Humans as Moral Animals

The first reason to study virtue is that moral behavior is central for human beings (Fowers, Reference Fowers2015; Tomasello, Reference Tomasello2019). 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 factsFootnote ³ 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, Reference Fowers2015; Tomasello, Reference Tomasello2014). The extent of this interdependence means that every individual’s welfare is powerfully affected by the ways that she is treated.Footnote 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,Footnote ⁵ and we recommend, here and elsewhere (e.g., Fowers, Novak, Kiknadze, & Calder, Reference Fowers, Novak, Kiknadze and Calder2023a), 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 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 trait-like characteristic of individuals (Brewer, Reference Brewer2009; Cokelet & Fowers, Reference Cokelet and Fowers2019; Fleeson et al., Reference Fleeson, Furr, Jayawickreme, Meindl and Helzer2014; Fowers, Reference Fowers2005a; Jayawickreme & Fleeson, Reference Jayawickreme, Fleeson, Sinnott-Armstrong and Miller2017a; Kim, Reference Kim2016; Mower, Reference Mower2013; Russell, Reference Russell2009; Snow, Reference Snow2010).Footnote 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.

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.Footnote 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, Reference Peterson and Seligman2004), but psychologists interested in empirical studies of virtue extend well beyond that movement (e.g., Lefevor & Fowers, Reference Lefevor and Fowers2016; Meindl et al., Reference Meindl, Jayawickreme, Furr and Fleeson2013; Morgan et al., Reference Morgan, Gulliford and Kristjánsson2017). Although there is accumulating evidence for virtues as acquired traits (Bleidorn & Denisson, Reference Bleidorn and Denissen2015; Fowers et al., Reference Fowers, Lang, Anderson, Lane, Cioffi and Cokelet2019; Meindl et al., Reference Meindl, Jayawickreme, Furr and Fleeson2013), 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, Reference Hutton2021; Olberding, Reference Olberding2016), and through friendship (Kristjánsson, Reference Kristjánsson2020). 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 virtues is among the most important sets of questions there are for understanding humans.

Psychologically Realistic Virtues

Third, many moral philosophers (e.g., Flanagan, Reference Flanagan1991; Miller, Reference Miller2014; Snow, Reference Snow2010) 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., Reference Carr, Arthur and Kristjánsson2017; Miller et al., Reference Miller, Furr, Knobel and Fleeson2015; Snow & Narvaez, Reference Snow and Narvaez2019; Vittersø, Reference Vittersø2016), 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, Reference Cokelet and Fowers2019; Flanagan, Reference Flanagan1991). 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.

Our model differs from philosophical theories of virtues in that it is more concretely descriptive and heuristically productive for empirical research. Theories offer abstract, general accounts of what makes a trait a virtue, the kinds of values that virtues have, the ways in which virtue traits relate to right and wrong actions, and how we should conceive of ideal virtues. These topics are important but the theories designed to answer them cannot be counted on to fruitfully inform empirical studies. The model we formulate in this book (termed the STRIVE-4 Model) provides a conceptual model that describes the general features of ordinary virtue traits that ordinary people ascribe to one another. This model also offers concrete, heuristic guidance for future virtue research, and we offer many hypotheses in this book that we think will be useful in guiding the empirical study of virtues. These hypotheses are numbered by the chapter in which they are discussed and a complete list of the hypotheses is available in Figure 1.

