Международный журнал неотложной психической помощи и устойчивости человека

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Building Resilience : The Role of Character Strengths in the Selection and Education of Military Leaders

Ole Boe

Around the year 2000, a new trend emerged within psychology. This new trend was the positive psychology paradigm, and since its birth, it has grown a lot as a new psychology paradigm (Weiten, 2007). Embedded within the positive psychology paradigm one will find a lot of research on different character strengths. In 2004, a character strength classification system was developed. The result was the book ‘Character Strengths and Virtues‘. This book classifies 24 specific character strengths sorted under six virtues (Peterson & Seligman, 2004). The six virtues are respectively wisdom and knowledge, courage, humanity, justice, temperance, and transcendence. Under each virtue, one will find the character strengths that relates to the specific virtue. For instance, the virtue courage entails emotional strengths that involve the exercise of will to accomplish goals in the face of opposition, external or internal. Included in this virtue are the character strengths bravery [valor], persistence [perseverance, industriousness], integrity [authenticity, honesty] and vitality [zest, enthusiasm, vigor, energy]. Courage is a fundamental aspect for every military officer when it comes to leading others in dangerous contexts (Matthews, 2014). A lot of research into Peterson and Seligman´s character strength classification system has been conducted over the past ten years (see Niemiec, 2013, for an overview of the research).