Discover Your Character Strengths in 15 Minutes
Take the 'Values in Action Inventory of Strengths' survey to identify your character strengths.
The classic question psychologists get asked at parties when they reveal their profession is: "Are you analysing me?" A good answer for any psychologist who wants to be invited to more parties is: "Yes, and I find you to be a wonderful human being!"
This helps underline the fact that stereotypically psychologists are obsessed with deficits and disorders. Just look at the title of the clinical psychologists' and psychiatrists' bible, the 'Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders', also known as 'the DSM'. Doesn't sound that warm and cuddly, does it?
To help counter this prevailing tendency towards the negative, psychologists Christopher Peterson and Martin Seligman wanted to create an anti-DSM, a Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Positive strengths and virtues. Surely it would be useful, they thought, if people could use a questionnaire to identify their strengths as human beings?
Inventory of strengths
What they came up with was the 'Values in Action Inventory of Strengths' (VIA-IS) which, in a moment, I'll suggest you take. But first a bit of background so that you can understand what it means.
To create the VIA, Peterson and Seligman (2005)
- Knowledge (virtue)
- Creativity (strength)
- Curiosity
- Love of learning
- Perspective (wisdom)
- Open-mindedness
- Courage (virtue)
- Bravery (strength)
- Persistence
- Integrity
- Vitality
- Humanity
- Capacity to love and receive love
- Kindness
- Social intelligence
- Justice
- Citizenship
- Fairness
- Leadership
- Temperance
- Forgiveness/mercy
- Modesty/humility
- Prudence
- Self-regulation
- Transcendence
- Appreciation of excellence and beauty
- Gratitude
- Hope
- Humour
- Spirituality
Take the survey
The VIA-IS can be taken for free at http://www.viasurvey.org/, a site run by the VIA institute. You need to register and then the site will save your results so you can always revisit and check your strengths.
Once you have registered with the site, you'll see there are three different versions: the full survey for adults (240 questions), the full survey for those between 8 and 17 years old (198 questions) and a brief version (24 questions). I'd highly recommend putting in the 15 minutes or so it will take to complete the full survey. While the brief survey is a good indicator, you'll get much more accurate results from the full survey.
The VIA-IS questionnaire asks you questions that access each of the strengths. It then gives you your top 5 'signature strengths', along with all the other strengths in order, from strongest to weakest. You might be surprised about some of your signature strengths - I certainly was.
More on strengths and virtues
Included in the results is a short description of what each strength means. There is also more information on some of these strengths and virtues on the VIA site - these are linked in the list above. You can also compare your own top 5 strengths to averages obtained by others. More about the strengths and what they mean is in these excerpts from Peterson and Seligman's book.
» In the next post: how to use your character strengths.
[Image credit: The Yorck Project]
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Excellent post! I love the idea of looking for people's strengths instead of trying to fix their weaknesses.
The survey site is clunky and not fun. I started and stopped two surveys because of the question structure.
I took the survey too. I was a little annoyed signing up to take it though. I am a research psychologist. Why don't they offer that as an occupation? Aren't they research psychologists? And why are you forced to enter an occupation? I also wasn't entirely sure how I felt about the survey. I think it's a great first start, but the questions are way too open to the possibility of socially desirable responding.
Personally, I think they should have included questions in the two directions: strength and weakness. Maybe it would balance answering trends. Despite that I found the survey very interesting, and I have written about it in my blog. This is the URL, if you want to take a look... http://espaciosinaptico.blogspot.com
I'm glad someone has taken a positive spin on personality. People are always looking for faults in others and finally people may become more aware of their strengths. I will take a look at the quiz.
I took the quiz and found it useful but somehow feel that it should have been supplemented by one's weakest points, which are easily found based on answers. As vital as it is to be aware of one's strengths to be able to make full use of them, one has to recognize one's weaknesses and take steps to minimize their adverse impact.
I like the idea - finding positive aspects instead of negative ones. However, the results slightly annoyed me, as they were WAY off. It seemed to think that my greatest strength was teamwork, while my taste for knowledge was near the bottom of the scale. In actual fact, I avoid anything that involves teamwork as best I can, and spend the majority of my time trying to learn new things!
Sorry to rant, but that's another thing I spend a lot of my time doing.
Good blog, by the way.
For the VIA survey, did everyone have 24 strengths? There were 5 major strenghts, but I have a feeling that they measure 24 traits, and that each trait is listed as a strength for each person.
A big problem I had with this site was that it assumed the taker was being objective about their answers while also tracking that trait as a possible strength. How can a questionnaire can know if someone is exaggerating what their friends think of them (which is in and of itself a highly subjective matter), or selling themselves short on their leadership skills? While I can see how some of the results could be accurate, there is just way too much room for error.
Great post! I get asked the same Q "Are you analyzing me" when I say I am a psychology major and usually I try not to say anything offensive so I just say, "No I am not"...lol but I think saying "Yes and you are a wonderful person" would be ideal. It is also important to see the virtues of others instead of judging them which is something I am working on.