Content area
Full Text
Park, Peterson, and Seligman (in press) provide interesting evidence about character strength and satisfaction with life. We were not surprised at some of the main findings, to wit: Zest, curiosity, love, hope, and gratitude were all fairly strongly associated with satisfaction with life. Furthermore, the more intensely these characteristics were endorsed, the more life satisfaction was reported. As the authors suggest, these characteristics seem to be logically connected with satisfaction. For example, love frequently is associated with life satisfaction (Diener & Seligman, 2002), and qualities such as gratitude and hope may connect past and future well in the minds of respondents.
What is most remarkable about this evidence is the very meager relationship between modesty and humility and life satisfaction. Looking at the sample, which was found on the Internet and which was made up of a very large number of adults at midlife, it is difficult to understand why so many people at this point in their lives would not endorse modesty and humility as essential to life satisfaction. The VIA definition of modesty and humility (e.g., "not regarding oneself as more special than one is) also strikes us as true to these concepts. In addition, the data show that related concepts such as perspective/wisdom are much more strongly related to life satisfaction. Perhaps the ideas of humility and modesty simply are not well appreciated in our culture? Self-esteem enhancement movements often eschew humility, and there is evidence that elevated self-esteem may be associated with displaced aggression (Bushman & Baumeister, 1998). More generally, there may be a rhetoric of the "good life" that puts little emphasis on the ideas of people such as Mahatma Gandhi, whose life and work were dedicated to great accomplishment within the framework of extraordinary modesty, humility, and sacrifice. Gandhi said, "For a kindly greeting bow thou down with zeal. . . and return with gladness good for evil done." Gandhi's life was highly influential in the work of Martin Luther King, Jr., who said, "Gandhi was inevitable. If humanity is to progress,...