I took a character survey from the VIA Institute as part of TEP444. Prof. Sacks said that these character strengths really aren’t strengths — after all, how can you really numerically determine what someone’s strengths are based on a short questionnaire?
Here’s what I got:
- Love of learning
- Prudence
- Judgement
- Curiosity
- Bravery
- Perspective
- Appreciation of beauty and excellence
- Teamwork
- Honesty
- Self-regulation
- Kindness
- Love
- Gratitude
- Humility
- Social intelligence
- Leadership
- Humour
- Fairness
- Hope
When we were doing our life mapping exercise, we did notice that many of the core VIA strengths don’t quite align with our life zoomed out in that context. This may be attributable to the prompts themselves that may favour more positive memories.