Introduction
Why Study Moral Virtue?
We are living in a time that has been characterized as “post-truth” and “post-morality” (Lazer et al., 2018; Pew Research Center, 2017). As morality has seemed to become increasingly relativized to individual and narrow group interests, disunity, divisiveness, and prejudicial conflict have grown apace. The need for convincing moral knowledge and widely accepted understandings of decency and the common good has seldom been greater. We might hope that scientific knowledge will enable us to develop the kind of moral knowledge that can equip us to bridge these rifts. But in order for science to help us with disunifying relativism, the first challenge is to confront and significantly rethink traditional demands to keep science and morality strictly separate. One way to approach morality scientifically is the study of moral virtue,1 which is the focus of this book. Fortunately, we are in the midst of a renaissance of philosophical interest in virtue and in a position to learn from a rapidly expanding set of social scientific studies on virtues or character strengths.
Thanks to the intelligence and diligence of many researchers, there is now a growing, interdisciplinary body of work that promises to answer many questions about morality, decency, and how we can promote moral progress. But this research is in its early days and the empirical work on virtue remains a patchwork. In order to fully tackle these vital questions the emerging science of virtue needs a unifying, cohesive framework. A primary reason that existing work on virtue and moral development is disunified is that it has been siloed within different disciplines and subdisciplines. Moreover, virtue research lacks the kind of systematic, empirically oriented conceptual framework that can ground and integrate the collage of empirical studies. This book charts the contours of the two problems
1 We focus on the moral virtues in this book, so we do not address the epistemic virtues or what are sometimes called the performance virtues.
and lays the groundwork for possible solutions: a unified, grounded interdisciplinary science of virtue that can illuminate human moral life in fresh and practical ways.
Before tackling questions about how to pursue virtue science effectively, we address questions about need for virtue science. Why should social scientists study virtue at all? In this introductory chapter, we explore five reasons for pursuing empirical virtue research: (1) Humans are moral animals, (2) moral behavior can be understood as an expression of acquired traits, (3) it is psychologically realistic to think that ordinary humans can acquire and express virtue traits, (4) moral education is valuable, and (5) virtues are often taken to be essential to a good life. After explaining these five reasons in favor of pursuing empirical virtue research, we address the three main challenges that virtue scientists must face: (1) the absence of empirically oriented virtue theory, (2) the overreliance on simple survey design in psychology, and (3) virtue skeptics.2 Finally, we explain the overarching argument of our book, breaking down how each part supports the overarching argument, and how each chapter contributes to its part.
Five Reasons for Empirical Virtue Research
Humans as Moral Animals
The first reason to study virtue is that moral behavior is central for human beings (Fowers, 2015; Tomasello, 2019). Although there is healthy debate about what moral behavior is, there is virtually no disagreement about whether humans, throughout history and across cultures, form shared moral understandings within their cultural groups. Debates about the specific content of morality often obscure the ubiquity of moral frameworks in human societies. Two basic facts3 point to more specific ways in which humans are fundamentally moral creatures.
First, we are profoundly social creatures that are entirely dependent on one another for everything from basic physical necessities to understanding how to live. For this reason, humans have been termed ultrasocial animals (Fowers, 2015; Tomasello, 2014). The extent of this interdependence means that every individual’s welfare is powerfully affected by the
2 One form of skepticism about virtue science is the idea that there should be a dichotomy of facts and values, with virtues placed in the values category. We discuss our disagreement with this dichotomizing at length in Chapter 6.
3 Of course, some may disagree about the factual claims we are making here, but the alternatives to them seem implausible to us.
ways that she is treated.4 Therefore, the quality of one’s life is due, in no small part, to whether others treat one fairly or unfairly, respectfully or disrespectfully, kindly or unkindly. Because of this strong, mutual influence on one another’s welfare, we are often held accountable to others for how we act. Both welfare influencing and accountability are constant features of human experience, from forager bands to modern urban life. This means that moral questions are ubiquitous for humans because virtually every action can affect others’ welfare in some way, and we might hold one another responsible for those effects. The stability and quality of every human group depends on the answers it has to these moral questions.
