Will Chinese people change in terms of their character strengths when disasters strike? As far as the most recent COVID-19 pandemic is concerned, we provide an explorative answer from the impacts of positive traits included in the Values in Action Classification of Strengths upon Chinese people. We conducted a large-scale online survey from 1 January 2019 to 13 February 2020, with 12,878 respondents nationwide, covering all the administrative regions in China and all age intervals. The changes in the 24 character strengths before and during the pandemic were compared. Results revealed a significant increase in teamwork triggered by the pandemic among Chinese people. Fine-grained differences in demographic variables were also examined. Results showed that the COVID-19 pandemic significantly boosted teamwork for both males and females. Concerning age differences, only younger adults (18-25-year-old) showed a significant increase in teamwork. Besides this, it was also discovered that females always performed a higher teamwork tendency than males, and the elderly higher than the younger, regardless of the pandemic.
Keywords: COVID-19 pandemic; character strengths; collectivistic culture; disaster; positive traits.