What Are the Happiness Strengths?

The definition of the “happiness strengths” used here draws on Ryan Niemiec and Robert McGrath’s presentation in The Power of Character Strengths (2019). The group comprises hope, zest, gratitude, curiosity, and love: five character strengths repeatedly associated with life satisfaction and other aspects of well-being. They describe capacities that can appear in how people think, feel, and act, rather than five moods they must maintain. The label identifies a research grouping within the VIA classification of 24 strengths. Hope and gratitude belong to transcendence, zest to courage, curiosity to wisdom, and love to humanity. The group therefore crosses four virtues rather than constituting a separate virtue of happiness.

This distinction makes the idea useful without turning it into a personality prescription. You may recognise one of these strengths immediately and find another less familiar. Neither experience tells you whether happiness is available to you. The practical question is how a capacity can be expressed in a situation that matters. A quiet act of curiosity or a realistic hopeful step can be meaningful even when the day itself is difficult.

Why These Five Became a Research Group

Park, Peterson, and Seligman's foundational 2004 study identified hope, zest, gratitude, love, and curiosity as consistently associated with life satisfaction. Later work investigated the pattern across settings and different ways of measuring well-being. A 2019 meta-analysis by Ovejero Bruna and colleagues examined the relationship between VIA strengths and life satisfaction while also considering measurement reliability. This accumulating evidence, rather than a decision that these are the five most admirable qualities, explains the group's prominence.

A larger synthesis by Casali and Feraco (2025) included 130 studies and 275,007 participants. Hope and zest showed the strongest overall associations with well-being, followed by gratitude, love, and curiosity. The pattern supports the happiness-strengths grouping, but the analysis pooled associations rather than testing a five-strength training package. It also found stronger relationships with well-being than with common mental-health outcomes. These are different research questions and should remain distinct when translating the findings into practice.

Happiness Includes More Than Feeling Cheerful

A pleasant moment, satisfaction with your life, and a sense of meaning are related experiences, but they are not interchangeable. Someone can feel tired after meaningful work while remaining satisfied with their direction. Another person can enjoy an entertaining evening while feeling uncertain about life more broadly. Research therefore needs to specify whether it measured positive emotion, life satisfaction, engagement, or another outcome. The word happiness alone can conceal these differences.

VIA's article Research-Backed Strategies to Help You Flourish introduces PERMA: positive emotions, engagement, relationships, meaning, and accomplishment. This provides a broader way to ask what a strength might support. An original practice question could be: did using curiosity make this activity more engaging, or did it simply make it more entertaining? Neither answer needs to be forced. The value of the framework is that it helps a person notice the kind of benefit they are actually seeking.

What Intervention Studies Have Tested

Proyer, Ruch, and Buschor's 2013 study compared strengths programmes in 178 adults. The group trained in strengths strongly associated with life satisfaction showed improvement relative to a control group. Crucially, its selected strengths were curiosity, gratitude, hope, humor, and zest: humor was included instead of love. Both intervention groups also reported subjective well-being gains above a waiting-list group. This is relevant experimental evidence, but it is not an exact test of the familiar five happiness strengths.

A more direct test came from Atanasova and colleagues, published online in 2024 and in a 2025 journal issue. Fifty-five career starters were randomly assigned to a three-week online programme using curiosity, gratitude, hope, love, and zest, or to a waiting-list group. The programme improved career decision-making self-efficacy, especially self-appraisal and problem-solving. This is encouraging evidence for a defined career outcome. It should not be presented as proof of an equivalent increase in happiness, life satisfaction, or every other outcome.

What Newer Reviews Add

A 2025 synthesis by Cebolla and colleagues brought together 162 randomised trials involving 33,032 participants across 15 strengths. Evidence for developing strengths and well-being was uneven, with better support for some strengths, including gratitude and hope. The review concerned strengths interventions broadly rather than a single happiness-strengths programme. Its practical message is to examine what was actually trained and measured before calling an exercise evidence-based.

A stricter 2026 meta-analysis by Cebolla and colleagues examined 114 trials with 20,853 participants and five trainable constructs. Gratitude interventions showed evidence linking development of the targeted strength with well-being. Hope interventions did not significantly increase measured hope, despite improvements in well-being. Different inclusion criteria and questions help explain why reviews can produce different conclusions. A highly correlated strength is not automatically the easiest to develop, and a helpful exercise does not by itself establish its mechanism.

