Character Strengths and Positive Institutions: Effects on Psychological Wellness

The current study explored relationships among religiosity, forgiveness, perceived institutional support, and psychological wellness, using positive psychology and the ecological counseling approach as the theoretical framework. There were two hypotheses tested in the current study. The first hypothesis was that there would be differences between a public and religious-affiliated school on measures of character strength, perception of institution, and psychological wellness. The second hypothesis was that religiosity and forgiveness influenced psychological wellness with perceived institutional support as a mediating variable. The Transgression-Related Interpersonal Motivations Inventory (McCullough, Rachal, Sandage, Worthington, Brown, & Hight, 1998) was used to measure the tendency to avoid or seek revenge from a person who has harmed them. The Modified Brief Multidimensional Measure of Religiosity/Spirituality (Fetzer Institute, 1999) was used to measure participants' active involvement in religious beliefs and practices. A Positive Institution Inventory was created by the researcher to measure participants' perception of their institution to enable their character strengths. The Psychological Well-Being Scales (Ryff, 1995) were employed to collect participants' evaluation of their own psychological health, specifically in the following areas: autonomy, environmental mastery, personal growth, positive relations, purpose in life, and self acceptance.;The instruments were administered to 172 undergraduate students from two Midwestern universities, one public and the other religious-affiliated. Chi-square test results revealed significant gender and class disproportionality between the public and religious-affiliated schools. Therefore, a two-way between groups analysis of variance was conducted to explore the impact of gender and school (i.e. public vs. religious-affiliated) on levels of religiosity, forgiveness, positive institution, and wellness subscales. There were no significant interactions or main effects found significant. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to examine the relationship among predicting variables (forgiveness & religiosity) and the outcome variable (psychological wellness), with the mediator being positive institution. The results yielded a marginal fit for the hypothesized model. A modified version of the original model was tested, revealing a good fit. However, forgiveness was not found to have any impact on either perception of institutional support or psychological wellness. The findings from this study did not support the hypothesis that perceived institutional support mediated character strengths and psychological wellness. The limitations of this study, as well as recommendations for future research, are discussed.