The Present Authoring - Virtues exercise has been designed to allow you to do an in-depth analysis of the positive elements of your personality, that is, your virtues. The exercise is structured around the Big Five Personality Model. The Big Five model is an empirically derived measurement model of personality that assesses variation in:

• Extraversion or positive emotion, dominance and enthusiasm
• Openness to Experience or creativity, artistic sensibility, and philosophical-mindedness
• Emotional Stability or the absence of negative emotion (anxiety, emotional pain, shame and guilt)
• Conscientiousness or orderliness and persistence
• Agreeableness or warmth, empathy and tender-mindedness (versus assertiveness and aggression)

How it works

When you do the Present Authoring - Virtues exercise, you will be asked to identify your virtues from among a list of traits that cluster around a particular personality factor. So for extraversion, for example, you might indicate that you feel comfortable around people, or that you are skilled in handling social situations, and so on. For Openness to Experience, you might indicate that you are always learning new things, or that you have a lot of insight into yourself and others. After narrowing down the selected list to the virtues that you feel are most pertinent, you will be asked to write about each virtue, first describing a time when that virtue helped you attain a desired goal or cause a desired outcome, and finally, exploring how you might use that virtue more effectively in your present or future life.