Definitional ambiguities in character strengths: A comparative analysis with personality and other psychobiological attributes

Abstract

Character strengths lack a consensual definition, creating ambiguity in psychological research. This exploratory study tests whether previously discussed ideas about character strengths’ shared qualities (e.g., fulfilling, morally valued, traitlike) distinguish them from related concepts, such as the Big Five. Ten laypersons rated 12 of these “criteria” across 80 character strengths adjectives and 170 that pertained to the Big Five, emotions, anatomy, and bodily states. Results indicate that one or two criteria suffice to define character strengths with about 74% accuracy. However, these criteria could not distinguish character strengths from the Big Five, suggesting they may belong to the same conceptual category. We recommend adopting one of five working definitions based on these findings when introducing character strengths in future research.