Character

Abstract

Character is a personality concept: in current usage approximately equivalent to personality, it is the sum of the relatively fixed personality traits and habitual modes of response of an individual. This article covers the history of character as a term in psychology, the temperament and character model and its critics, the classification of character strengths and virtues, the links between character strengths and well-being, moral character in person perception and identity, and strengths interventions.

Keywords: character, character strengths, moral character, temperament, virtues

In the early parts of the 20th century, character made up a major part of psychology, specifically of personality psychology, and recent years have witnessed a reinvigoration of character, ethics and morality as objects of psychological study (Fleeson et al., 2014). In self-reports from a sample of 1,063,921 adults, results for 75 nations each represented by at least 150 respondents suggested substantial cross-cultural similarity in the endorsement of character strengths, though the participants probably represent a biased sample for many of the countries (McGrath, 2015a).

What Character Is

MeSH defines Character as, in current usage, approximately equivalent to personality: the sum of the relatively fixed personality traits and habitual modes of response of an individual. It lists Characters as an entry term and files the descriptor under personality.

Psychological research uses the word in three main ways. One treats character as personality dimensions that mature in adulthood, distinct from temperament dimensions that manifest early in life (Cloninger et al., 1993). A second treats character strengths as positively valued traits that are expected to contribute to the good life (Wagner et al., 2020). A third asks whether moral character exists as a psychological construct, with stable individual differences in moral behavior (Fleeson et al., 2014).

Character and Personality

Allport's 1937 book set out a psychological interpretation of personality (Allport, 1937). Between 1921 and 1937 Allport was among the leading figures in the movement to establish personality as a research category in American psychology; of particular importance was the gradual erosion of the language of character and the self-sacrificing, morally grounded self that it supported, a trend that Allport's psychology of personality helped fuel while simultaneously attempting to resist it (Nicholson, 1998).

An influential observational study of children's moral behavior, conducted by Hartshorne, May and colleagues in the 1920s (Hartshorne & May, 1928), suggested that consistency in morality-related behavior was lower than many people expected; some psychologists interpreted such results to mean that there were no stable, meaningful individual differences in moral behavior, so that character did not exist (Fleeson et al., 2014). The question was taken up again in Personality and assessment (Mischel, 1968) and, in moral philosophy, in Lack of character: Personality and moral behavior (Doris, 2002).

Temperament and Character

A psychobiological model of temperament and character describes four dimensions of temperament (novelty seeking, harm avoidance, reward dependence and persistence), described as independently heritable and manifest early in life, and three dimensions of character that mature in adulthood: self-directedness, cooperativeness and self-transcendence (Cloninger et al., 1993). The three character dimensions correspond to the extent to which a person identifies the self as an autonomous individual, as an integral part of humanity and as an integral part of the universe as a whole, and data on 300 individuals from the general population supported the reliability and structure of the seven dimensions (Cloninger et al., 1993).

Figure 1

The Seven Dimensions of the Temperament and Character Model

Figure 1 sets out the seven dimensions.

In a community sample of 727, facets-to-scale confirmatory and exploratory factor analyses of the revised Temperament and Character Inventory did not support the organization of temperament and character facet scales within their superordinate domains, and five of the 29 facet scales displayed relatively low internal consistency (Farmer & Goldberg, 2008). A later genome-wide study by the model's proponents, in a discovery sample of 2,149 healthy Finns, found 42 sets of single-nucleotide polymorphisms that identified 727 gene loci and were significantly associated with one or more profiles of character traits; 95% of the sets were identified in one or both of the Korean and German replication samples (Zwir et al., 2020).

Character Strengths and Virtues

A handbook and classification of character strengths and virtues was published in 2004 (Peterson & Seligman, 2004). The resulting Values in Action classification distinguishes six core virtues and 24 strengths, and the assignment of the strengths to the virtues was done on theoretical grounds rather than empirically (Ruch & Proyer, 2015).

Table 1 lists the six virtues with the descriptions given in Ruch and Proyer's (2015) adaptation of the classification.

The structure of the classification is contested. Factor analyses of measures based on the classification usually suggest four to five factors that do not correspond well to traditional lists of virtues, and across four samples of 1,070,549 cases a three-virtue model of Caring, Inquisitiveness and Self-Control was proposed instead (McGrath, 2015b). In ratings by 70 experts and 41 laypersons of how prototypical each strength is for each virtue, the abstract reports that 10 strengths were very good markers for their virtues, nine were good markers and four were acceptable markers (the Results section gives nine, 11 and three), and only one, humor, failed to reach the cut-off score, but strengths were often markers for two or even three virtues (Ruch & Proyer, 2015).

In 75 nations each represented by at least 150 respondents, the most highly endorsed character strengths were Honesty, Fairness, Kindness, Judgment and Curiosity, while the least endorsed were Self-Regulation, Modesty, Prudence and Spirituality; the author notes that the participants probably represent a biased sample for many of the countries (McGrath, 2015a).

