John M.Yeager, Ed.D, MAPP is Director of the Center for Character Excellence at The Culver Academies in Culver, Indiana. Prior to coming to Culver, he was on faculty at Boston University and an associate scholar in BU’s Center for the Advancement of Ethics and Character.  John consults with schools on the integration of character in academic, leadership and athletic programs.  He has an extensive list of independent school clients.   John’s research focuses on the relationship between character strengths and well-being in adolescents and adults.  He is the author/co-author of Character and Coaching – Building Virtue in Athletic Programs, and Our Game: The Character and Culture of Lacrosse.

Sherri Fisher, MAPP, M.Ed, CPBS, is a practicing educational specialist and coach. A career educator, she has worked as a teacher, program director and curriculum designer, both privately and within mainstream educational environments, across the curriculum from kindergarten through college. Clients include students, families, faculty and schools.  She is recognized by both colleagues and clients for her resourcefulness in creating flexible, individualized, practical and effective strategies for engaging the strengths of individuals and organizations. Sherri’s research interests focus on identifying, preserving and developing what works well in both schools and individuals, in support of a flourishing future.

Psychological testing is the ultimate heuristic to simplify the complexity of being human. Such assessment comes in many flavors: cognitive, achievement, temperament, processing, perceptual, and affective are just a few.  Nearly everyone wants to know what their test results really mean – to be spared both the mystery and misery of self-discovery – and be told the pathway to true happiness.  Positive psychology, the study of positive subjective experience, positive individual traits, and the institutions enabling both of these, is rooted in the belief that people can become happier.  Why be happy?  Beyond the good feelings that happiness confers, happy people tend to have increased mental and physical health, and are more cooperative and “other-centered.”   

Research indicates that three pathways to happiness exist: pleasure, engagement and meaning.  Parents send their children off to college fearing overindulgence in the first, but hoping for the development of character that will result in the latter two.   For students attending college, the responsibility to build character seems to fall largely on the shoulders of institutions where, despite many learned people, a clear definition of character is often difficult to identify. One’s character is undeniably an important part of who a person is.  However, while character is glorified, discussed, and studied, it is unusual when people can agree to what character actually is.

Positive Psychology has set out to define character in its “Manual of the Sanities”, Peterson and Seligman’s (2004) Character Strengths and Virtues.  Rooted in 3000 years of human history and philosophy across cultures and wisdom traditions, and viewed through the theoretical lens of positive psychology, character strengths are presented as the foundation of the human condition and an essential route to the good life. Within these traditions, 24 strengths of character falling into six virtue categories have been found to be ubiquitous. See the list here: http://viastrengths.org/index.aspx?ContentID=44

Positive psychology, with its study of building character and the good life, attracts students as well as researchers. Promoting a broadening of the focus of psychology from minimizing mental illness to instead promoting full, rich lives, positive psychology is the most popular class at Harvard this year. Similar courses have emerged world-wide, from New York to California to Australia to Great Britain.  The University of Pennsylvania offers the first Master of Applied Positive Psychology program.  Positive psychology research covers subjects ranging from states such as “flow” (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990) to age-old virtues such as wisdom, courage, love, justice, temperance, and transcendence.  It includes hope and optimism, mindfulness, and “grit.”  It even delves into the nature and basis of how we reach moral judgments. 

Today’s college students possess various desires, appetites, and motives, and a well-formed character may serve as a protective and enabling factor in the various constructive and mitigating environments experienced on campus – whether it be in the classroom, athletic field, stage or in daily residential life.  The cultivation of character strengths typically doesn’t happen in isolation. Empirical research advocates addressing character from a multidimensional perspective (Park, 2004).  Tom Lickona and Matt Davidson (2005) suggest that there are two types of character. Performance character focuses on diligence, perseverance and self-discipline necessary to a commitment to academic, athletic, and other areas of excellence.   Peterson and Seligman call these virtues “temperance” and “courage.” Moral character embodies the traits of “integrity, justice, caring, and respect – needed for successful interpersonal relationships and ethical behavior.”  These are Peterson and Seligman’s virtues of “humanity”, “justice”, and “transcendence.”

If we are to emphasize the importance of moral character on our college campuses, it may be prudent to intentionally examine strategies to bring out the “best” in the students.   To do so we will need to know what character traits students already have, as well as which ones we’d like them to develop. Robert Brooks (2001), in the Atlantic Monthly article, The Organization Kid, provides a compelling example of the state of performance and moral character on Princeton’s campus.  From a performance character perspective, he found that many students felt that they were like “tools for processing information” in their quest for knowledge and the ultimate GPA.  When asked if Princeton builds [moral] character, Brooks claims, “[Students] would inevitably mention the honor code against cheating, or policies to reduce drinking.  When I asked about moral questions, they would often flee such talk and start discussing legislative questions.”

Avoiding poor character, however, is not the same as building virtue. So just how does one go about identifying traits of moral character in a positive way that is empirically sound as well as appealing?  The VIA-IS (Values in Action Inventory of Strengths), based on the work of Peterson, Seligman et. al, looks at the age-old question, “What is the good of a person?” It assesses both the core characteristics (virtues) valued by moral philosophers and religious thinkers, as well as the psychological ingredients (character strengths) which enable one to achieve virtue.  The VIA-IS is easily available in an on-line format, and one’s top five “Signature” strengths will be presented on completing the test.  Some strengths of character are phasic and may change in response to one’s environment while others are tonic and more trait-like over time. Find your Signature Strengths  http://www.authentichappiness.sas.upenn.edu 

Institutions of higher education set out to build character in college students. With the VIA-IS, we can accurately measure the strengths of character a person already has.  In part two of this series, we will discover how colleges and universities can use positive psychology to both assess and develop the good character of their students.

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The authors retain all rights to this essay.  However, FYA-List subscribers may distribute the essay for non-commercial purposes. 
Requested citation for redistribution or reference:
Yeager, J.M. and Fisher, S. (2006).  It Builds Character, But How Can We Tell?.  Essay for the First-Year Assessment Listserv.  Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina, National Resource Center for The First-Year Experience and Students in Transition. (http://www.sc.edu/fye/resources/assessment/essays/Yeager-10.31.06.html)
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References
Aristotle (1950) The Ethics of Aristotle – translated by D.P. Chase.  New York: Dutton.
Brooks, D. (2001).  The Organization Kid.   The Atlantic Monthly. Volume 287, No. 4
Csikszentmihalyi (1990). Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. New York: Harper Collins.
DeToqueville, A. (1956/1984/2001). Democracy in America.  New York: New Library/Signet/Penguin.
Lickona, T. and Davidson, M. (2005).  Smart and good high schools: Integrating excellence and ethics for success in school, work, and beyond.  The Character Development Group.
Park, N. (2004). Character strengths and positive youth development. The annals of the          American Academy. AAPSS, 591, 40-54.
Peterson, C. and Seligman, M.E.P. (2004).   Character Strengths and Virtues – A Handbook and Classification.  New York: Oxford University Press.
Tigner, S.   Cultural Foundations for Educators (unpublished coursepacket – Boston University School of Education).
United States Department of Education (2006). Comprehensive Schoolwide Character Education Interventions:  Benefits for Character Traits, Behavioral, and Academic Outcomes.