CHARACTER AS DESTINY THE ROLE OF VALUES

Assess your Strengths

• Values in Action: A survey of 24 (fairly) universal strengths.

• Having good character means:– You understand your own strengths– You consistently try to express and expand them

www.authentichappiness.org – take the VIA survey and report on what you learn in your journal.

Work on Strengths or Weaknesses?

• Jon Haidt found that work on strengths gave significant increases in happiness.

• But a similar focus on improving weaknesses also gives more happiness.

• Take your pick.

Character and Happiness

• In experiments, people who concentrate on expressing their own (VIA) strengths every day find their happiness rising.

• How can you express yours?

Flow – Using our Talents Effortlessly

• White belt, brown belt, black belt• Proposed by: Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi• Includes a consuming focus on an activity and a

loss of interest in the self.• Time passes unaware, hunger and fatigue are

not noticed, surrounding are absent.• The person is fully immersed in what he or she

is doing, characterized by a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and success in the process of the activity.

Assignment

• When have you felt yourself in a state of flow?

• When have you seen others in flow?

• Do you think you can recreate it?

• Respond in your diary.

Looking at Values

• Jonathan Haidt, U. Virginia: Five classes of virtues, two generally agreed on and three that are predominantly “conservative”– Social justice (HARM): treat all fairly, be just– Care (RECIPROCITY): treat all with compassion

& consideration

• These are generally agreed upon by all.

Haidt’s Five Universal Values

• Harm avoidance: care for others, esp. weaker

• Reciprocity: altruism based on a “golden rule” being fair and just.

• Loyalty to Ingroup: sacrifice, heroism, patriotism,

• Acknowledging Hierarchy: reverence, honor to elders, experts, parents.

• Purity: food, sex, clothing rules, innate feelings of disgust about boundary violations.

Care connects us with those who are weaker or need our help to flourish or even survive. Positive expression is compassion and kindness; we feel disgust for the opposite of cruelty and aggression.

Justice: Assuring that justice and fairness will be there for us when we need it.

Ingroup loyalty: sacrifice for the good of the larger group, especially in time of conflict.

War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.

John Stuart Mill (1806 - 1873)

Hierarchy: respect, awe, reverence, admiration to those in authority or having wisdom or admirable leadership qualities.

Purity: rules about sexuality, pure and impure foods, & religious rules of conduct.

1

2

3

4

5

6

Harm Reciprocity Ingroup H ierarchy Purity

Extremely Liberal Extremely Conservative

Re

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to

Mo

ral D

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Figure 1. Moral relevance by foundation for extreme liberals and conservatives. 1=not relevant at all, 6=always relevant.

When morality opposes justice: Conservatives have moral intuitions that liberals may not recognize Jonathan Haidt and Jesse Graham, 2006

The Strange Story of Politics and Happiness

Following slides from

http://pewresearch.org/pubs/301/are-we-happy-yet

Are Conservatives Happier?

• Pew Research Center, Feb. 2006:– Conservatives are

happier than liberals– Religious people happier

than irreligious– Married people happier

than single– Most of us are happy

http://pewresearch.org/pubs/301/are-we-happy-yet

Being conservative and Republican accounts for more happiness; conservative Democrats were not as happy as the conservative Republicans.

In this and other surveys, frequent church attendance is linked to greater happiness.

Respond: Why would this be? What factors can help explain these findings?

Study and go to school . . .

Could be explained by work and social status satisfaction.

Challenge:

• Why would religion and political views correlate with happiness?

• How can you honor your views and increase you own happiness?

• Write response.