Possession and Applicability of Signature Character Strengths: What Is Essential for Well-Being, Work Engagement, and Burnout?

Abstract

Signature character strengths can foster health-related outcomes in work and private life, thus being particularly important for endangered occupational groups like physicians. However, situational circumstances need to allow character strengths demonstration (applicability) first to enable their application. Therefore, this study addresses the role of (1) applicability of signature character strengths in work and private life beyond their possession and (2) relationships with well-being, work engagement, and burnout dimensions (emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and reduced personal accomplishment). Hospital physicians (N = 274) completed an online survey examining their signature character strengths and applicability, well-being, work engagement, and burnout dimensions. The top-five individual signature character strengths were fairness, honesty, judgment, kindness, and love. Hierarchical multiple linear regressions revealed that the possession as well as the applicability of signature character strengths was important in work and private life, but to different degrees. Possessing fairness, honesty, or kindness indicated significant positive relations with subjective well-being, whereas judgment and kindness seemed to negatively interact with reduced personal accomplishment. Hospital physicians' applicability of fairness, honesty, judgment, and love was particularly essential for their psychological well-being and work engagement, whereas the applicability of fairness (reduced personal accomplishment) and judgment (emotional exhaustion, depersonalization) at work interacted negatively with the respective outcomes. Therefore, creating awareness for individual signature character strengths as well as providing applicability in hospitals and private life could be a promising approach to improve physicians' well-being and consequently patient care as well as the performance of the health-care system in general.

Development of Cynicism in Medical Students: Exploring the Role of Signature Character Strengths and Well-Being

“…Our findings revealed that both groups generally rated the applicability of signature character strengths in private life higher than during studies. Huber et al (2019) reported similar results for a sample of physicians. These findings could be explained by the fact that character strengths and their application are not mentioned or trained in the medical curriculum per se.…”

“…Hence, the "Applicability of Character Strengths Rating Scale" ACS-RS (Harzer and Ruch, 2013) was developed to measure the individually perceived influence of four conditions: two external ones: (I) normative demands and (II) appropriateness of strength-related behavior in given situations; two internal ones: (III) perceived presence of factors that may facilitate or hamper strength-related behavior and (IV) intrinsic motivation to show certain behavior Ruch, 2012, 2013). Recently conducted cross-sectional studies with samples of medical students and physicians emphasized the important role of one's applicable signature character strengths (applicability of signature character strengths in the context of study and work = ASCS-S/-W; and private life = ASCS-P) to foster mental health, well-being, burnout and work-engagement (Hausler et al, 2017a;Huber et al, 2019;Strecker et al, 2019). Furthermore, Höge et al (2019) could demonstrate with a sample of hospital physicians that the ASCS-W at the first measurement (T1) had an impact on the perception of the socio-moral climate of the medical department at the second measurement (T2) and reversed effects of the socio-moral climate at T1 on the ASCS at work at T2.…”

Character Strengths – Stability, Change, and Relationships with Well-Being Changes

“…Further, while the current study focused on "possessing" character strengths, most intervention studies aim at increasing the application of strengths (e.g., Seligman et al, 2005). Since, the application and the possession of character strengths have been reported to be relevant for well-being (Huber et al, 2018), future studies might examine the effects of both on longitudinal changes in well-being.…”

Identifying thriving Workplaces in Hospitals: Work Characteristics and the Applicability of Character Strengths at Work

“…These strengths (groups) may correspond, more or less, to specific work characteristics: e.g., strengths of mind to cognitive demands or interpersonal strengths to social support. Furthermore, the relations to various outcomes are potentially supposed to vary (e.g., Huber et al 2018 in this special issue), also considering, for example, the so called Bhappiness strengths( e.g., Littman-Ovadia et al 2017;Hausler et al 2017b).…”