Character strengths and academic achievement in undergraduate college students

Pages:76-83
Sabiha Alam Choudhury and Indranee P. Barooah (Department of Psychology, Gauhati University, Guwahati, Assam)

The present study aims to find the relationship between character strengths and academic achievement and thereby draw out the relevance of recognizing and utilizing character strengths for academic success of college students. Character strengths are the psychological ingredients for displaying human goodness and they serve as pathways for developing a life of greater virtue. While personality is the summary of our entire psychological makeup, character strengths are the positive components what is best in a person. The Value In Action (VIA) Classification is a widely used framework for helping individuals discover, explore, and use those qualities that are strongest in them their character strengths. The 24 VIA Character Strengths are universal across all aspects of life: work, school, family, friends, and community. The 24 character strengths fall under six broad virtues (wisdom, courage, humanity, justice, temperance and transcendence) and encompass the capacities of individuals for helping themselves and others. A fertile setting for studying character strengths is the educational institute. Experiences in an educational institute are widely regarded as providing numerous opportunities for students to develop a variety of psychological dimensions including values, competencies, attitudes, knowledge, beliefs, identity, self-concept, and personality traits. Taking this relevant aspect into consideration the present study examined character strengths in relation to the academic performance among undergraduate college students of Guwahati city. In this study two colleges in Guwahati city affiliated to Gauhati University, were selected wherein a sample of 120 undergraduate students (60 males and 60 females) were included in the investigation. It was found that out of the 24 character strengths, a few strengths had a positive relation with academic achievement and resulted in good performance.