CHARACTER STRENGTHS AND VIRTUES: A Comparison While the psychiatric and psychological communities have long focused on pathologies of behavior, a branch of psychological research has begun to emerge within the last decade that is examining those parts of human behavioral patterns that are positive and helpful rather than harmful and pathological. One framework for understanding these behaviors was published in 2004 by Dr. Christopher Peterson and Dr. Martin E.P. Seligman, entitled "Character Strengths and Virtues: A Handbook and Classification" (CSV)[1]. Much like the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, which catalogs mental disorders, the CSV is meant to begin the process of cataloging what has been termed by the authors as "categories of sanity." This framework organizes its set of virtues into six broad categories, and then adds virtues that fall into these categories, bringing the total of its list of virtues to 24. Much like ADF's set of virtues, the CSV virtues were arrived at by examining multiple cultural contexts and determining what factors many of them had in common when envisioning a person of good character. The researchers in this case created a list of ten criteria against which they measured the virtues they found that many cultures valued in common; a virtue had to meet at least eight of the ten criteria in order to qualify. (The Handbook offers a rundown of each virtue and thoroughly documents why they consider it to meet or not meet each individual criterion.) In scientific fashion, the researchers went on to clearly define each of their virtues in behavioral terms which are measurable using psychometric methods, allowing them to "measure character strengths and virtues in a rigorous scientific manner," as reviewer Robert Cloniger described it. [2] The CSV Handbook also offers data from psychometric studies of many of its virtues and how they contribute to a person's wellbeing. The six broad categories they defined along with the sub-virtues they encompass were:
Notably, many of the virtues listed in the DP are found here under the same terms: wisdom, courage, integrity. A few of them appear here under a simple change of terminology: the CSV's "temperance" is equivalent to ADF's "moderation", and "persistence" and "perseverance" are identical as well. Others of ADF's virtues are more difficult to map onto the CSV; fertility, for example, can be seen as a combination of the CSV values of vitality and creativity, and vision is somewhat equivalent to a combination of perspective and, perhaps oddly, humility. (One aspect of humility mentioned in the Handbook is realizing that you are only one part of the greater picture, a part of vision nearly as important as perspective!) As a secular framework, piety is not found specifically in the CSV, but our concept of piety could be seen as a combination of factors involved in the Transcendence category. Spirituality and gratitude particularly come to mind, perhaps with a little "self-regulation" and "persistence" thrown in. Hospitality is a peculiarly outmoded and lost virtue in the modern world; the polytheology behind our understanding of reciprocal give-and-take as the basis of reality is the hardest to map onto the CSV. Perhaps if we think of it as a judicious combining of social responsibility, kindness, and gratitude, we can approach a psychological understanding of hospitality as a virtue. Other CSV virtues that are not specifically encompassed by ADF virtues may seem to spring from a Christianized viewpoint; Cloniger notes that the six broad categories are a slight reworking of the virtues of medieval Christian tradition. These traditions themselves did not come from outside the Indo-European mindset, however; one version of the virtues were originally expounded by a Roman Christian, Aurelius Clemens Prudentius, in his poem Psychomachia around 410 CE, and these reflect values not derived from the Jewish basis of Christianity but rather from its Hellenistic roots. Other of these medieval systems combined elements propounded by Plato with elements derived from the New Testament book of 1 Corinthians (namely faith, hope and love/agape); the authorship of 1 Corinthians is generally regarded by scholars to be genuinely that of Paul of Tarsus, who, while he was raised in a strict sect of Judaism, was also a Roman citizen steeped in the Hellenism that shaped both the society of the Empire and the emerging sect that would become Christianity. Taken together, the CSV contains a list of virtues that, while formulated for a secular audience, offer some new ways to look at the virtues that we suggest in ADF. Seeing how the CSV's sub-virtues fit into their broader categories can suggest new avenues for exploration of the equivalent ADF virtues, and ways to conceptualize them that might otherwise have gone unexamined. [1] Peterson, Christopher; Seligman, Martin E. P. Character strengths and virtues: A handbook and classification. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. |
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