What Are the Opportunities for Growing in Character and Virtue?

Simple, easy-to-use interventions have been developed to increase gratitude in life. The original intervention (Emmons & McCullough, 2003) consisted of reflecting upon five things one was grateful for each week for ten consecutive weeks. A simple approach is sharing three grateful things aloud with a spouse or friend — once or three times a week — to develop the habit.

Acts of kindness and helping others increase the well-being of those receiving help — but studies also show they increase the giver's own sense of well-being and character development. Evidence further shows that acts of kindness across a community encourage others to do similar acts, creating a ripple effect (Fowler & Christakis, 2010; Chancellor et al., 2018).

Research suggests that hope fixes a person's attention on the possibility of good in the future, especially in the face of difficulty. Hope empowers us to act — or to wait — to receive that good regardless of challenges or uncertainty. Intentional envisioning and planning for a "future that is not now" is proving to bring positive impacts on well-being.

Forgiving others for wrongs they have done to you is generally associated with better mental health, greater hope, and possibly better physical health (Wade et al., 2014; VanderWeele, 2018). Forgiveness — replacing ill-will with good-will toward the offender — is different from condoning or reconciling. One can forgive while still pursuing a just outcome.

Work and the decision to work involve joining others in contributing to meeting the needs and desires of human society. Participation in work has been shown, on average, to positively affect numerous health and well-being outcomes.

Aristotle argued that happiness is attained by action in accord with virtue. While the empirical study of virtues is relatively new (Petersen & Seligman, 2005), quantitative evidence now reveals that exercising virtues like respect, compassion, encouragement, and appreciation can increase overall well-being.