Fairness

One of the 24 character strengths

Holding everyone to the same standard, including people you don't like or don't know — and being willing to admit when you got it wrong.

Fairness is the strength of applying one standard to everybody. The test is whether it still applies to a friend.

The easy half is treating strangers evenly. The hard half, and the one this strength is really about, is treating a friend by the same rule as everybody else when the friend is in the wrong. That is where it costs something, and where the exception usually gets made.

It comes with a willingness to be the one who was mistaken. Somebody who leads here will reopen a decision that went their way if the reasoning turns out to have been poor, which is rarer than it sounds and is the same instinct pointed inward.

Curious which of these lead in you? Take the free assessment and find out.

96 questions · about 9 min · free

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What it looks like

Two people broke the same rule. One of them is a friend. The friend gets the same conversation, on the same day, in the same tone.

What it costs

Consistency is not always what a moment needs. Somebody who leads here can apply the rule to a person who was having the worst week of their life, and be technically right and useless. The strength has no built-in exception, so the exceptions have to be made on purpose.

What Fairness is not

It gets confused with treating everybody identically. Somebody who leads here is usually quicker than anyone to notice when two situations only look the same. The standard is the thing that stays fixed, not the treatment.

Often confused with

Honesty
Both refuse to bend a principle for convenience. Honesty is about what somebody says; Fairness is about how they decide between people.
Judgment
Both slow a decision down. Judgment is weighing whether something is true; Fairness is weighing whether it is being applied evenly.

What a strength does not say

Everybody has all 24 of these. A result puts them in order within one person, so a strength near the bottom of somebody's list is one they reach for less often rather than one they are missing.

That also means nothing here compares one person with another. There is no reference sample behind these scales, and an order made of somebody's own answers cannot say where they stand next to anybody.

All 24 character strengths

Or start with what the 24 character strengths are.

Where does Fairness sit in your own 24?

Two hundred and thirteen questions, about twenty minutes. You get all 24 put in your own order, free, with the ones that lead in you named at the top.

96 questions · about 9 min · free

Start your free assessment

selfwyse helps you reflect and connect — not to diagnose, treat, or predict any medical, psychological, or mental health condition.