The set of 24 strengths comes from the research of Dr. Martin Seligman at the University of Pennsylvania. And the late Dr. Chris Peterson at the University of Michigan. They found that these 24 character strengths, in their different combinations, help people flourish. And here's an exciting fact. These 24 strengths lead to flourishing across gender, class, race, culture, geography. Basically across all the things that divide us, we have these character strengths in common. Okay. So there are 24 character strengths. We all have these 24 strengths in different combinations that are unique to us, and that are important for us to flourish as individuals. Of the 24, this course focuses on the strengths that we believe have the greatest impact at school and are particularly predictive of positive life outcomes beyond. It's important to recognize that many of our character strengths can change over time. You may act gritty in one circumstance but not another. Or you may become more socially intelligent as you observe your community over time. That's why Dr. Peterson and Dr. Seligman use the term character strength and not character trait. Trait too often makes us think about things like color of your eyes or your height, something fixed. A strength though, or a character skill, is something you can work on and hone. Strengths or skills, not traits, please. Let's talk character strength with Dr. Marty Seligman. What's character strength? >> Well, the first question is, what's character. So, character in Chris Peterson and my hands was the set of strengths that contributed to well-being that every parent wanted for every child. That every religion, every politics across time has agreed on. So, those are those are the strengths of character. >> How did you land on the 24 that are in character strengths in it for you? >> Well it took about three years looking at a hundred or so strengths and whittling it down to 24 that were universal, that every parent wanted. That when if you displayed them, it didn't diminish me, so we had 11 criteria of character strengths, and it had to fulfill all 11. And we whittled it down to 24 that way. >> Can character strengths be taught? >> I think some can and some can't. So I spent a lot of my life teaching optimism and it's clear you can increase that. I've been very interested, can you increase integrity or honesty or authenticity? And I really don't know if you can. Can you increase humor? Yeah, probably. Can you increase zest? Well I don't know. So I think if we take all the character strengths that interest us in school, some are very changeable. Optimism being a great example. >> What is optimism and why are the ripples so tremendous? >> Well, I think human beings are creatures of the future and we're not prisoners of the past. The question is how do we project ourselves into the future? And I think the answer is to, the extent we project into the future with hope, the belief that more good things will occur, that you can do something about them, and they will pervade your life and fewer bad things will occur. You can change bad things and when bad things happen to you they're local. That's to view your future with hope. And the mechanism of optimism when we view our future with hope and optimism is we try harder. Conversely, the mechanism of pessimism is fatalism, giving up, learned helplessness. So optimism is the lever by which we project ourselves into a positive future. >> And the ripples of optimism result from that belief? >> Well the ripples of optimism, there are several. First, you get less depressed when bad events occur. You're more resilient. Secondly, your physical health is better. Third, people like you better. And fourth, because you try harder, you achieve more. So the ripples of optimism are not just feeling good, it's doing better in the world.
