Character strength · Humanity
Kindness as a character strength: meaning and examples
The short answer: kindness is the habit of doing good for others, including people you do not know, without expecting anything back. It covers generosity, care, compassion and simple everyday helpfulness. It is one of the 24 character strengths of the VIA classification, in the Humanity family: the strengths of caring for others.
What kindness looks like
People with a lot of kindness tend to:
- notice when someone is struggling, and do something about it
- help a stranger with directions, a stroller or a heavy bag
- give their time to friends, neighbors or causes
- find real pleasure in other people's good fortune
- go out of their way for people who cannot repay them
In everyday life
At work, kindness is the colleague who helps the new hire find their feet, covers a shift without being asked, or checks in after someone has a rough meeting. Outside work, it might be volunteering, cooking for a neighbor, or a generous tip.
Small acts count. Research on kindness finds that the person doing the good deed often feels better too.
Kindness and the strengths close to it
- Love is care within close relationships. Kindness extends care to everyone.
- Social intelligence helps kindness land well, by reading what the other person actually needs.
- Fairness makes sure kindness is shared evenly, not only with people we like.
When kindness is overdone, or underused
Like every strength, kindness works best in the right amount. Overdone, kindness can turn into people-pleasing, being taken advantage of, or helping so much that others do not get the chance to learn. Underused, it is easy to walk past the moments where a little help would mean a lot.
The aim is generosity that includes yourself.
Is kindness one of your top strengths?
Ask yourself:
- Do you often help people even when nobody would know if you did not?
- Do others describe you as kind, generous or caring?
- Does helping someone usually leave you feeling better, not drained?
If you answered yes to most of these, kindness may be one of your signature strengths. The only way to know how it compares with your other 23 is to rank them.
Find your top strengths with the free test
Where this comes from
The 24 character strengths were described by psychologists Christopher Peterson and Martin Seligman in Character Strengths and Virtues: A Handbook and Classification (2004). Happy Me's assessment uses public-domain questions from the International Personality Item Pool and is not affiliated with the VIA Institute.