Happiness Strengths and Signature Strengths Are Different

Happiness strengths are a named set shared across the research literature. Signature strengths describe qualities that are especially characteristic of a particular person; they may or may not include the happiness strengths. VIA's guidance on using signature strengths in new ways starts with a personally central strength and explores fresh expressions of it. Its frequently discussed week of practice should not be relabelled as a validated week-long programme for this specific five-strength group.

Schutte and Malouff's 2019 meta-analysis found benefits of signature-strengths interventions for happiness or positive affect and life satisfaction. That supports the broader practice of working with strengths, while remaining a different evidence base. Someone whose signature strength is love of learning could use it to explore curiosity, for example. This is an original practical suggestion, not a finding that one particular combination works best. The choice should fit the person, the intended outcome, and a manageable opportunity to practise.

Applications in Work and Career Decisions

In a study of 5,487 workers, Casali and Feraco (2024) examined strengths, life satisfaction, and PERMA+4 dimensions. The happiness strengths featured in direct and indirect statistical relationships with life satisfaction, alongside a general character factor. The study helps connect strengths with a wider picture of functioning at work. Because the data were observational, its models suggest possible pathways rather than proving that changing a strength causes a particular workplace outcome.

This offers a useful starting point for practical questions. What would curiosity look like while considering a new role? How could hope be expressed through a realistic next step rather than a confident prediction? What valued aspect of work might gratitude help someone notice without overlooking unfair conditions? These questions differ from telling a person to become more positive about an unsuitable job. A strength can inform a decision while practical information, constraints, and values remain part of it.

Five Ways to Make the Idea Concrete

The following examples are editorial suggestions inspired by strengths practice, not a tested five-part treatment. For hope, select a worthwhile personal goal, identify one feasible next action, and consider an alternative if that action becomes unavailable. For zest, choose a manageable activity in which you can participate with attention and energy, adapted to your health and circumstances. The aim is purposeful expression rather than forcing excitement or comparing your energy with someone else's.

For gratitude, notice one specific thing you value and describe why it matters, without requiring yourself to feel grateful for suffering. For curiosity, explore a question you would genuinely like to understand, through reading, observation, or trying something unfamiliar. For love, give attentive care within a valued relationship and notice opportunities to receive care as well. These practices can be individual and integrated into ordinary life. They do not require a group course, public disclosure, or an outgoing personality.

Design Experiences Around Strengths

VIA's Be More with Less suggests arranging experiences that allow strengths to be used. Its practical value here is an invitation to design an activity around a capacity rather than only naming that capacity. A local walk, for example, could become an exploration of an unfamiliar detail rather than a task to complete. A quiet evening might include attentive time with someone important. These examples illustrate options rather than a claim that every experience will produce happiness.

Two people could choose the same activity and use quite different strengths. One might explore through curiosity, while another notices what they appreciate through gratitude. This makes it helpful to name the intended strength before beginning and describe the actual behaviour afterward. Did you ask a new question, notice something specific, or act on a goal? Concrete descriptions make reflection more useful than a general verdict that the day was successful or unsuccessful.

Notice Change Without Turning Happiness into a Test

Start with a small practice that fits your life and decide when to review it. Note what you did, which strength it expressed, and what you noticed about interest, connection, energy, or satisfaction. A brief record can reveal whether an exercise is feasible and whether you want to continue it. It is not a controlled experiment and cannot isolate the practice from other changes in your life. Its purpose is to help you make a thoughtful next choice.

The happiness label should leave room for difficult feelings and changing circumstances. Hope can coexist with uncertainty, gratitude with grief, and love with a need for boundaries. If an exercise feels mechanical, consider changing its form rather than interpreting the experience as a character deficit. Equally, a low position in a VIA profile is a relative ranking, not evidence that a capacity is absent. The aim is meaningful use, not forcing five strengths into the top of a report.

A Related Question: Could They Help with Loneliness?

Researcher Bana Biri's 2023 master's dissertation at the University of East London examined the happiness strengths and loneliness among 44 immigrants in Ontario. Higher combined scores were associated with less loneliness, and the group was a significant statistical predictor in the study's regression analysis. This was an observational dissertation, not a trial of strength development. The findings therefore motivate a further question: could training people to activate these strengths reduce loneliness?

That question could be examined through individual practices, comparison conditions, and measurements before training, after it, and at follow-up. A study would need to assess both the targeted strengths and loneliness, rather than assume that feeling better proves the intended capacity changed. The result might differ by practice, person, or context. This is one reason a broad review of happiness strengths should include unanswered questions as well as encouraging findings.

