Character Strengths and Type: Exploration of Covariation

Ninety-eight adult volunteers participated in this exploratory study of potential links between psychological type as determined by the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator and signature strengths as identified by the Values in Action Inventory of Strengths. We examined participants’ types and signature strengths to test for covariation between specific signature strengths and individual type dichotomies or paired type combinations. We found significant covariations between 10 character strengths with single type dimensions namely, creativity (intuition), open-mindedness (thinking), love of learning (introversion), integrity (sensing and thinking), persistence (judging), vitality (extraversion), love (extraversion and feeling), fairness (sensing), and gratitude (extraversion). Love, integrity, and gratitude also covaried with multiple paired type combinations while curiosity covaried only with one paired type combination (introverted intuition).