Free Character Traits Test: Identify Your Signature Personality Strengths

I’m now in Week 5 of the free Yale Happiness Course, which focuses on finding things that truly make you happy, as opposed to the 5 Surprising Things That Don’t Make You As Happy As You Think.

For example, instead of equating a “good job” with high income, you should redefine a good job as one that allows you to express many of your “signature personality strengths”. When regularly using their specific signature strengths in daily life, people reported higher levels or happiness and lower levels of depressive symptoms. In another study, being able to use your strengths at work resulted in higher productivity and job satisfaction.

In the early 2000s, something groundbreaking occurred in the social sciences: Scientists discovered a common language of 24 character strengths make up what’s best about our personality. Everyone possesses all 24 character strengths in different degrees, so each person has a truly unique character strengths profile. Each character strength falls under one of these six broad virtue categories, which are universal across cultures and nations.

How can you identify your signature personality strengths? The VIA Institute on Character offers a free Character Strengths Profile that takes about 10 minutes and will list your strengths from highest to lowest based on your self-assessment answers. Here are the six broad “core virtues” and the 24 character traits that they measure:

• Wisdom: creativity, curiosity, open-mindedness, love of learning, perspective
• Courage: bravery, persistence, honesty, zest
• Humanity: love, kindness, social intelligence
• Justice: teamwork, fairness, leadership
• Temperance: forgiveness, humility, prudence, self-regulation
• Transcendence: appreciation of beauty and excellence, gratitude, hope, humor, spirituality

Everyone likes a nice graphic, so here’s one that adds a short explanation (source .zip file):

Character strengths are the core personality traits that define your unique identity and make you feel authentic, alive and engaged in life. Your free Character Strengths Profile below lists your strengths from highest to lowest based on the positive qualities that are strongest in you! Research shows learning about your strengths and how to express them can make you happier, less stressed, more productive at work and better connected to others. Interested in exploring the best parts of yourself? Check out our personalized, in-depth Total 24 or Top 5 Reports and use your strengths to build your best life.

Out of my top 5 character strengths, two were from Temperance, two were from Wisdom, and one was from Courage. The self-assessment does require you to be honest about your weaknesses, even if it may not feel great to admit them. I didn’t pay for a premium report, but I printed out the results and hopefully can incorporate them better in my daily life.

This activity reminds me of the #1 Thing People Regret The Most On Their Deathbeds:

I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.