Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, India
Paper presented at 3rd International Conference on Recent Advances in Psychotherapy & Yoga, Nov., 23-25, 2007, Sagar.
Peterson & Seligman (2004) identified 6 virtues having 24 character strengths of human beings namely wisdom, courage, justice, humanity, temperance and transcendence. The five-factor model of personality studies individual differences through five relatively independent dimensions: extraversion (E), neuroticism (N), conscientiousness (C), agreeablcness (A), and openness to experience (O). Using a sample of 251 undergraduate students, this study explored the relationship between the five-factor model of personality and character strengths. Results showed significant positive correlation between extraversion and five virtues. Agreeablcness, conscientiousness and openness showed a significant positive correlation with all six virtues while neuroticism showed a significant negative correlation with all of them. Further, Regression analyses revealed that C N and A explained 34% of the variance in wisdom. A, E: and O explained 19% of the variance in humanity. A. E and N explained 17% of the variance in justice. Moreover, four factors (C, N, A and O) explained 16% of the variance in temperance and further four (O, C, A, and E) explained 26% of the variance in transcendence.
positive psychology, character strengths, big five factors, personality, Virtues
