#mylittlepony - #The real-life basis for the elements of harmony.

The real-life basis for the elements of harmony.

tl;dr: The main characters of MLP perfectly represent the 6 core character virtues classified by psychologists Martin Seligman and Christopher Peterson from there research on positive psychology, and in there book Character Strengths and Virtues: a Handbook and Classification.

Positive psychology is the field of psychology that tries to understand what characteristics and habits lead to good mental health, as opposed to trying to classify and understand mental disorders. Martin Seligman and Christopher Peterson are a pair of positive psychologists that wanted to better classify what characteristics lead to a happy healthy life. Their work aimed to figure out a set of "core" virtues that are recognized and admired by most, if not all, cultures, and lead to a healthy, fulfilling life when cultivated and practiced. The core virtues they discovered are Love of learning, courage, humanity, transcendence, temperance, and justice, along with 24 sub virtues that fall under the core 6.

Each of the mane six is a near perfect example of each of the core virtues and are deficient in at least one other. Twilight represents the love of learning, but at the beginning of the show lacks justice and humanity (equinity?). rainbow dash represents courage but lacks humanity as well, pinkie pie represents transcendence but lacks temperance etc. The main six are all foils of each other, each representing a virtue that one or more of the others are deficient in. Over the course of the show their friendship with each other helps each of them to cultivate the virtues they lack to become better people. This character dynamic is one of the things that make the show so good, each of the characters is admirable because of there virtue, but also relatable because of there flaws, and when they are all together they make a perfect team able to overcome any obstacle. I wonder if this was at all intentional, If Lauren Faust read positive psychology research to try to create characters and convey lessons that would help improve the wellbeing of her audience, and if the concept of the "elements of harmony" was intentionally created as an in-universe kid-friendly equivalent of the character strengths and virtues. Since kids might not fully understand words like "transcendence", "temperance" or "justice" it would make sense to use simpler analogs like "laughter" and "honesty" instead, or it might just be a coincidence.

I've been wanting to make write this post for years but never got around to it, If you managed to read my entire rambling what do you all think?

Submitted November 21, 2018 at 05:21PM by cryptobum
via reddit https://www.reddit.com/r/mylittlepony/comments/9z8z7f/the_reallife_basis_for_the_elements_of_harmony/?utm_source=ifttt