Does it work?

In a study of about 500 participants, Martin Seligman and colleagues (2005) assessed the impact of various positive psychology interventions, including a character strengths activity, on emotional wellbeing. For one of the activities, participants were instructed to use one of their core character strengths in a new way each day for a week. Participants in the activity reported increased happiness and decreased symptoms of depression up to six months following the intervention(Seligman et al., 2005). Mollie McCullough(2015) studied this same intervention, but with a small group of elementary school teachers. Teachers participated in four, hour-long sessions over the course of 2 weeks in which they worked together with researchers to discover their core character strengths and develop plans for implementing those strengths in new ways at work. Teacher participants experienced increased happiness, work satisfaction, and decreased stress and burnout at post-intervention and a month later, although the degree of these effects varied per teacher (McCullough, 2015). 

Lavy and Littman-Ovadia (2017) surveyed 1,095 participants from various occupations, about a quarter of whom worked in education, to better understand the impact of strengths use at work on employee wellbeing. Participants completed multiple self-reported surveys evaluating their understanding and use of character strengths at work, job satisfaction, productivity, engagement, and organizational citizenship behavior (OCB). OCB involves contributions that go beyond job responsibilities in the workplace, such as helping coworkers, showing tolerance, and participating in organizational events(Lavy & Littman-Ovadia, 2017). Strengths use at work had a direct relationship to higher levels of work productivity, satisfaction and OCB. It was also suggested that gains in these domains by strengths use may also be mediated by levels of positive affect and engagement(Lavy & Littman-Ovadia, 2017).