Whether character strengths are distinct from personality traits has also been tested. In two studies (N = 606 and N = 498), eight of the 24 VIA scales proved largely redundant with one HEXACO personality facet, but only one, Appreciation of Beauty, was largely redundant with Five Factor facets, and all strength scales except Spirituality overlapped substantially with at least one personality facet; the authors conclude that the VIA variables are strongly related to commonly measured personality facets but that the two models are not redundant (McGrath et al., 2020).

Strengths and Well-Being

Among 5,299 adults from three Internet samples, hope, zest, gratitude, love and curiosity were consistently and robustly associated with life satisfaction, whereas modesty and the intellectual strengths of appreciation of beauty, creativity, judgment and love of learning were only weakly associated; the relationship was in general monotonic, indicating that excess on any one character strength does not diminish life satisfaction (Park et al., 2004). Whether strengths can be overused is debated: a review of nonmonotonic, inverted-U-shaped effects argues that positive phenomena can reach inflection points at which their effects turn negative (Grant & Schwartz, 2011).

In a US sample of 12,439 adults and a Swiss sample of 445, the character strengths most highly linked to happiness in the form of life satisfaction included love, hope, curiosity and zest, and those strengths were associated with orientations to pleasure, to engagement and to meaning (Peterson et al., 2007). In a study of 5,521 participants, all strengths were positively related to all five dimensions of a multidimensional framework of well-being in self-reports, a pattern largely confirmed by informant-reports in a second study of 172 (Wagner et al., 2020).

Moral Character

Moral character has been reviewed as a construct, asking what it is and what it does (Cohen & Morse, 2014). In person perception, moral character and social warmth traits proved separable, and in most contexts moral character information was more important in impression formation than warmth information; moral character information also appeared more prominently than warmth information in obituaries (Goodwin et al., 2014). The finding is set against the account in which warmth and competence are two universal dimensions of social cognition (Fiske et al., 2007); Goodwin and colleagues argue that warmth and moral character, sometimes conceived of as interchangeable, are separable (Goodwin et al., 2014).

Judges agree about moral character. When targets rated their own moral character on six moral character traits and friends, family members or acquaintances rated them on the same traits, self-other and inter-informant agreement was found for a general character factor and for the individual traits, which the authors take as evidence for the existence of moral character (Helzer et al., 2014).

Across five experiments, moral traits, more than any other mental faculty, were considered the most essential part of identity, the self and the soul; memory was also fairly important, while lower-level cognition and perception had the most tenuous connection to identity (Strohminger & Nichols, 2014).

Strengths Interventions

Strengths interventions aim to promote well-being or other positive outcomes by facilitating strengths identification, and sometimes also strengths use or development; in a review of 18 (quasi-)experimental studies published between 2011 and 2016, all types of strengths interventions had positive outcomes in terms of well-being, job outcomes, personal growth initiative and group or team outcomes (Ghielen et al., 2018). An earlier six-group, random-assignment, placebo-controlled Internet study tested five purported happiness interventions and one plausible control exercise, and found that three of the interventions lastingly increased happiness and decreased depressive symptoms (Seligman et al., 2005). The impact of signature character strengths interventions has also been meta-analyzed (Schutte & Malouff, 2019). The size of such effects is debated: a reanalysis of two highly cited meta-analyses of positive psychology interventions found that, when small sample size bias was taken into account, effects on well-being were small but significant (approximately r = .10) and effects on depression were variable and generally not statistically significant (White et al., 2019).

Worked Example

The expert-rating counts for the VIA strengths can be added up. Of the 24 strengths, the abstract and Discussion report that 10 were very good markers, nine good and four acceptable (Ruch & Proyer, 2015), while the Results section gives nine, 11 and three; either way, 10 + 9 + 4 = 9 + 11 + 3 = 23 reached the cut-off for their assigned virtue, and 23 / 24 ≈ 0.96, about 96%. The one remaining strength failed to reach it, and the same study found strengths often marked two or three virtues, so a high pass rate for each assignment does not mean each strength belongs to only one virtue.

Discussion

Three conclusions follow. First, the meaning of character has shifted: the language of character eroded as personality became a research category (Nicholson, 1998), and research has since returned to character, ethics and morality (Fleeson et al., 2014).

Second, the main classifications of character are structurally contested: the temperament and character facet scales were not supported by factor analysis (Farmer & Goldberg, 2008), and factor analyses of the VIA strengths usually suggest four or five factors rather than six virtues (McGrath, 2015b), although prototypicality ratings supported the assignment of the strengths to virtues with one exception (Ruch & Proyer, 2015).

Third, character matters to how people are seen and how they fare: moral character predominated over warmth in impression formation (Goodwin et al., 2014), and several strengths were robustly associated with life satisfaction (Park et al., 2004).

Current Directions

Three lines of work are named in the cited studies. Genetics: the proponents of the temperament and character model conclude that self-regulatory personality traits are strongly influenced by organized interactions among more than 700 genes (Zwir et al., 2020). Moral character: new prospects for research on moral character as a psychological construct have been proposed (Fleeson et al., 2014). Interventions: mediators such as hope and positive affect, and moderators such as extraversion, have been identified for strengths interventions (Ghielen et al., 2018).