Second, it seems possible to live a better or worse life. We take seriously the ancient idea that ethics is about how well one lives and that the moral virtues might be needed to live well. The ideal of living well was expressed in the Greek term “eudaimonia,” which we translate as flourishing,5 and we recommend, here and elsewhere (e.g., Fowers, Novak, Kiknadze, & Calder, 2023a), a thorough study of the concept of flourishing, which is often understood as a person that is fulfilling her potential as a human being. We have much more to say about what constitutes a good life and the idea that virtue science can investigate the importance of morality for flourishing in Chapters 1 and 10.
The idea that to understand morality we need to think about the good life for individuals is somewhat foreign to most moderns, as we typically understand morality in terms of right and wrong actions. The most common contemporary understanding of morality is a “rail guard” formulation in which morality is guided by rules and motivated by guilt, punishment, and reward. It is true that these kinds of motivation are important, and that right and wrong actions are an important component of morality. According to ancient virtue theories, however, morality and moral motivation are understood much more broadly. There is a focus on virtue traits and not just actions, and moral motivation is taken to often arise from the positive pursuit of goods. That is, moral motivation is often based on attraction to what is good rather than on respect for rights, duties, or imperatives, or a concern to avoid bad consequences. Another contrast with common contemporary views of morality is the idea that morality enhances the welfare of the moral agent. The basic idea is that human beings will benefit if they develop virtue
4 Rather than use awkward gender-neutral phrasing such as “he or she,” we alternate feminine and masculine pronouns in the chapters of the book.
5 Eudaimonia is usually translated as happiness, but we avoid that translation because it can connote an ephemeral emotional state, and the ancient Greeks saw eudaimonia in terms of a whole life, not just felicitous moments.
Introduction:
Why Study Moral Virtue?
traits that involve positive attraction to the good – a thick form of morality that goes beyond mere “right action” that embodies respect for the moral rules or rail guards. We expand on these distinctions in the remainder of the book and explain how virtue science can test the ancient philosophic hypothesis that morality is essential to the good human life.
It is important at the beginning to emphasize the hypothetical tone of this book. We advance a lot of hypotheses, many based on ancient Aristotelian and Confucian thought, but we see these as hypotheses that may or may not garner empirical support. This openness to disconfirmation is vital because we are proposing many contentious ideas that should be empirically examined rather than assumed to be true.
The two central hypotheses about human life – that we are often accountable for how we treat one another and that a good human life may well require us to develop moral virtues – support the view that humans are fundamentally moral creatures. Indeed, morality appears to be central to typical human lives. If that is the case, what could be a more important aspect of human life to study? We propose studying morality in terms of virtues because virtue traits make it possible for people to act consistently in moral ways, as we discuss in the next section. And the relationships among the virtues and a flourishing life are some of the important empirical questions we hope a virtue science will help us to answer (Chapter 10).
Can Moral Behavior Be Understood in Terms of Acquired Traits?
The second important reason to study virtues empirically is to investigate the claim that moral behavior, especially virtue, can be seen as a traitlike characteristic of individuals (Brewer, 2009; Cokelet & Fowers, 2019; Fleeson et al., 2014; Fowers, 2005a; Jayawickreme & Fleeson, 2017a; Kim, 2016; Mower, 2013; Russell, 2009; Snow, 2010).6 The renaissance of interest in ancient Greek and Chinese moral philosophy has suggested the hypothesis that moral behavior can be understood in terms of acquired traits (Chapter 5). These philosophies focus on the complete moral life which reflects a person’s character or agency, and this presumably involves having traits that produce reliable and spontaneous actions that promote what is good. Ancient philosophers, East and West, discussed this reliably moral behavior in terms of virtues such as courage, fairness, generosity, and honesty.
6 We are aware that the concept of a trait is fraught. We discuss many of the interpretations of that term and trait theories in Chapter 5.
The idea that moral behavior can be based on acquired traits is exciting and attractive, partially because it takes us beyond the idea of traits as inherited temperaments. The allure of virtue is also apparent in its prominence in many cultures, including such diverse groups as ancient Greeks, Confucians, Buddhists, Christians, and Lakotas (Sioux). Importantly, this concept of virtue suggests that no group of people is ruled out when it comes to acquiring virtues. We suggest that virtues can be acquired by virtually anyone regardless of gender, race, or similar characteristics.7 Seeing virtues as traits also emphasizes the idea that individuals with virtue traits will reliably and spontaneously express that trait through virtuous behavior in appropriate circumstances. In Chapter 1, we discuss how virtuous traits motivate individuals to act morally.
