Connect individual strengths to the broader virtues they serve

Understand which of the six VIA virtues your signature strengths express, and what that reveals about your character.

Why it works

Peterson and Seligman organized the 24 strengths under six broader virtues (wisdom, courage, humanity, justice, temperance, transcendence). This structure matters because it reveals the character orientation behind the strengths: two people might both have high creativity, but one’s creativity serves wisdom (original ideas) and another’s serves humanity (relational artistry). Virtue-level awareness creates a more integrated self-understanding than strength profiles alone and anchors character development in the longer tradition of virtue ethics.

How to do it

1. Identify which of the six virtues most of your signature strengths cluster under.
2. Read the classical definition of that virtue (e.g., Aristotle on courage, Aquinas on temperance). Does it ring true as a character orientation for you?
3. Identify the virtue most underrepresented in your profile. Choose one practice from that virtue to work on for a month.
4. Return to the strength profile after a year of character development and notice what has shifted.

Evidence

Virtue ethics as a framework for character development has a 2,500-year history. Peterson and Seligman’s empirical classification is a modernization of that tradition; the six virtues show reasonable cross-cultural consistency. (observational)

The six-virtue categorization is a theoretical organization; cluster structure varies somewhat across cultures and the boundaries between virtues are fuzzy.

Sources

• Peterson & Seligman (2004), Character Strengths and Virtues (APA/Oxford University Press)
• Dahlsgaard, Peterson & Seligman (2005), "Shared virtue: the convergence of valued human strengths across culture and history," Review of General Psychology

Common mistake

Using the strengths profile as a personality descriptor rather than as a character development tool — the virtues framing reminds you that strengths are for cultivation, not just identification.