 The canonical approach to character traits in positive psychology is found in Character Strengths and Virtues: A Handbook and Classification, edited by Christopher Peterson and Martin Seligman and published in 2004. Peterson and Seligman, with the help of over 50 leading scholars working on character, put together a classification of character traits which they saw as a “manual of the sanities” (2004: 4) by focusing on psychological health rather than illness, as so much of the field had done prior to the positive psychology movement.