Research On The Structure Of Positive Characters Among College Students

Positive character is one of the core research fields of positive psychology. The researchon the structure of positive characters as the base of the research on positive characters, makespositive characters scale development and application research possible. In this research, theresearch on the structure of positive characters was chosen to be the topic. We chose collegestudents as the research object, trying to explore the structure of college students’ positivecharacters, by the means of the combination of questionnaire survey and experiment.In the first study, positive characters scale (VIA-IS) developed by Seligman and Petersonwas selected as the tool. We used the way of factor analysis for data analysis, adopting3different methods of determining the number of factors, to explore the explicit structure ofcollege students’ positive characters, and to understand the development situation of them.Study2adopted the method of vocabulary to explore the implicit concept and thepsychological structure of positive characters. The vocabulary material was from characterstrengths and virtues classification (VIA-CS)(Peterson&Seligman,2004), the Chinese BigSeven personality model, and Schwartz’s value model, based on which the questionnaire wasprepared to study the implicit structure of college students’ positive characters, revealing thestructure and meaning of positive characters with Chinese cultural characteristics morecomprehensively and deeply.The third research used Implicit Association Test (IAT), to study the implicit attitude ofcollege students to different positive psychological qualities. As the supplements anddeepening of study2, study3tested and revised the structure of college students’ positivecharacters, and discussed the other related issues at the same time.Taken together, the main results and conclusions of our research are listed below:(1)The explicit structure of college students’ positive characters contains threedimensions: interpersonal relationship, wisdom, work style. Several qualities are included inall dimensions.(2)The development condition of college students’ positive characters is overall favorable.The qualities of college students related to interpersonal relationship and a positive mental attitude are better, but they are lack of the qualities related to learning, creating, hard workingand making progress.(3)The implicit attitude of college students to positive characters has significant IATeffect. The college students hold a positive attitude to the positive qualities, and hold anegative attitude to the negative qualities.(4)There exists significant gender differences in the implicit attitude of college studentsto positive characters: The girls’IAT effect value is more significant, that is, girls associate thepositive characters with good words (meanwhile associate the negative psychological qualitywith bad words) more closely. Girls more recognize positive characters, and more denynegative psychological quality. There is no significant influence in subject to IAT effect. TheIAT effect values of participants in arts and science have no significant differences, and thereis no significant difference in the interaction between gender and subject.(5)The IAT effect for fifty positive psychological qualities is different. Generally, theitems of interpersonal relationship and extroversion score higher, and the items of wisdom andwork style dimensions score lower. That is to say, the traits related to interpersonalrelationship and character get more recognition and attention than the outstanding ability fromcollege students.(6)The implicit structure of college students’ positive characters is divided into fourdimensions: work style, interpersonal relationship, extroversion, and wisdom. Fourdimensions all include some positive psychological qualities, and we get the central traits ofeach dimension.