Psychologists have begun to study virtues as acquired traits as well. Positive psychology provided a strong impetus for this research (e.g., Bleidorn & Denisson, 2015; Peterson & Seligman, 2004), but psychologists interested in empirical studies of virtue extend well beyond that movement (e.g., Lefevor & Fowers, 2016; Meindl et al., 2013; Morgan et al., 2017). Although there is accumulating evidence for virtues as acquired traits (Bleidorn & Denisson, 2015; Fowers et al., 2019; Meindl et al., 2013), the “traitness” of virtues remains an open question.
We see the qualifier “acquired” as important theoretically and empirically, and we suggest some hypotheses to test that idea (Chapters 1–5). By focusing on acquired traits, we differentiate virtue traits from inherited, temperament-based traits and from traits that are conceived in essentialist terms. Aristotle did not give a very fulsome account of the acquisition of virtue, but he suggested that virtues are acquired through example and practice. There are many other possibilities, including ritual practice (Hutton, 2021; Olberding, 2016), and through friendship (Kristjánsson, 2020). In the end, identifying and clarifying the pathway(s) toward virtue acquisition are the empirical questions we discuss in Chapter 4. In addition, in Chapter 5, we present moral virtues as traits that are chosen and cultivated because the individual sees them as worthy characteristics.
The important point we suggest here is that consistently acting morally can be conceptualized in terms of virtue traits. If people can cultivate traits that make it possible to act reliably and spontaneously for their own and others’ welfare, the question of whether humans can acquire and practice
7 Of course, it may turn out that evidence shows that cultivating virtues may not be possible for some groups (e.g., psychopaths) or without certain contextual features (e.g., the absence of civil war), but such traits and situations are thankfully unusual.
virtues is among the most important sets of questions there are for understanding humans.
Psychologically Realistic Virtues
Third, many moral philosophers (e.g., Flanagan, 1991; Miller, 2014; Snow, 2010) have become increasingly interested in psychologically realistic portrayals of and empirical evidence for virtues. One important reason for seeking a realistic portrayal of virtues is that this can make it possible to study them with the methods of science. These philosophers have been clear in calling for a science of virtue, although, as philosophers, they are generally not equipped to explain how that science can be conducted. Some recent interdisciplinary collaborations have shown promise for helpfully illuminating virtue (e.g., Carr et al., 2017; Miller et al., 2015; Snow & Narvaez, 2019; Vittersø, 2016), and we hope the same can be said of this book.
Philosophers’ interest in a science of virtue is one key reason we have written this book. We believe that philosophical contributions to our understanding of virtue have been enormously enlightening and useful. Indeed, it is difficult to comprehend how the concept of virtue could have been revived without its philosophical renaissance. Unfortunately for those interested in virtue science, however, philosophical accounts of virtue are often formulated in psychologically unrealistic terms (Cokelet & Fowers, 2019; Flanagan, 1991). We describe in Chapter 2 how this problem can be dealt with and how philosophers can fruitfully contribute to interdisciplinary research.
For a theory of virtue to be psychologically realistic means that it can describe and explain how ordinary human beings can acquire and practice virtues in everyday life. When a theory is unrealistic, it offers us an overly abstract or demanding picture of the virtues that may well represent an admirable ethical ideal, but not one that we can use to understand and explain the moral traits and behavior of ordinary folk. One way that social scientists can contribute to virtue theory and ethics more broadly is to complement abstract and sometimes psychologically unrealistic philosophical work on virtue with psychological theories that focus on virtues as characteristics that ordinary people implicitly recognize and care about. This book addresses that need through the creation of a psychologically realistic, empirically testable model of virtue. We examine the contributions that developmental and personality psychology can make to this project in Chapters 4–6 and then formulate our model in Part III.
4-9: Normative sensitivity in children will be a prerequisite for virtue development.
4-10: Recognition of mutual obligation toward completing joint tasks will be a prerequisite for virtue development.
4-11: Reason giving for actions will be a prerequisite for virtue development.
4-12: Recognition of the equal rewards principle will be a prerequisite for virtue development.
4-13: When people observe moral exemplars, it can enhance virtue development.
4-14: The integration of self-interested and other-interested values will contribute to virtue development.
4-15: Specific virtues will increase in strength among some individuals over time.
4-16: Virtue traits may be acquired intentionally through training and practice.
4-17: Increased practice of a virtue will lead to it being practiced in more diverse situations.
