Community Peace and Character Strengths

The dynamics of community peace (CP) and character strengths (CSs) are very neglected areas of research, and core constructs such as “community” and “peace” are being used in the literature in many ways. This study aimed to explore through a narrative review the state-of-the-art conceptualizations on community, positive peace, and CSs and the undercurrents among them and to investigate through an exploratory empirical study (N = 15,718) with a convenience sample, the most important CSs for building CP, the association between community well-being and CSs, and the relative importance of other community-related facets. Findings indicated that both community and peace are challenging, diverse, and context-driven concepts. Three of the five most important CSs for building a peaceful community came from the humanity virtue cluster and one from each of the wisdom, knowledge, and courage cluster. No CSs from the justice, temperance, or transcendence clusters emerged in the top five. The most important facets mentioned for their own specific communities were safety and peace. Results also showed that the participants simultaneously experienced less often peace and harmony or satisfaction with life in their communities. These findings also suggest that it is important to take safety into account in efforts to build CP through CSs. It is concluded that wider relational and socio-economic structuring processes may need to be considered together with individual-level experiences and needs for the promotion of CP. Some public policy recommendations were made, and pointers for further research were indicated.