Psychology Today: Change These 3 Beliefs to Strengthen Your Character

Psychology Today: Change These 3 Beliefs to Strengthen Your Character

The strength of your character may have roots in your beliefs about the world.

“A new study published in The Journal of Positive Psychology shows that having a positive ‘primal’ worldview, i.e., viewing the world as a safe, enticing, and purposeful place, has a strong link with character strengths like hope, gratitude, and curiosity. Recent theories have hypothesized that primal world beliefs are catalysts of personality differences and development — and that ‘primals’ can help us understand why humans differ in their attitudes, emotional dispositions, and typical behaviors,” explains psychologist Alexander Stahlmann of the University of Zurich.

Stahlmann contends that primal world beliefs are organized in a hierarchy based on their level of abstraction. The most abstract or general primal is the belief in a good (vs. bad) world. Secondary primals that feed into the primary category include believing that the world is a:

1. A safe (vs. dangerous) place,

2. An enticing (vs. dull) place, and

3. An alive (vs. mechanistic) place.

The researchers found a strong connection between positive primals and the following character strengths:

• Hope

• Spirituality

• Zest

• Gratitude

• Curiosity

• Leadership

According to the researchers, these results have the potential to make believing in a good world a prerequisite for developing character strengths. In other words, becoming more hopeful, enthusiastic, and appreciative might hinge on seeing the world as a beautiful, interesting, and safe place.

For anyone who wants to change their worldview in a positive way, Stahlmann shares the following suggestion:

Everybody can see some degree of beauty in the world, but some may believe that this beauty is confined to treasured places or memories,” he says. Developing positive primals means gradually extending confined beliefs to the whole world. This development may be achieved through anything that helps people realize that beauty is all around them and always has been there, no matter the historical period or what the future may hold.”

Read the full article here!

Reflection: Do you agree that having a positive worldview strengthens your character? Why/why not and if so, in what way?

#Primals #Beliefs #Character #Worldview