Cross-sectional age differences in 24 character strengths: Five meta-analyses from early adolescence to late adulthood

ABSTRACT

The present study comprises five meta-analyses (47 samples with a total N of 1,098,748) that investigate cross-sectional age differences in the 24 character strengths entailed in the VIA model. It is expected that most strengths show age differences, especially higher levels throughout adulthood. Ten age groups from early adolescence (10–12 years) to late adulthood (65+ years) were compared for each strength using random-effects models. Overall, significant age differences were found for 23 of the 24 character strengths (all except perspective) across the lifespan, with 91% of the effects indicating higher levels of the character strengths with age. Effect sizes were mostly very small, in line with age differences found for other traits. Most age differences were found for creativity, curiosity, love of learning, zest, and self-regulation as well as in middle adulthood. These results provide an impetus for research and applications on the development of character strengths.

KEYWORDS:

• Character strengths
• meta-analysis
• age differences
• VIA model
• lifespan development
• interventions

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Moritz Meyer for conducting the literature search and abstract screening, Anja Lehmann for conducting the abstract screening, Christoph Kramm for his help in preparing the data and in conducting the analyses, Fabienne Müller and Kai Holthuizen for their help in preparing the tables, and Olenka Dworakowski for her help in preparing the figures and tables and in conducting the analyses. We would like to thank Robert E. McGrath, René T. Proyer, Claudia Harzer, Hadassah Littman-Ovadia, Marco Weber, Shiri Lavy, Marta Ferragut Ortiz-Tallo, and Angelika Güsewell for providing several unpublished data sets of age differences in character strengths. We would also like to thank Carolina M. Azañedo, Anne Berthold, Ingrid Brdar, Rhett Diessner, Wenjie Duan, Danilo Garcia, Polona Gradišek, Robin A. Hanks, Janice Niann Tsyr Lee, Sophie Leontopoulou, Young-Jin Lim, María Luisa Martínez-Martí, Nicholas Munro, Ana Paula Porto Noronha, Omar Saldaña, Andrea C. Samson, Anat Shoshani, Kamlesh Singh, Adam J. Vanhove, and Lisa Wagner for providing one unpublished dataset of age differences in the character strengths.

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here.

Notes

1. While we initially intended to include also studies that assessed only a subset of the 24 character strengths, we only had one such data set available (Diessner et al., 2008). To ensure the comparability of samples across the 24 character strengths, which was the focus of the present meta-analyses, we decided to exclude this dataset from the analysis.