4-18: The rudiments of virtue can develop over time into mature virtue.
4-19: Children’s role adoption will influence virtue development.
4-20: Children over six can perceive human goods.
4-21: Children over six can act in the service of the goods they perceive.
5-1: Virtue measures will be only moderately related to personality dimensions.
5-2: Virtue measures will have incremental validity above and beyond traditionally defined personality traits.
5-3: Agency is present in the cultivation of virtues.
6-1: Virtues are generally and explicitly understood as choiceworthy characteristics because they contribute to a flourishing life.
6-2: Individuals cultivate virtues for the sake of living well.
6-3: The expression of virtues includes substantial other-benefiting.
6-4: The expression of virtues includes substantial self-benefiting.
6-5: Virtues are moderate expressions of a strength that contrast with the excesses and deficiencies associated with those strengths.
7-1: Virtues are scalar or measurable and can be assessed quantitatively.
7-2: Virtue traits will have incremental validity regarding criterion variables beyond social desirability.
Figure 1 (cont.)
7-3: Lay informants can provide valid and meaningful reports on a target person’s virtuous behavior.
7-4: Individuals will cultivate virtue intentionally as an approach to crafting a good life.
7-5: Virtue assessments will demonstrate significant between-person variability.
7-6: Virtue assessments will demonstrate significant within-person consistency over time.
7-7: There will be within-person variability in virtue trait expression.
8-1: Virtue trait expression will be contextualized to fit situations, roles, and relationships.
8-2: Individuals’ virtue expression will vary with respect to their acknowledged roles.
8-3: Virtue trait expression will vary within persons across personal, professional, and civic roles.
8-4: Virtue trait expression will vary between-persons based on the social role context.
8-5: The degree of practical wisdom will be negatively correlated with the degree of role conflict.
8-6: Appropriate virtues will be more strongly related to a given role enactment than will personality dimensions between-persons.
8-7: Appropriate virtues will be more strongly related to a given role enactment than will personality dimensions within-persons.
8-8: There will be between-person differences in virtue possession depending on the individuals’ social roles.
8-9: Observed parenting quality will be positively correlated with commitment to the parenting role.
8-10: Observed parenting quality will be positively correlated with investment in the child’s welfare
8-11: Observed parenting quality will be positively correlated with the virtue of patience.
8-12: Changes in parenting quality will be positively correlated with personal growth.
8-13: Observed parenting quality will be positively related to loyalty.
8-14: Observed parenting quality will be positively related to kindness.
8-15: Observed parenting quality will be positively associated with the virtue of compassion.
Figure 1 (cont.)
8-16: Observed teaching quality will be positively related to the virtue of loyalty.
8-17: Excellence in law enforcement among police officers will be positively correlated with the virtue of courage.
8-18: Excellence in law enforcement among police officers will be positively correlated with the virtue of fairness.
8-19: The degree of compassion will be positively correlated to the observed expertise of healing professionals.
8-20: The degree of trustworthiness will be positively correlated to the observed expertise of healing professionals.
8-21: The degree of honesty will be positively correlated to the observed expertise of healing professionals.
9-1: Virtue traits will also predict differences in the types of situations that individuals encounter.
9-2: Differences in encountered situations will be more acutely perceived based on the strength of the virtue trait.
9-3: Individuals with stronger virtue traits will evoke desirable alterations in situation perception and action for participants in the situation.
9-4: Situation perception will vary appropriately with the strength of individuals’ virtue traits.
9-5: Virtue traits and relevant situational factors will interact to influence agents’ behavior.
9-6: People with stronger virtue traits can recognize and transform situations in ways conducive to virtuous actions.
9-7: Adeptness in recognizing the morality in situations will be positively correlated with practical wisdom.
9-8: The greater an individual’s phronesis the more the individual will perceive the possibilities for moral action excellently.
9-9: Situation perception guided by phronesis will enable better moral action possibilities.
10-1: Eudaimonia will be positively related to indicators of shared meaning.
10-2: Participating in shared meaning means being willing to act together.
10-3: Eudaimonia will be positively related to the quality of an individual’s friendships.
10-4: Eudaimonia will be positively related to indicators of character friendship.
Figure 1 (cont.)
10-5: Eudaimonia will be positively related to indicators of the quality of the individual’s belonging to choiceworthy social groups.
10-6: Progress in achieving goals related to mid-level human goods will be positively related to eudaimonia.
