Dahlsgaard_Peterson_ Seligman 2005 Shared virtue.pdf

Shared Virtue: The Convergence of Valued Human Strengths Across Culture and History Katherine Dahlsgaard University of Pennsylvania Christopher Peterson University of Michigan Martin E. P. Seligman University of Pennsylvania Positive psychology needs an agreed-upon way of classifying positive traits as a backbone for research, diagnosis, and intervention. As a 1st step toward classification, the authors examined philosophical and religious traditions in China (Confucianism and Taoism), South Asia (Buddhism and Hinduism), and the West (Athenian philos- ophy, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) for the answers each provided to questions of moral behavior and the good life. The authors found that 6 core virtues recurred in these writings: courage, justice, humanity, temperance, wisdom, and transcendence. This convergence suggests a nonarbitrary foundation for the classification of human strengths and virtues. Keywords: virtues, character strengths, positive traits, culture, positive psychology In recent years, strides have been made in understanding, treating, and preventing psycho- logical disorders. Critical to this progress are two widely accepted classification manuals— the American Psychiatric Association’s Diag- nostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disor- ders (DSM–IV; 4th ed., 1994) and the World Health Organization’s (1990) International Classification of Diseases (ICD). Consensual classifications are important because they pro- vide a common vocabulary for basic researchers and clinicians, allowing communication across professional groups as well as with the general public. The DSM–IV and ICD describe much of what is wrong with people, but what about those things that are right? Psychology has long ig- nored human excellence, in part because we lack a crucial starting point: an empirically in- formed, consensual classification of human vir- tues. Nothing comparable to the DSM–IV or ICD exists for human strengths. When psychol- ogists talk about mental health,