Read about the character strengths and loneliness study

Reading the Evidence as a Whole

The clearest overall pattern is the recurring association of these five strengths with well-being; the intervention evidence is more varied and depends on the outcome and programme. Research on all strengths, studies of the five as a group, and work on a single strength each contribute something different. For a reader, the most useful next step is to choose a concrete application while retaining that distinction. For a practitioner, it is to match claims to the specific evidence supporting them.

This article is a narrative review of foundational studies, major syntheses, selected interventions, and relevant VIA resources available in October 2026. It is not an exhaustive systematic review of every study on hope, gratitude, love, curiosity, and zest. The references include routes into the wider literature, including the 2025 meta-analysis and its published list of included studies. They allow readers to explore populations, measures, and findings beyond the examples discussed here.

References and VIA Reading

• Aluise, K. (n.d.). Be more with less. VIA Institute on Character. https://www.viacharacter.org/topics/articles/be-more-with-less
• Atanasova, N., van Woerkom, M., Spanouli, A., Botke, J., & van Roekel, E. (2025). The effects of a happiness strengths intervention on career decision-making self-efficacy among career starters. The Career Development Quarterly, 73(1), 16–31. (First published online in 2024.) https://doi.org/10.1002/cdq.12369
• Biri, B. (2023). Happiness character strengths (character strengths subset) and their relation to loneliness among immigrants in Ontario, Canada [Master’s dissertation, University of East London].
• Casali, N., & Feraco, T. (2024). Which character strengths may build organizational well-being? Insights from an international sample of workers. PLOS ONE, 19(10), e0312934. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0312934
• Casali, N., & Feraco, T. (2025). Bridges over troubled water: A meta-analysis of the associations of character strengths with well-being and common mental health disorders. European Journal of Personality. https://doi.org/10.1177/08902070251366765
• Cebolla, A., Navarro-Siurana, J., Galante, J., Sarrión, P., Vidal, J., Fernández-Castilla, B., Lecuona, O., Vázquez, C., & Baños, R. M. (2025). A synthesis of RCTs on psychological interventions fostering strengths and virtues: Evidence from 21 systematic reviews. Applied Psychology: Health and Well-Being, 17(4), e70069. https://doi.org/10.1111/aphw.70069
• Cebolla, A., Fernández-Castilla, B., Lecuona, O., Navarro-Siurana, J., Galante, J., Sarrión, P., Vidal, J., Baños, R. M., & Vázquez, C. (2026). Efficacy of cultivating human strengths and virtues on well-being: A one-stage meta-analytic structural equation modeling approach. Clinical Psychology Review, 124, 102692. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cpr.2026.102692
• Niemiec, R. M. (n.d.). How to reach happiness by using your character strengths. VIA Institute on Character. https://www.viacharacter.org/topics/articles/use-your-strengths-to-boost-happiness
• Niemiec, R. M. (n.d.). Research-backed strategies to help you flourish. VIA Institute on Character. https://www.viacharacter.org/topics/articles/research-backed-strategies-to-help-you-flourish
• Niemiec, R. M., & McGrath, R. E. (2019). The power of character strengths: Appreciate and ignite your positive personality. VIA Institute on Character.
• Ovejero Bruna, M., Brabete, A. C., & Alvarado Izquierdo, J. M. (2019). Reliability generalization as a seal of quality of substantive meta-analyses: The case of the VIA Inventory of Strengths (VIA-IS) and their relationships to life satisfaction. Psychological Reports. https://doi.org/10.1177/0033294118779198
• Park, N., Peterson, C., & Seligman, M. E. P. (2004). Strengths of character and well-being. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 23(5), 603–619. https://doi.org/10.1521/jscp.23.5.603.50748
• Proyer, R. T., Ruch, W., & Buschor, C. (2013). Testing strengths-based interventions: A preliminary study on the effectiveness of a program targeting curiosity, gratitude, hope, humor, and zest for enhancing life satisfaction. Journal of Happiness Studies, 14, 275–292. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10902-012-9331-9
• Schutte, N. S., & Malouff, J. M. (2019). The impact of signature character strengths interventions: A meta-analysis. Journal of Happiness Studies, 20, 1179–1196. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10902-018-9990-2
• VIA Institute on Character. (n.d.). Character strengths and well-being/happiness. https://www.viacharacter.org/research/findings/character-strengths-and--well-being-happiness

Full reference list of studies included in Casali & Feraco’s 2025 meta-analysis

Original character strengths symbols belong to the VIA Institute on Character. Image layout and virtue colours were prepared for this article.