Appreciative joy rooted in Chinese culture: Its relationship with strengths in values in action

Appreciative joy refers to feeling happy for others with appreciative and unenvious attitudes, which is a strength-like construct emphasized much more in Chinese than in Western culture. The current study provides an initial exploration of appreciative joy's relationship with the strengths in the Values in Action (VIA) framework. Study 1 with 516 online participants showed that appreciative joy was positively correlated with the VIA strengths and provided an incremental explanation for subjective well-being and envy after controlling for the 24 VIA strengths. Study 2 recruited 559 readers of a Chinese novel (The Dream of the Red Chamber) and showed that appreciative joy was associated with the perception of the outstanding strength of characters in the novel after controlling for interpersonal strengths. These findings illustrate both similarities and differences between appreciative joy and strengths in VIA and hold multiple implications for research on appreciative joy, positive psychology and cultural diversity.