A Study Of Character Strengths Among Senior Primary Students And The Relationship Between Character Strengths And Life Satisfaction For Them

At the turn of the century, along with the trend of positive psychology, study focus on the orientation of human positive strengths become the new trend of psychology. Character strengths become the core of positive psychology for its study on positive strengths existing in human heart and exploration on the inner reason of human positive behavior. Character advantages is based on the positive psychology thought, focus on the positive aspects of person psychology, and is a group of positive personality traits that reflected from the individual cognition, emotion and actions. Positive psychologists think that character strengths can adjust the human cognitive style and cognitive perspective, and bring positive significance to events; it is the basis of individual behavior and virtue, also is a potential and constructive power; it is the "fixed power" to counter the difficulties.To cultivate primary students character strengths is the mission and goal of education. Therefore, this research is going to explore character strengths of senior primary students and the relationship between their character strengths and life satisfaction. This research selected847senior primary students from grade5and6measured by revised Values in Action Inventory of Strengths-Youth which from Peterson and life satisfaction scale which created by professor Denier from the university of Illinois.the results show that:(1) The most outstanding character strengths in senior primary students is fairness, gratitude, appreciation, forgiveness and hope; and leadership, insight, creativeness, prudence and modest is their scarcest character strength.(2) Girls scored higher than that of boys in gratitude, hope and fairness. There are remarkable gender differences in senior primary students’significant strengths.(3) The number of extracurricular class attention in senior primary students can influence their rank of character strengths. The outstanding character strengths of students who don’t take part in after-school classe is gratitude. With the number of attending after-school class increased, the rank of gratitude is moving down until out of outstanding character strengths.(4) There is difference between urban and rural senior primary students in their significant character strengths. The top most character strength of rural senior primary students is forgiveness, and the topmost of urban senior primary students is fairness.(5) There is a positive correlation between senior primary students’character strengths and their life satisfaction, love, gratitude, prudence, leadership and perspective have the closest relationship with life satisfaction.(6) Senior primary students’character strengths can predict their life satisfaction. Love, leadership and prudence can predict the overall samples’life satisfaction, and love and leadership can be significant prediction.