۱- Background

۲- Method

۳- Results

۴- Discussion

۵- Conclusion

References

Abstract

Introduction: Although typically considered a stable trait, character strengths may be subject to temporal changes. Whereas research has investigated these changes across adulthood, the pivotal period of adolescence remains relatively understudied.
Method: To identify potential developmental differences in character strengths, we conducted a cross-sectional exploratory analysis of 24 Character strengths, assessed by the VIA-Youth, across youth between ages 10 and 17 from four highly represented countries (N = 12,871).
Results: The general pattern was for older adolescents to generate lower scores in many traits compared to younger adolescents. When considering gender as a potential moderator, girls, on average, scored higher on most strengths, but also showed more consistently lower scores across ages.
Conclusion: Findings provide a nuanced understanding of developmental differences in character across adolescence in a large-scale study. We frame these findings in the context of recent work investigating how character strengths develop throughout adolescence and offer suggestions for future research and interventions.

Background

Almost as soon as a period of transition from childhood to adulthood was identified as a topic for inquiry, adolescence was labeled as a time of significant turmoil. A perspective first popularized in the early 20th Century, and echoed by analytic thinkers, identified adolescence as a period of “storm and stress” (Freud, 1969; Hall, 1904). Though empirical literature has refuted the hypothesis that adolescent angst is universal in Western society, research on adolescence continued to focus on explaining the challenges of the period (e.g., Arnett, 1999; Eccles et al., 1993). In recent years, however, researchers have taken on the complementary question of positive development in adolescence, a question often described in terms of character development (e.g., Lerner & Callina, 2014; Wang, Ferris, Hershberg, & Lerner, 2015). The purpose of the current study was to identify how positive development naturalistically manifests across adolescence through character strengths. We present an exploratory analysis of extensive multinational data spanning ages 10–۱۷ to identify potential trends in character development. Character is treated by psychologists as consisting of the positive and socially valued elements of personality (McGrath, HallSimmonds, & Goldberg, in press). That social value implicates character as the elements of personality with a moral component. Personality traits appear to develop in the long term in a manner consistent with the maturation principle of the neo-socioanalytic model of personality (Roberts & Nickel, 2017). That is, personality tends to evolve in socially desirable directions with greater social awareness and investment (Roberts & Wood, 2006). For example, adolescence sees increases in extraversion and openness and decreases in neuroticism between the ages of 12 and 18 (Pullmann, Raudsepp, & Allik, 2006).