10-7: The virtues (e.g., honesty, patience) related to a good (e.g., knowledge production) will be positively related to various indicators of success in pursuing that good.
10-8: The virtues related to knowledge acquisition will be positively related to various indicators of success in knowledge acquisition.
10-9: The virtue of loyalty will be positively related to an individual’s group-favoring actions.
10-10: The virtue of loyalty will be positively related to the individual’s perception of belonging to the group.
10-11: The virtue of loyalty will be positively related to the group members’ acknowledgement of the individual’s group membership.
10-12: The virtue of loyalty will be positively related to the degree of coordinated actions among group members.
10-13: Virtuous activities will contribute to well-functioning communities.
10-14: Trait virtues will be more strongly related to goods and their associated goals than state versions of similar characteristics.
10-15: An individual can successfully pursue a specific good to the degree that that individual expresses the virtues associated with that good.
10-16: The assessments of flourishing from various perspectives (including subjective and observable perspectives) will overlap significantly.
10-17: There will be unique variance in flourishing assessments from various perspectives.
10-18: Longitudinal measurement of flourishing will be more stable and will provide more information than single-timepoint assessments of flourishing.
10-19: Perceived belonging (both by the target individual and other members of the group) to groups will be positively related to indicators of eudaimonia.
10-20: Perceived belonging is necessary for eudaimonia.
10-21: Relevant virtues (e.g., loyalty, forgiveness) will be positively related to perceived group belonging (both by the target individual and other members of the group).
Figure 1 (cont.)
10-22: There will be a positive relationship between belonging-relevant virtues and indicators of eudaimonia.
10-23: The positive relationship between belonging-relevant virtues and indicators of eudaimonia will be mediated by perceived group belonging.
10-24: Indicators of close personal relationship (CPR) quality will be positively related to indicators of eudaimonia.
10-25: High-quality CPRs are necessary for eudaimonia.
10-26: Relevant virtues (e.g., loyalty, forgiveness, friendship) will be positively related to CPR quality.
10-27: There will be a positive relationship between CPR-relevant virtues and indicators of eudaimonia.
10-28: The positive relationship between CPR-relevant virtues and indicators of eudaimonia will be mediated by CPR quality.
10-29: Indicators of meaning and purpose (personal or impersonal) will be positively correlated with indicators of flourishing.
10-30: The presence of meaning and purpose are necessary for flourishing.
10-31: Depending on the source of meaning and purpose (individual or group), virtues (courage and open-mindedness or loyalty, respectively) will be related to reports of meaning and purpose in life.
10-32: Among those who see meaning and purpose as individual aims, indicators of meaning and purpose will mediate the relationship between indicators of the virtues of courage and open-mindedness and indicators of flourishing.
10-33: Among those who look for meaning and purpose in the collective, indicators of meaning and purpose will mediate the relationship between indicators of the virtue of loyalty and indicators of flourishing.
11-1: The four components (behavior, cognition, affect/motivation, and practical wisdom) of the STRIVE-4 Model can be measured for any given virtue.
11-2: The four components (behavior, cognition, affect/motivation, and practical wisdom) of the STRIVE-4 Model are necessary for the expression of any given virtue.
11-3: Virtue behavior can be observed in experimental or observational studies.
11-4: Self-reported virtue behavior will be related to relevant criterion variables (e.g., well-being).
Figure 1 (cont.)
Five Reasons
11-5: Virtue behavior (observed or self-reported) will add incremental validity to the ability to predict virtue-related criteria.
11-6: Virtue-related knowledge can be assessed as a distinct component of any virtue.
11-7: Virtue-related knowledge will add incremental validity to the ability to predict virtue-related criteria.
11-8: Virtue-related motivation can be assessed as a distinct component of any virtue.
11-9: Virtue-related motivation will add incremental validity to the ability to predict virtue-related criteria.
11-10: Virtue-related emotion can be assessed as a distinct component of any virtue.
11-11: Virtue-related emotion will add incremental validity to the ability to predict virtue-related criteria.
11-12: Indicators of virtue will be positively associated with indicators of practical wisdom.
11-13: High-quality appraisals of situations will be positively associated with indicators of practical wisdom.
11-14: The adjudication among appropriate virtues for a situation can be assessed as a component of practical wisdom.
11-15: The proper adjudication among appropriate virtues for a situation will be positively related with indicators of virtue.
