VIA Institute on Character

The Science of Strengths.... The Practice of Well Being

The study of strengths started in the early 2000s, when scientists gathered to study character more scientifically. A total of 55 distinguished scientists joined the study over several years.

The result was the VIA Classification of Character Strengths and Virtues (Peterson & Seligman, 2004), a classification of positive traits in human beings. Since then, hundreds of peer-reviewed articles have been published across many cultures.

Once the VIA Classification was complete, a ground-breaking personal strengths test, the VIA Survey, was designed specifically to measure these 24 character strengths in individuals. Since then, over 25 million surveys have been taken around the world and VIA continues to fuel the advancements of character strengths science through research, personalized reports, books and more.