Character Strengths and Academic Achievement in Undergraduate College Students

Character Strengths: The topic of has been of longstanding interest to philosophers, educators, political leaders, religious leaders, and the general public. The word character conjures up a number of meanings for people such as one's reputation (his is being attacked), one's level of morality (she's a woman of character), or pigeonholing into one construct such as honesty or integrity (he very honest so is a person of strong character). People tend to think of as something permanent and unchanging in people. This is further complicated by traditional views of that widely manifest today as championed by many education programs found in schools, religious groups, athletic programs, etc. that identify a small number of positive traits (e.g. usually four to seven) and claim that this grouping of qualities represents good character. What is often missing from these views of is akin to the actual meaning of the word. The word character refers to those qualities that are distinctive to the individual. Research is continuing to accumulate each year around the benefits of strengths use. In general, strengths seem to assist in reducing the likelihood of distress and dysfunction while encouraging tangible outcomes like: Greater happiness, Acceptance of oneself, Reverence for life, Competence, mastery, efficacy, Mental and physical health, Positive and supportive social networks, Satisfying, engaging, and meaningful work, Accomplishment of goals, Greater engagement and life meaning, Higher work productivity, Increased likelihood of work being a life calling, Less stress and improved coping, Greater academic achievement, Improved close relationships.Linley and Harrington (2006) defined STRENGTH as a capacity for feeling, thinking, and behaving in a way that allows optimal functioning in the pursuit of valued outcomes. In this regard it can be said that the work on classification of illnesses had a 2000 year or more long history of beginning, but the efforts to classify strengths and positive outcomes is comparatively much recent. Therefore, it is easy to understand why we have a better understanding of human weaknesses than we do of strengths. (Snyder, p . 32). Virtue can be defined as any psychological process that enables a person to think and act so as to benefit him- or her- self and society (McCullough & Snyder, 2000, p. 1). As such, virtue- related concepts historically have been of considerable interest to psychological researchers and practitioners, as exemplified in the humanistic psychology tradition (Peterson & Seligman, 2004) and in family social science research on family strengths and resilience (Sandage & Hill, 2001 ).Therefore Character Strengths are the psychological ingredients, processes or mechanisms that define the virtues. That is, strengths are the distinguishable routes to displaying one or another of the virtues. For example, the virtue of wisdom can be achieved through strengths such as curiosity and love of learning, open-mindedness, creativity.. These strengths are similar in the sense that they all involve the acquisition and use of knowledge, but they are also distinct. These strengths can be regarded as ubiquitously recognized and valued, although a given individual will rarely, if ever, display all of them (Walker & Pitts, 1998). Character traits can be regarded as dimensional traits that exist in degress across individuals (Linley & Joseph,p.435)Peterson and Seligman (2004) define strengths as a ubiquitously recognised subset of personality traits that are morally valued. According to Linley and Harrington (2006), strengths are ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving that come naturally and easily to a person and that enable high functioning and performance. It has been observed that the most systematic approach to studying virtue and strengths from a psychological perspective has come from the field of positive psychology. …