11-16: The blueprint for life can be assessed as a component of practical wisdom.
11-17: The blueprint for life will be positively related with indicators of virtue.
11-18: The integration of emotion and cognition can be assessed.
11-19: The integration of emotion and cognition is positively related to virtuous action.
11-20: Virtue acquisition can be fostered by well-designed, structured interventions among adults and children.
11-21: Virtue-related behavior can be increased with simple, short-term interventions.
11-22: Virtue traits will be associated with variations in neural structure.
11-23: Virtue traits will be associated with variations in neural processes.
Figure 1 (cont.)
11-24: Indicators of virtues will be negatively correlated with latency in moral responses.
11-25: Indicators of virtues will be negatively correlated with control system involvement in moral responses.
13-1: Are cultural differences in virtues based on (1) multiple incommensurable types of virtue or (2) variations in virtues that form family resemblances?
Figure 1 (cont.)
The Value of Moral Education
Fourth, although many scholars believe that humans have a built-in interest in moral concerns (Darwin, 1871/1981; de Waal, 1996; Flanagan, 2017; Fowers, 2015; Taylor, 1989; Tomasello, 2014, 2019), no one believes that children are born with a full understanding of and capacity for acting morally. These and many other scholars have presented arguments and evidence that humans have a built-in moral sensitivity that develops naturally, but that the specifics of what is moral are learned in the cultural environment. We suggest as our first general hypothesis (I-1): that virtue expression will vary across cultures. We make this our first hypothesis because it is so important to recognize the cultural relativity of what is meant by virtue. In fact, everything we suggest in this book will need to be assessed for how thoroughly culture must be seen as a moderator.
In addition, significant cognitive, emotional, and social development are necessary for children to learn about moral ways of living. Therefore, moral behavior and acquired virtue traits must be learned, and that learning will occur in many settings, including the home, through religious institutions, in schools, with peers, in higher education and professional education, and in community relations. Much of this learning will be informal and vicarious, but children need to be explicitly educated about how to act morally as well. A reasonable case can be made that learning to act morally to some degree or other is essential to good interpersonal and communal relationships (cf. Fowers, 2000, 2015). Indeed, consistently treating one another honestly, generously, and fairly seem foundational to good interpersonal relationships and to communities. Questions about the roles that virtues play in relationships and communities are, to a large degree, empirical questions that virtue science can help us answer.
For these reasons, a great deal of effort has been devoted to moral education in all these settings (Kristjánsson, 2016, 2017, 2021; Lapsley & Power,
2005). Despite the importance of moral education, we lack the detailed scientific knowledge necessary to conduct this education confidently and with the most refined practices. Character (virtue) education, for example, has grown tremendously in recent times, and the available evidence on its efficacy (Berkowitz & Bier, 2007; Johnson et al., 2023) and the efficacy of similar programs (e.g., social emotional learning; Durlak et al., 2011) is positive and encouraging, if a bit spotty. We wish to emphasize that the development of a productive science of virtue can provide a stronger basis for thinking about why and how children can learn and can ground a more firmly evidence-based moral education. For example, this science can increase educators’, parents’, and policymakers’ confidence in character education and guide program design and implementation. As our knowledge of the moral virtues increases, our understanding of the environments that encourage virtue, as well as of how virtues are cultivated and enacted, will grow. We believe that this knowledge will help educators to foster good character.
Virtues as a Pathway to a Good Life
Finally, ancient Western and Eastern philosophers argued that the surest way to live well as a human being was to cultivate the virtues (Aristotle, 1999; Fowers, 2005a, 2012; Keown, 2016; Olberding, 2016; Russell, 2009). Social scientific and philosophical interest in the good life has exploded in recent years. If the ancient Greeks, Indians, Chinese, and others were correct about virtues as a necessary foundation for the best kind of life, then it is vital for us to understand how individuals can cultivate and maintain virtues and how those traits relate to a good life.