Common Misconceptions

“A strength can never be overdone.”

A review argues that positive phenomena can reach inflection points at which their effects turn negative (Grant & Schwartz, 2011), although in one study the relation between strengths and life satisfaction was generally monotonic (Park et al., 2004).

“Warmth matters more than moral character in impressions of others.”

In most contexts, moral character information was more important in impression formation than warmth information (Goodwin et al., 2014).

“The six virtues are confirmed by factor analysis.”

Factor analyses of measures based on the classification usually suggest four or five factors that do not correspond well to traditional lists of virtues (McGrath, 2015b), but a factor analysis of expert and lay prototypicality ratings found a six-factor solution more meaningful, and its authors argue that the classification is not a factor-analytic model (Ruch & Proyer, 2015).

Glossary

Character strengths.

Positively valued traits that are expected to contribute to the good life.

Cooperativeness.

A character dimension reflecting the self identified as an integral part of humanity.

Harm avoidance.

One of the four temperament dimensions of the temperament and character model.

Impression formation.

Forming judgments of other people from information about them, in which moral character usually outweighed warmth.

Inter-informant agreement.

Agreement between different people rating the same target, found for moral character traits.

Moral character.

Stable individual differences in moral traits and behavior, whose existence as a construct has been debated.

Novelty seeking.

One of the four temperament dimensions of the temperament and character model.

Persistence.

One of the four temperament dimensions of the temperament and character model.

Reward dependence.

One of the four temperament dimensions of the temperament and character model.

Self-directedness.

A character dimension reflecting the self identified as an autonomous individual.

Self-transcendence.

A character dimension reflecting the self identified as an integral part of the universe as a whole.

Strengths intervention.

An intervention that aims to promote well-being or other positive outcomes by facilitating strengths identification, use or development.

Temperament.

In the temperament and character model, dimensions described as independently heritable and manifest early in life.

VIA Classification.

The Values in Action classification of six core virtues and 24 character strengths.

Key Researchers

Gordon W. Allport

(1897–1967). Psychologist at Harvard University; his 1937 Personality: A psychological interpretation helped establish personality as a research category in American psychology. Wikipedia - Wikidata - Faculty Page

C. Robert Cloninger

(b. 1944). Psychiatrist, Emeritus at Washington University in St. Louis; proposed the psychobiological model of temperament and character and the Temperament and Character Inventory. Wikipedia - Wikidata - Faculty Page

William Fleeson

Personality psychologist at Wake Forest University; reviewed the prospects for a personality-based perspective on moral character and studied agreement in the perception of moral character. Wikipedia - Wikidata

Robert E. McGrath

Psychologist at Fairleigh Dickinson University; studied character strengths across 75 nations and proposed a three-virtue structure for the VIA strengths. ORCID - Faculty Page

Christopher Peterson

(1950–2012). Psychologist at the University of Michigan; classified character strengths and virtues with Seligman and studied their links to life satisfaction. Wikipedia - Wikidata - Google Scholar - Faculty Page

Willibald Ruch

(b. 1956). Psychologist at the University of Zurich; tested how the 24 VIA strengths map onto six virtues. ORCID - Wikidata - Google Scholar - Faculty Page

Martin E. P. Seligman

(b. 1942). Psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania; co-authored the handbook and classification of character strengths and virtues. ORCID - Wikipedia - Wikidata - Google Scholar - Faculty Page

Frequently Asked Questions

What is character in psychology?

MeSH defines it as, in current usage, approximately equivalent to personality: the sum of the relatively fixed personality traits and habitual modes of response of an individual.

How do character and temperament differ?

In the temperament and character model, temperament dimensions are described as heritable and manifest early in life, while character dimensions mature in adulthood (Cloninger et al., 1993).

What are character strengths?

Positively valued traits that are expected to contribute to the good life (Wagner et al., 2020).

How many character strengths and virtues are there?

The VIA classification distinguishes six core virtues and 24 strengths (Ruch & Proyer, 2015).

Which character strengths are most common?

Across 75 nations, in an online sample that probably represents a biased sample for many of the countries, the most highly endorsed were Honesty, Fairness, Kindness, Judgment and Curiosity (McGrath, 2015a).

Which strengths go with life satisfaction?

Hope, zest, gratitude, love and curiosity were consistently and robustly associated with it (Park et al., 2004).

Does moral character matter in how people are judged?

Yes: in most contexts, moral character information was more important in impression formation than warmth information (Goodwin et al., 2014).

Do strengths interventions work?

In a review of 18 (quasi-)experimental studies, all types of strengths interventions had positive outcomes in terms of well-being and other outcomes (Ghielen et al., 2018); across positive psychology interventions more broadly, effects on well-being were small once small sample size bias was taken into account (White et al., 2019).

References