Zest (positive psychology)
In positive psychology, zest is one of the 24 strengths possessed by humanity. As a component of the virtue of courage, zest is defined as living life with a sense of excitement, anticipation, and energy. Approaching life as an adventure; such that one has “motivation in challenging situations or tasks”. Zest is essentially a concept of courage, and involves acquiring the motivation to complete challenging situations and tasks. Those who have zest exude enthusiasm, excitement and energy while approaching tasks in life. Hence, the concept of zest involves performing tasks wholeheartedly, whilst also being adventurous, vivacious and energetic. It discourages the focus on the negative views of psychology. It embraces a notion that one must observe people that "live well" in order to truly understand positive psychology. (For example, a Buddhist monk would be a preferred subject of observation compared to a college student.) Zestful people simply enjoy things more than people low in zestfulness. Zest is a positive trait reflecting a person’s approach to life with anticipation, energy, enthusiasm and excitement.
Christopher Peterson and Martin Seligman developed terminology to describe human strengths. They developed a descriptive list of six human virtues (Wisdom and Knowledge, Courage, Humanity, Justice, Temperance, and Transcendence) comprising 24 strengths. Zest is one of the four strengths that combine to make up the virtue of courage, as defined by this system.
The VIA-IS is a self-report questionnaire that assesses the strength with which respondents answer strength-relevant statements about themselves on a 1-5 Likert scale. The following statements on the VIA-IS are used to measure a persons zest: I look forward to each new day; I cannot wait to get started on a project; I want to fully participate in life, not just view it from the sidelines.
As with many other constructs in the relatively new field of Positive Psychology, it is difficult to quantify zest. Other traits like socioeconomic status, which can easily be measured by gross income per household, or constructs like fear, which can be quantified by changes in heart rate, skin conductance, and pupil dilation, have much more defined and widely accepted methods of measure. However, measurements of Zest are still in the beginning stages of development. How do we measure how energetic one person is compared to another? How do we determine exactly how excited a person is about life? What precisely does it mean to approach life adventurously? These are just a few of the questions that must be answered to most effectively research zest.
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