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Many mid-to-late 20th century Humanistic psychologists such as Abraham Maslow and Martin Seligman noticed that the field of psychology was largely successful in addressing the negativities and shortcomings revolving around the life of human beings. They ultimately led to the introduction of positive psychology which majored its focus on man’s potentialities, achievable aspirations and virtues. There are various positive psychology researches conducted by different scholars that sets the context for the Karris and Craighead 2012 study as discussed in their article, one of them is the development of the classification also known as the Values in Action (VIA) classification of strengths which was conducted by Peterson and Seligman 2004. These two scholars later developed the VIA inventory of Strengths of Scale (VIA-IS) which is a 240-item face-valid self-report questionnaire designed to measure 24 character strengths.
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This article seeks to discuss a study carried out by Karris and Craighead to assess the 24 VIA character strengths solely on college students. This is the first study which focused on the VIA character strengths using the traditional paper-and-pencil methodology.
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The study included 759 participants (N=759), n=394 were male while n=365 were female who were college students at the University of Colorado at Boulder and were between the ages of 18 and 22. This age group is a representative of the larger young adults population in the US whom the study sought to identify their VIA.
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In regard to social desirability, the author designed the Unlikely Virtues Scale (UV) which is a14-item true or false self report questionnaire. The scale is designed to asses individual endorsement of virtuous but unlikely behavior. It correlates with Marlowe-crowne social desirability scale(r-0.73, p<0.01)
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Participants were asked to complete a questionnaire which included their demographic information, well-being, happiness, mental health constructs and the VIA-IS scale to measure for the 24 character strengths.
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The Topmost endorsed values were humor, love and kindness while Modesty/humility, self-regulation and spirituality were the three least endorsed strengths. There were significant gender differences as more females scored higher on strengths regarding to kindness, love and gratitude while their male counterparts scored relatively higher in strengths regarding creativity, bravery and self regulation. The responses received from the participants were not in any way influenced by Social desirability.
(8) From the study, the authors concluded that college males and females indicate that the 24 character strengths were more rather than less like them. In addition, the Unlikely Virtues Scale indicated that the scores were within the expected normal range.
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One of the notable limitation the study faced was the fact that the study involved a self-report there it raise concerns about the systematic response distortions. In addition, the failure by the report on describing or telling us what constitutes “good” character is also a major limitation to the study.
References
Karris, M., & Craighead, W. (2012). Differences in Character Among U.S. College Students.
Individual Differences Research, 10(2), 69-80.
