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."
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4 comments:

  1. TamOctober 7, 2008 at 2:58 PM

    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.

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  2. rvmanOctober 7, 2008 at 7:10 PM

    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.

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  3. AnonymousOctober 8, 2008 at 12:39 PM

    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.

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  4. TamOctober 12, 2008 at 11:03 PM

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

    ReplyDelete