The Relationships between Character Strengths and Subjective Wellbeing: Evidence from Greece under Lockdown during COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

COVID-19 was first identified in December 2019. As long as this type of coronavirus was new, the main way for governments to avoid the spread of the infection was enforced quarantine. Besides public health protection, quarantine can have a psychological impact on the residents, with main symptoms being angst, anxiety, depressive, and PTSD symptoms. As it has been found that character strengths can promote subjective wellbeing, the purpose of the study was to examine this relationship under the new situation of quarantine in the Greek population in adults who were in quarantine for at least two weeks. The total sample consisted of 354 participants who were aged 18–72-years-old. A total of 263 participants were women (74.3%), 91 were men (25.7%), and 94,6% of them were highly educated. The sample was a convenience sample. The tools used were PANAS) , PERMA) and finally VIA-114GR (). The data analysis was completed using SPSS software version 26.0 (IBM Corp. Released 2019. IBM SPSS Statistics for Windows, Version 26.0. Armonk, NY: IBM Corp) and EQS 6.1 (Multivariate Software Inc.: Encino, CA, USA, 2006). The results showed that love, curiosity, persistence, hope, and zest are strongly associated with subjective wellbeing, even in conditions such as quarantine, and can support specific aspects of it.

Stress, Anxiety and Depression Prevalence among Greek University Students during COVID-19 Pandemic: A Two-Year Survey

“…These findings were also in line with evidence from pre-pandemic studies [ 34 ]. A balanced social environment and resilience of character are essential for preserving the mental well-being during the home-confinement periods [ 47 ].…”

Impacts of the COVID-19 Pandemic upon Chinese Positive Traits

“…On one hand, the conceptualization of character strengths differs from the traditional personalities, that they are malleable by targeted training or after traumatic life events [ 11 ] and easier to change. On the other hand, as an emerging body of work has demonstrated the protective role of character strengths as a coping mechanism to buffer between the negative impacts of the pandemic and mental health [ 23 , 26 , 27 , 29 , 35 ], the observed changes in character strengths in our study might be temporary and reflect more of a situational reaction to hard times. In addition, despite suffering the negative impacts like health threats, stress and depress [ 3 ], exposure to traumatic events like the pandemic could also associate with positive outcomes [ 61 ].…”

“…Casali et al [ 28 ] converged the 24 character strengths into one factor and the results from a longitudinal study ( n = 254) showed character strengths had a direct effect on mental health during the second wave of the pandemic by comparing the first and the second wave of the pandemic in Italy. A study of people from Greece ( n = 354) also proved most of the 24 human strengths were “able to act” to maintain or enhance subjective well-being, especially love, curiosity, persistence, hope, and zest with a strong association with subjective well-being under quarantine [ 29 ]. Coincidentally, the longitudinal study [ 30 ] conducted for Spain ( n = 348) grouped the character strengths into five factors (i.e., fortitude, goodness, intellectual, interpersonal, and restraint) and discovered that all the factors positively correlated with life satisfaction and positive affect over a one-month period during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown.…”

“…This finding comes in line with the literature, according to which, the interpersonal virtue of people aged 45 plus was found to reach higher levels compared to the younger [ 59 ]. Researchers even argued that, except for the intellect virtue, all the other virtues get higher with age [ 29 ]. Moreover, our results extend those conclusions and provide further insights into the COVID-19 scenario.…”

“…Character strengths could moderate between COVID-19-related stress and well-being [ 23 , 26 , 27 ]. Longitudinal studies in Italy [ 28 ], Greece [ 29 ], and Spain [ 30 ] proved the protective role of character strengths to buffer the stress and anxiety from lockdown in quarantine during the pandemic and sustain mental health.…”