The Value of Moral Education

Fourth, although many scholars believe that humans have a built-in interest in moral concerns (Darwin, Reference Darwin1871/1981; de Waal, Reference de Waal1996; Flanagan, Reference Flanagan2017; Fowers, Reference Fowers2015; Taylor, Reference Taylor1989; Tomasello, Reference Tomasello2014, Reference Tomasello2019), 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, Reference Fowers2000, Reference Fowers2015). 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, Reference Kristjánsson2016, Reference Kristjánsson2017, Reference Kristjánsson2021; 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, Reference Berkowitz and Bier2007; Johnson et al., Reference Johnson, McGrath, Bier, Brown and Berkowitz2023) and the efficacy of similar programs (e.g., social emotional learning; Durlak et al., Reference Durlak, Weissberg, Dymkicki, Schellinger and Taylor2011) 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, Reference Aristotle1999; Fowers, Reference Fowers2005a, Reference Fowers2012; Keown, Reference Keown2016; Olberding, Reference Olberding2016; Russell, Reference Russell2009). 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, Reference Bleidorn and Denissen2015; Davis et al., Reference Davis, Hook, Worthington, Van Tongeren, Gartner, Jennings II and Emmons2011; Lotz et al., Reference Lotz, Schlösser, Cain and Fetchenhauer2013; Morgan et al., Reference Morgan, Gulliford and Kristjánsson2017). 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., Reference Crocker, Canevello and Brown2017; Hare, Reference Hare2017; Keltner et al., Reference Keltner, Kogan, Piff and Saturn2014; Mikulincer & Shaver, Reference Mikulincer and Shaver2010; Tomasello, Reference Tomasello2019), 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 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 wide-ranging 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 and exemplifying currently available research methods that can strengthen the rigor and hypothesis testing in virtue research, thereby supporting the development of a science of virtue.

Virtue Skeptics

Third, virtue skeptics have lodged principled objections to the scientific study of virtue (Chapters 3, 6, and 12). Although we could simply dismiss these skeptics and just get on with the promotion of virtue science, we believe that there are good reasons to address virtue skeptics. First, scientific objectivity requires dealing straightforwardly with serious critics of one’s perspective. Second, the objections go to the heart of whether and how virtues can be studied empirically and in an interdisciplinary manner. Third, virtue-friendly scholars need cogent arguments to counter skeptical questions. Finally, the ways these philosophers go wrong in thinking about virtue traits and appropriating psychological research are extremely instructive regarding how to productively interpret the results of virtue science.

Several philosophers (Doris, Reference Doris2002; Harman, Reference Harman2009; Miller, Reference Miller2014) have questioned the viability of virtue science. They examined portions of the empirical psychological literature and argued that this research demonstrates the nonexistence of virtues. We recognize and applaud their interdisciplinary interest in empirical evidence. In brief, these philosophers’ sincere efforts went awry for two main reasons. First, virtue skeptics have generally adopted an idealized concept of virtue rather than a psychologically realistic one (Cokelet & Fowers, Reference Cokelet and Fowers2019), despite their focus on psychological science (which also generally lacks a fully formulated, realistic virtue concept). As we explained elsewhere (Cokelet & Fowers, Reference Cokelet and Fowers2019), psychologically realistic virtue traits – such as the ones picked out by the model we offer in Part III – are relatively unscathed by their critique. Second, virtue skeptics tend to dial into a small portion of the psychological literature. This is natural in attempting to address another vast discipline, but it can lead one astray. In contrast, we discuss a broader array of psychological theory and research focused especially on developmental and personality psychology (in the chapters in Part II). We also show that a more comprehensive understanding of psychological research actually opens the way toward virtue science rather than closing the door to it (Chapters 4 and 5). For these reasons, we want to encourage philosophers to turn their attention to positive interdisciplinary scholarship on virtues.

Some social scientists also object to virtue science, insisting on a strict fact–value dichotomy. Fact–value dichotomizers believe that the cornerstone of scientific objectivity requires an exclusive focus on observed facts to the exclusion of value and moral questions. In contrast, some social scientists have set aside the fact–value dichotomy, but they seldom provide a fulsome argument against the dichotomy (see Brinkmann [Reference Brinkmann2011] for an exception). We believe the latter group has the right idea, and we argue for that position in Chapter 6. We claim that human behavior (including scientists’ behavior) is value-imbued and must be understood and studied accordingly.

We argue that facts and values are difficult, perhaps impossible, to keep truly separate. This leads social scientists frequently to make normativeFootnote ⁸ claims without realizing they are doing so. Because these claims are not explicit and considered, they tend to rely on unreflective presuppositions rather than well-considered conceptual positions. Therefore, the normative claims tend to be muddled and difficult to identify and question. In Chapters 6 and 13, we argue that making normative claims explicit allows values to be productively acknowledged in social science, fostering open critiques of these values. Scientists’ value commitments can thereby undergo clarification and improvement if they are found to be worthwhile or dismissed if the value commitments lack merit.