Inner Peace and Character Strengths

Peace is regarded as a universal good, as reflected in its selection as the very first word of the United Nation’s motto: Peace, dignity, and equality on a healthy planet. However, most academic attention focuses on “outer” forms (i.e. relational, societal, intergroup), with relatively little attention to “inner” varieties (i.e. tranquil states of mind). This perhaps reflects the Western-centric nature of academia, with inner peace—and low arousal positive states more generally—having received less attention in the West compared to Eastern cultures. However, aligning with broader efforts to redress the Western-centricity of scholarship, there is now an emergent literature exploring this concept. This chapter adds to these efforts by analysing several peace-oriented items including items recently developed for inclusion in the Gallup World Poll: “In general, do you feel at peace with your life, or not?”; “In general, how often do you feel you are at peace with your thoughts and feelings?”; and “In general, how often can you find inner peace during difficult times?” These questions were asked after 24,496 participants from a wide range of nations completed the online VIA Survey of character strengths over a 10-day period in July 2023. The results showed inner peace to be a complex, multifaceted construct, sharing both important similarities and differences with closely related concepts like calmness, balance, and harmony. Moreover, exploring inner peace through the lens of character strengths elicited numerous intriguing findings that were often unexpected—most notably that the most positively impactful strength was zest—and which further enrich our understanding of this understudied phenomenon. More work will be needed to explore these dynamics, for which this analysis will hopefully offer a useful foundation.