Character strength · Temperance
Prudence as a character strength: meaning and examples
The short answer: prudence is being careful about your choices: thinking before you act, planning ahead, and not taking risks you will regret. It is practical wisdom about what to do. It is one of the 24 character strengths of the VIA classification, in the Temperance family: the strengths that protect against excess.
What prudence looks like
People with a lot of prudence tend to:
- think twice before saying or sending something they cannot take back
- read the contract before signing
- plan trips, budgets and projects ahead
- weigh long-term costs as well as short-term rewards
- rarely end up saying "I wish I hadn't done that"
In everyday life
At work, prudence is the person who double-checks the numbers, keeps a backup, and spots the risk before it becomes a crisis. At home, it is the savings account, the insurance, the spare key left with a neighbor.
Prudence is often underrated because its successes are invisible: the problem that never happened.
Prudence and the strengths close to it
- Self-control manages impulses in the moment. Prudence plans so fewer of them arise.
- Judgment is careful about what to believe. Prudence is careful about what to do.
- Perseverance follows a plan through. Prudence makes sure it is a good plan.
When prudence is overdone, or underused
Like every strength, prudence works best in the right amount. Overdone, prudence can become over-caution: missing opportunities, avoiding all risk, or frustrating more spontaneous people. Underused, decisions are made on impulse and regretted later.
The aim is caution in proportion to what is at stake.
Is prudence one of your top strengths?
Ask yourself:
- Do you usually think things over before committing?
- Do friends see you as the careful, sensible one?
- Do you plan ahead even for things others leave to the last minute?
If you answered yes to most of these, prudence 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.