that men's falling in love and exclaiming this love first may be a by-product of them equating love with sexual desire.” Added Harrison: “But research shows passionate love and sexual desire are distinctly different mechanisms.”

Cooperation – are women more cooperative than men? 

The answer is no, according to a major study published last year by the American Psychological Assn. which found that men are equally cooperative, “particularly in situations involving a dilemma that pits the interests of an individual against the interests of a group,” according to an APA report.  Explained lead researcher Daniel Balliet, PhD, of the VU University Amsterdam: “The argument is that throughout human evolutionary history, male coalitions have been an effective strategy for men to acquire resources, such as food and property. Both hunting and warfare are social dilemmas in that they firmly pit individual and group interests against each other. Yet, if everyone acts upon their immediate self-interest, then no food will be provided, and wars will be lost. To overcome such social dilemmas requires strategies to cooperate with each other.”

Additional study results:

• Women seem to reach mutual decisions more readily when interacting with the opposite sex.
• Men cooperate better with other men than women cooperate with each other.

Baby Faces

Who’s more motivated by cute baby faces, men or women?  Sorry Grandma, you’re not alone.  Researchers from the University of Oxford, led by Morten Kringelbach and Christine Parsons, report that men are as motivated by baby faces as women.  Christian Jarrett, in her study review for the British Psychological Society, pointed out that co-author Kringelback “is the same researcher who a few years ago showed that looking at baby faces, as opposed to adult faces, is associated with a distinct pattern of brain activity in the orbitofrontal cortex - a kind of neural ‘cuteness response’.”

Additional findings: 

·         Conforming to cultural stereotypes, women rated babies as more attractive than men (though there was no gender difference in evaluating adult faces);

·         Not surprisingly, “cuter” infants (those whose features included a large rounded forehead, large low-set eyes, a short and narrow nose and a small chin) were rated as more friendly, cheerful and likeable and thus, more “adoptable.”

Self-Esteem in Youth & Early Adulthood
Do young men have more self-esteem than young women?  Apparently not, according to researchers from the University of Basel in Switzerland who drew on 16 years of data to arrive at their conclusions.  Self-esteem increases during adolescence, then slows in young adulthood, according to the researchers, but there’s no statistical difference between males and females. Said lead author Ruth Yasemin Erol, MSc, as quoted in Science News last year: “We tested for factors that we thought would have an impact on how self-esteem develops," Erol said. "Understanding the trajectory of self-esteem is important to pinpointing and timing interventions that could improve people's self-esteem."

Some of their major findings, as reported in Science News:

·         In adolescence, Hispanics had lower self-esteem than black or non-Hispanic whites, but Hispanics’ self-esteem increased more strongly so that by age 30, they had higher self-esteem than whites.

·         Blacks have higher self-esteem than whites in both adolescence and young adulthood, a differential that held through age 30.  

 One major conclusion, according to Erol: “. . . parents, teachers and counselors may overlook self-esteem problems in male adolescents and young men because of the widespread belief that men have higher self-esteem than women have."

Are people who read fiction helping build a stronger society?

The research is in, and it all flows in the same direction: fictional stories – from novels to movies to theatre to TV shows – form the rock bed of a moral society.  Fiction teaches us to be more empathetic, more understanding, more moral. Fictional stories help us adhere to a just society and, as some would argue, help make societies work.  So the next time you curl up with a good book, know that you’re also making the world a better place.

The debate has raged for decades – what role do fictional stories tell?  Is TV, as the head of the FCC once remarked, truly “a vast wasteland” which corrodes society’s values? 

Author Jonathan Gottschall, in his stirring new book “The Storytelling Animal” says no – fiction serves a clear and definable role. It forces us to think about right and wrong, evil and just behavior.  In short: fiction is good for you.  Gottschall writes: 

“. . . research consistently shows that fiction does mold us. The more deeply we are cast under a story’s spell, the more potent its influence. In fact, fiction seems to be more effective at changing beliefs than nonfiction, which is designed to persuade through argument and evidence. Studies show that when we read nonfiction, we read with our shields up. We are critical and skeptical. But when we are absorbed in a story, we drop our intellectual guard. We are moved emotionally, and this seems to make us rubbery and easy to shape.”

Gottschall acknowledges that fiction has its downsides. He writes:

“. . . those who are concerned about the messages in fiction — whether they are conservative or progressive — have a point. Fiction is dangerous because it has the power to modify the principles of individuals and whole societies. But fiction is doing something that all political factions should be able to get behind. Beyond the local battles of the culture wars, virtually all storytelling, regardless of genre, increases society’s fund of empathy and reinforces an ethic of decency that is deeper than politics.”

Eric Liebetrau, reviewing Gottschall’s work in a piece for The Boston Globe, affirms the power of fiction, saying: “Contrary to conventional wisdom, fiction is not just a method for escaping harsh reality.” Quoting Gottschall, Liebetrau points out that fiction serves as a “powerful and ancient virtual reality technology that simulates the big dilemmas of human life.”

Gottschall’s final word:

“Fiction is often treated like a mere frill in human life, if not something worse. But the emerging science of story suggests that fiction is good for more than kicks. By enhancing empathy, fiction reduces social friction. At the same time, story exerts a kind of magnetic force, drawing us together around common values. In other words, most fiction, even the trashy stuff, appears to be in the public interest after all.”

Afterword: Gottschall’s analysis, explains Liebetrau, embraces “a host of different disciplines, including classic literature, psychology, social sciences, biology, neurology, religion, and evolutionary studies.” And Liebetrau adds that the author offers some “modest suggestions.”  For example:
• “Allow yourself to daydream. Daydreams are our own little stories. . . . ”
• “If you are a doubter, try to be more tolerant of the myths . . . . that help tie culture together. . . . ”
• “Read fiction . . . . it will make you more empathic and better able to navigate life’s dilemmas.”