Character Strengths and Virtues: A Handbook and Classification QUOTES

1 " When the infants were between 6 and 9 months of age, caregivers in the experimental group were trained in sensitive responding. Then at 1 year of age, Strange Situation assessments were done. The effects of the intervention were dramatic. Compared with the control group, infants in the experimental group were almost three times as likely to show a secure pattern of attachment. Follow-up studies found that the effects of the intervention were enduring and were still evident more than 2 years later not only in child–caregiver relationships but also in child–peer interactions. "

― , Character Strengths and Virtues: A Handbook and Classification

2 " In sum, secure attachment at all ages depends on the sensitivity of attachment figures. The results of intervention studies with infants, parents, and couples provide compelling evidence that sensitivity is a skill that can be taught and learned, and that can transform troubled relationships into well-functioning, satisfying ones. "

― , Character Strengths and Virtues: A Handbook and Classification

3 " Knee-jerk disobedience and anticonformity are no more praiseworthy than the most mindless loyalty to a group. "

― , Character Strengths and Virtues: A Handbook and Classification

4 " Thayer (1986), for example, has shown numerous times that moderate exercise—such as a brisk 10-minute walk—tends to increase subjective energy and, to a lesser extent, decrease tension for up to 2 hours after the exercise has been completed. Eating a small sugar snack, on the other hand, is associated with significantly higher tension just 30 minutes after the snack has been eaten. And although energy increases and tiredness decreases initially after the snack, both then reverse directions later so that by 2 hours after the snack, energy has decreased and tiredness increased beyond what they were to begin with "

― , Character Strengths and Virtues: A Handbook and Classification

5 " If parents can instill self-control in their children, they can achieve a powerful and important effect that will benefit their offspring for years to come. Indulgent parenting and an excessive concern with maximizing children’s self-esteem may, however, be detrimental to self-control, producing instead a personality that is weak, narcissistic, and self-indulgent. "

― , Character Strengths and Virtues: A Handbook and Classification

6 " Forgiveness is associated with a variety of traits that are of value for personal and societal well-being. Forgiving people appear to be slightly lower in a variety of negative affects, including anger, anxiety, depression, and hostility. Forgivers also tend to endorse socially desirable attitudes and behavior, and self-ratings of the disposition to forgive correlate negatively with clinicians’ ratings of hostility and passive-aggressive behavior. "

― , Character Strengths and Virtues: A Handbook and Classification

7 " Clusters of items in the scale point to the following tendencies associated with social responsibility: greater concern for social and moral issues; disapproval of privilege and favor; emphasis on duties and self-discipline; greater conventionality; less rebelliousness; greater sense of trust and confidence in the world; greater poise, assurance, and personal security. "

― , Character Strengths and Virtues: A Handbook and Classification

8 " It is conceivable that the psychological and physical benefits of volunteering eventuate in longer life. Two recent studies found that among community-dwelling older adults, volunteering led to reduced risk of early death. "

― , Character Strengths and Virtues: A Handbook and Classification

9 " However, research with activists in the Civil Rights and antiwar movements of the 1950s and 1960s and of those who sheltered Holocaust survivors during World War II confirm that compassion, empathy, and social responsibility were core family values that motivated their actions. Once exercised in action, values of social responsibility and service to others may become integral to identity. "

― , Character Strengths and Virtues: A Handbook and Classification

10 " It does appear that involvement in organizations with a diverse membership and in groups that engage in acts of charity or community service boosts social trust. "

― , Character Strengths and Virtues: A Handbook and Classification

11 " Although acting inconsistently with one’s own implicit interests and developmental trends can sometimes pay off, the data suggest that those who ignore their deeper impulses, curiosities, and values typically experience sub-optimal outcomes. For example, the latter types tend not to be the ones who make a mark on history. "

― Christopher Peterson , , Character Strengths and Virtues: A Handbook and Classification

12 " ... Nix et al. (1999) showed in experimental studies that whereas task success can produce happiness, only success at autonomously motivated tasks maintained or enhanced vitality. Finally, in new research, Bernstein and Ryan (2001) argued that subjective vitality can be affected by contact with nature. "

― , Character Strengths and Virtues: A Handbook and Classification

13 " Ryan and Frederick (1997) showed that in a population suffering from debilitating pain, pain level per se did not detract from vitality. Instead, pain fright was negatively associated with vitality, as was attending treatment for external as opposed to internal reasons. Some of the factors that may influence one’s sense of vitality and contribute to its resilience are one’s feelings of personal causation, optimism, and perceptions of social support. "

― , Character Strengths and Virtues: A Handbook and Classification

14 " From C. R. Rogers’s (1961) perspective, the problems of inauthenticity arise not because a person hides his real emotional reactions from others (as may sometimes be appropriate) but because he hides them from himself. "

― , Character Strengths and Virtues: A Handbook and Classification

15 " We classify the positive traits that protect us from excess as strengths of temperance. What are the types of excess of special concern? Hatred—against which forgiveness and mercy protect us. Arrogance—against which humility and modesty protect us. Short-term pleasure with long-term costs—against which prudence protects us. And destabilizing emotional extremes of all sorts—against which self-regulation protects us. "

― , Character Strengths and Virtues: A Handbook and Classification

16 " Among a number of interesting findings, this work reveals that young people differ widely among themselves in whether they define drug use as primarily a moral or a prudential issue, with further variations according to age and drug type. Defining drug use as a prudential issue is not in itself associated with less use, because use is relatively strong among those who think of it in terms of personal autonomy. Drug use is typically less prevalent among those who think of it as a moral issue—as young people tend to do for harder drugs—and among those who consider it prudential and are concerned about its future personal consequences, the truly prudent. "

― , Character Strengths and Virtues: A Handbook and Classification

17 " Models of leader attributes that dominated in the early part of the 20th century emphasized leader traits. Several surveys and reviews of this literature identified a number of dispositional qualities that distinguished leaders from nonleaders, including intelligence, originality, dependability, initiative, desire to excel, sociability, adaptability, extroversion, and dominance. However, no single personal quality was strongly and consistently correlated with leadership. "

― , Character Strengths and Virtues: A Handbook and Classification

18 " Humble individuals will not willfully distort information in order to defend, repair, or verify their own image. For humble people, there should be no press toward self-importance and no burning need to see—or present—themselves as being better than they actually are. They should also not be particularly interested in dominating others in order to receive entitlements or to elevate their own status. On the other hand, humility should not lead people to take harsh or condemning approaches toward themselves, magnifying weaknesses and severely punishing failures while overlooking strengths and successes. "

― , Character Strengths and Virtues: A Handbook and Classification

19 " An aha experienced decades ago by one of us is relevant to this point. Halfway through a grueling clinical internship, CP [Christopher Peterson] complained to his supervisor, “No one [meaning the patients] ever says thank you for anything I try to do.” The response from the experienced psychiatrist stopped CP mid-whine: “If they [the patients] could say thank you, how many of them do you think would be in a psychiatric hospital? "

― , Character Strengths and Virtues: A Handbook and Classification

20 " Starrett (1996) argued that, because we inhabit a global community, our civic responsibilities transcend the borders of nation-states. "

― , Character Strengths and Virtues: A Handbook and Classification