Although the evidence is far from complete, growing social science research suggests that the ancient Greeks may have been on the right track about the positive relationship between virtues and living well (Bleidorn & Denissen, 2015; Davis et al., 2011; Lotz et al., 2013; Morgan et al., 2017). This suggests that virtue science may have much to contribute to the scientific study of individual and social well-being. Accordingly, scholars from many disciplines have taken an interest in positive moral behavior in recent decades (Crocker et al., 2017; Hare, 2017; Keltner et al., 2014; Mikulincer & Shaver, 2010; Tomasello, 2019), and there are scores of empirical studies of virtues (which we detail in Part III). Yet we lack a systematic framework to organize and guide that knowledge seeking. A heuristic framework can help us to empirically assess the degree to which the Ancients were correct is seeing virtue as vital to human flourishing. Our aim in this book is to
provide the kind of framework necessary for a fruitful science of virtue. We provide many hypotheses designed to test the relationships among virtues and flourishing in Chapter 10.
To summarize, we suggest that developing a science of virtue is important for five reasons. First, humans are moral creatures, and a reasonably complete understanding of human activity must include its moral dimension. Second, consistent moral behavior may be trait-like, and understanding consistent human moral behavior requires the assessments of such traits. Third, a science of virtue is needed to examine virtues as psychologically realistic traits rather than abstract or extraordinarily ideal characteristics. Fourth, moral education is necessary, and virtue science can provide important guidance for that education. Finally, a science of virtue is needed to assess the idea that virtues provide a foundation for living well as a human being. We find these reasons compelling, but there are also some obstacles to virtue science. We address those hindrances to virtue science briefly in the next section and indicate where we deal with them more fully in the book.
The Primary Challenges for a Science of Virtue
The scientific research that has been conducted on virtues has been fueled by interest in several subdisciplines of psychology (e.g., development, social, personality, and positive psychology) and in other social sciences. The social science of virtue has been encouraged by the several decades-long philosophical renaissance of virtue scholarship. Extending this interdisciplinary trend, we focus on integrating high-quality philosophical analyses of virtue with cutting-edge social science. Although scores of studies have been conducted, this research has not yet developed into a mature science of virtue. To get there – to develop a cogent and fruitful scientific inquiry into virtue – we think three main problems must be addressed: the absence of an empirically oriented virtue theory, an overreliance on simple survey studies, and virtue skepticism.
The Absence of Empirically Oriented Virtue Theory
The first difficulty is the lack of cohesive theoretical guidance for empirical virtue research. Although many social scientists are interested in virtue, their efforts have been hobbled by an atheoretical approach, leading to patchwork research rather than a cohesive, cumulative science. Without a general framework, virtue scientists may not develop constructs and
measures that capture all the dimensions of a given virtue trait, they may not see interesting hypotheses that an ambitious science of virtue can tackle, and as a group virtue scientists will not be able to integrate their studies of different virtues, which are often pursued with different theoretical assumptions and orientations based on their subareas (e.g., personality psychology or moral development). Philosophical theories of virtue might be thought to help because they are very general, but their high level of abstraction makes it difficult for social scientists to find guidance for their empirical investigations. To overcome these issues, we present an ecumenical version of virtue theory in Chapter 1 that forms the basis for our empirically oriented and hypothesis-focused model of virtue. This theory is informed by philosophy but is also tailored to inform empirical science. The theory we present captures the key elements of virtue in a way that we believe will be broadly acceptable to virtue scholars. This theory provides the conceptual and explanatory basis that leads to our virtue model in Part III and the research recommendations we make in Part IV. Rather than persuade staunch critics of the concept of virtue, our approach centers on providing conceptual resources to virtue-friendly thinkers. The model is enriched by philosophical insight and cutting-edge scientific methods to offer detailed, theoretically informed research design guidance and dozens of hypotheses that can encourage a more structured, robust, and wideranging social science of virtue. Accordingly, our book provides tangible, heuristic guidance for hundreds of studies, which we hope will provide essential resources for scholars interested in virtue.
The Overreliance on Simple Survey Designs in Psychology
Second, in Chapters 5 and 7, we discuss unresolved methodological challenges that arise because of researchers’ overreliance on single-timepoint survey methods. This kind of measurement generally produces only summary global self-assessments of a respondent’s virtue(s). We describe more sophisticated methods for virtue researchers that can underwrite a more robust and confident description, explanation, and pedagogy of virtue in Parts III and IV. For example, because a trait should manifest reliably in a person’s life, a basic requirement for testing whether virtues are traits is to conduct research that provides evidence of within-person consistency over time. That means the same individuals must be assessed repeatedly rather than just once to obtain solid evidence for traits. In addition, it is vital for virtue research to include both self-report methods and the observation of virtue-related behaviors. We address this problem by describing
