Tuesday, October 7, 2008

Signature Strengths

I took the VIA Signature Strengths assessment on positive psychologist Martin Seligman's website Authentic Happiness (named after his book).

My top 5 strengths according to this test:

(1) Judgment, critical thinking, and open mindedness
(2) Love of learning
(3) Capacity to love and be loved
(4) Industry, diligence, and perseverance
(5) Humor and playfulness

My bottom 5 strengths:

(20) Gratitude
(21) Kindness and generosity
(22) Appreciation of beauty and excellence
(23) Spirituality, sense of purpose, and faith
(24) Modesty and humility

Other instruments suggest that:

I am also "moderately pessimistic" about good events (believe good events have temporary causes), "moderately optimistic" about bad events (believe bad events have more permanent causes), and "moderately hopeless" overall.

I am "secure" in close relationships.

I am "slightly below average in life satisfaction."

4 comments:

Tam said...

My signature strengths:

(1) Curiosity and interest in the world

(2) Capacity to love and be loved

(3) Fairness, equity, and justice

(4) Forgiveness and mercy

and the bottom of my list:

(21) Modesty and humility

(22) Spirituality, sense of purpose, and faith

(23) Self-control and self-regulation (duh)

and

(24) Industry, diligence, and perseverence.

rvman said...

My top five:

(1) Caution, Prudence, and discretion
(2) Judgement, Critical Thinking, and open-mindedness
(3) Forgiveness and Mercy
(4) Modesty and Humility
(5)Fairness, Equality, and Justice

Bottom 5:
(1) Spirituality, sense of purpose, and faith
(2) Gratitude
(3) Appreciation of beauty and excellence
(4) Social Awareness
(5) Industry, diligence, and perseverence

I can see myself as the 'anti-' of the bottom five, if you take "Appreciation of beauty and excellence" entirely to mean the 'arty' rather than 'engineering' type excellence. I wouldn't have picked 'forgiveness and mercy' as a top five, though.

Anonymous said...

My strengths were:

1. caution, prudence, discretion
2. industry, diligence, perserverance
3. honesty, authenticity, genuineness
4. modesty, humility
5. capacity to love and be loved

Weaknesses:

1. humor and playfullness
2. leadership
3. hope, optimism, future-mindedness
4. creativity, ingenuity, originality
5. spirituality, sense of purpose, faith

I agree with the top five, but I was surprised that caution was number one. I agree with some of the bottom five, but I think the others are true depending on my mood.

Tam said...

"Sally's mom", your top five sound like the 'classic midwestern values' from a political ad :-) That's awesome.