Your signature strengths are the handful of the 24 character strengths, usually the top five, that come most naturally to you and that you feel most yourself when using. On this site you find them by taking the character strengths test and reading your strips from the top: the strengths with the highest markers are the candidates.
What makes a strength a signature strength
Peterson and Seligman (2004) coined the term and gave it a definition that goes beyond the score. A signature strength is one you feel you own; using it feels exciting rather than effortful; you learned it quickly and keep finding new ways to use it; you look for chances to use it; and using it leaves you invigorated rather than drained. They suggested most people have between three and seven.
The research on signature strengths is mostly about what happens when people use them. Seligman and others (2005) asked people to use one of their top five strengths in a new way every day for a week and found that their happiness scores were higher six months later than those of a comparison group. Harzer and Ruch (2012) found that people who applied four or more of their signature strengths at work were more likely to describe their work as a calling and to report positive experiences in it, whatever the job was.
What a top-five list does not mean
The order of your top five is not exact. Each strength is measured with four items on a five-point scale, so the possible range is 4 to 20 and two strengths a point apart are not reliably in that order. The published test-retest reliabilities for individual strengths run from .55 to .82 over two to three weeks, so a strength at fifth place today may be at seventh next month. The set of strengths near the top is more stable than the ranking within it.
A low marker is not a weakness in the everyday sense. The 24 strengths are all positive; a low score on prudence describes someone who likes risk, and a low score on modesty describes someone happy to stand out. A signature strength is not a verdict on what you should do with your life; the research describes what people who use their strengths report, not what anyone ought to do.
What it means for your results
Look at the top five or six markers together and test each against Peterson and Seligman’s criteria: whether it feels like you, and whether using it leaves you energised rather than drained. A strength that scores high but feels like duty rather than pleasure is a strength, but it may not be a signature one. The site shows all 24 strips on one page so you can see the shape of your profile at once, and if you take the test again the order among your top few is the thing worth comparing.
The character strengths test has 96 items, takes ten minutes and is scored on your device.