Abstract: Peterson, Seligman, and their colleagues proposed a system of virtues as a major personal resource for enhancing well-being. The system of virtues consists of 6 core virtues （wisdom/knowledge, courage, humanity, justice, temperance, and transcendence） and 24 character strengths. Later studies have consistently indicated that virtues and their corresponding character strengths are negatively related to psychological symptoms. Nevertheless, current studies have a strong bias toward examining the relationship between strengths and psychological outcomes. The limited research on virtues may be partly attributed to several issues related to virtue assessment or virtue structure. The cultural invariance of the virtue classification proposed by Peterson et al has recently been examined in different cultures other than the United States; various structures of virtues were obtained. The first issue is the structure of the 2-tier system （virtues vs. character strengths）; and the second is the culture-related understanding of items of different character strengths and virtues. The Combined Etic-Emic Approach was recommended in these multicultural studies, which entails the development process of cross-cultural measurement for ensuring the conceptual equivalence, metric equivalence, functional equivalence, and linguistic equivalence. Generally, it requires identifying the universal items （ie, etic items） first, and then locally relevant items （ie, emic items） are added to the established etic instrument to form a combined and new instrument. Duan, Ho, and their colleagues adopted this approach to reduce the culturally inappropriate items and developed a 96-item Chinese Virtues Questionnaire to measure 3 virtues among the Chinese. Confirmatory factor analysis and psychometric evaluation suggested 3 well-established and culturally meaningful virtues, namely, relationship, vitality, and conscientiousness. Subsequent studies implied the contributions of the three virtues to mental health. Future directions were also discussed.

Key words: Virtues, Character Strengths, Values In Action Classification, Chinese Virtues Questionnaire, Positive Psychology

摘要： 性格优势和美德是源于“价值实践分类体系”同一架构中不同层次的概念。过去十年的研究表明性格优势对个体身心健康和幸福感有积极贡献。但目前该领域绝大多数研究着眼于性格优势，而忽略了该体系中更普遍、更核心的美德。美德的结构差异性可能阻碍了相关研究的进行和比较。本文认为“兼顾文化共通性与文化特殊性方法”可能是解决途径之一，并引用已有研究进行佐证，发现亲和力、生命力和意志力可能是一个具有普遍意义的美德结构。

关键词: 美德 性格优势 价值实践分类体系 中文美德问卷 积极心理学