Positive psychology and virtue: Values in action

ABSTRACT

This paper provides an overview of the issues and themes that were discussed on an interdisciplinary panel which occurred at the American Philosophical Association’s pacific division meeting in April of 2017. The panel focused on the connections between the VIA classification of virtues and character strengths in psychology and virtues and the Aristotelian approach to virtue in philosophy. Three key themes emerged from the papers presented at this panel: 1) the nature of the relationship between virtues and character strengths on the VIA model; 2) the extent to which the conceptions of virtues and character strengths are best understood as universal or culturally-embedded; and 3) the reliability of using self-report measurements to measure character strengths. This paper serves to frame papers that resulted from that panel and were incorporated into this special issue of the Journal of Positive Psychology.     

Some philosophical concerns about how the VIA classifies character traits and the VIA-IS measures them

ABSTRACT

Written from the perspective of a philosopher, this paper raises a number of potential concerns with how the VIA classifies and the VIA-IS measures character traits. With respect to the 24 character strengths, concerns are raised about missing strengths, the lack of vices, conflicting character strengths, the unclear connection between character strengths and virtues, and the misclassification of some character strengths under certain virtues. With respect to the 6 virtues, concerns are raised about conflicting virtues, the absence of practical wisdom, and factor analyses that do not find a 6 factor structure. With respect to the VIA-IS, concerns are raised about its neglect of motivation and about the underlying assumptions it makes about character traits. The paper ends by sketching a significantly improved classification which omits the 6 virtues and introduces additional strengths, vices, and a conflict resolution trait.     

The VIA inventory of strengths,positive youth development,and moral education

ABSTRACT

The VIA Inventory of Strengths and the VIA model were originally developed to assess and study 24 character strengths. In this paper, I discuss how the VIA Inventory and its character strength model can be applied to the field of moral education with moral philosophical considerations. First, I review previous factor analysis studies that have consistently reported factors containing candidates for moral virtues, and discuss the systematic structure and organization of VIA character strengths. Second, I discuss several issues related to the VIA model, including a lack of previous studies that directly support the moral justifiability of the model and the presence of a fundamental virtue component required for optimal moral functioning in virtue ethics, phronesis, practical wisdom, in the model. Finally, I propose future directions for research on the VIA model in order to address the aforementioned issues and facilitate the application of the model in moral education.     

Changing the Past,Present, and Future

Abstract

There has recently been a growing movement within psychology toward placing a greater emphasis on the positive aspects of human nature. This movement, known as positive psychology, focuses on the scientific study of human strengths and virtues as well as the variables that promote positive traits, emotions, and institutions. The purpose of this article is to discuss selected topics of research in positive psychology and the potential psychotherapeutic application of this research for children and youth, particularly in school settings. Interventions are presented for altering and enhancing children's and adolescents' perspectives regarding their past, their experience of the present, and their hopes for the future.     

性格优势与美德研究的现状、困境与出路

性格优势和美德是源于“价值实践分类体系”同一架构中不同层次的概念。过去十年的研究表明性格优势对个体身心健康和幸福感有积极贡献。但目前该领域绝大多数研究着眼于性格优势,而忽略了该体系中更普遍、更核心的美德。美德的结构差异性可能阻碍了相关研究的进行和比较。本文认为“兼顾文化共通性与文化特殊性方法”可能是解决途径之一,并引用已有研究进行佐证,发现亲和力、生命力和意志力可能是一个具有普遍意义的美德结构。     

From the Equator to the North Pole: A Study of Character Strengths

Recently, psychologists have begun to shift their research attention to positive topics historically overlooked by the profession. The study of character strengths is a major research interest of positive psychologists. A classification of 24 character strengths, called the Values in Action (VIA) Classification, has recently been developed, and the current study evaluates these character strengths across cultures. Among 123 members of the Kenyan Maasai, 71 Inughuit in Northern Greenland, and 519 University of Illinois students, we found high rates of agreement about the existence, desirability, and development of these strengths of character. Despite these strong similarities, there were differences between and within cultures in terms of gender, the perceived importance of specific strengths (such as modesty), and the existence of cultural institutions that promote each strength.     

Marital virtues and their relationship to individual functioning,communication, and relationship adjustment

Extant research has documented both individual well-being and couple communication as important predictors of marital adjustment. In the recent years, researchers have looked beyond problem-based predictors, shifting the focus from pathology and communication to include positive actions and ways of being. This study used Fowers’ [(2005) Virtue and psychology: Pursuing excellence in ordinary practices. Washington, DC: APA Press] framework of virtue ethics to test additional potentially important linkages. This framework posits that characteristics, such as compassion and generosity, which are foundational to relationship adjustment. This study examined the direct and indirect links among individual functioning, marital virtues, communication, and marital adjustment. Data were collected from a sample of 422 married and cohabitating individuals using a self-report survey. Individual well-being significantly and consistently predicted virtues, communication, and relationship functioning. Marital virtues and communication were found to mediate the relationship between individual well-being and relationship adjustment. In addition, communication was found to mediate the relationship between marital virtues and relationship adjustment. Findings provide support for the notion that character strengths – enacted as marital virtues – influence communication and relationship adjustment.     

Relations between virtues and positive mental health in a Korean population: A Multiple Indicators Multiple Causes (MIMIC) model approach

A Multiple Indicators Multiple Causes (MIMIC) approach was applied to investigate the relationship between virtues and positive mental health as determined using the Character Strength Test and the Mental Health Continuum‐Short Form. The study participants were 876 college students (54% women; overall mean age [SD] 21.50 years [2.35]) recruited from introductory psychology courses at two universities in Seoul. Findings revealed that the intellectual virtues of college students predicted subjective well‐being according to all emotional, social and psychological measures. Results are discussed in the context of previous work using the Values in Action classification of virtues and character strengths. In addition, implications regarding understanding the nature and possible origins of positive mental health are outlined.     

Positive psychology progress: empirical validation of interventions

Positive psychology has flourished in the last 5 years. The authors review recent developments in the field, including books, meetings, courses, and conferences. They also discuss the newly created classification of character strengths and virtues, a positive complement to the various editions of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (e. g., American Psychiatric Association, 1994), and present some cross-cultural findings that suggest a surprising ubiquity of strengths and virtues. Finally, the authors focus on psychological interventions that increase individual happiness. In a 6-group, random-assignment, placebo-controlled Internet study, the authors tested 5 purported happiness interventions and 1 plausible control exercise. They found that 3 of the interventions lastingly increased happiness and decreased depressive symptoms. Positive interventions can supplement traditional interventions that relieve suffering and may someday be the practical legacy of positive psychology.     

Positive psychology on character strengths and virtues. A disquieting suggestion

The Values in Action (VIA) classification of character strengths and virtues has been recently proposed by two leading positive psychologists, Christopher Peterson and Martin Seligman as “the social science equivalent of virtue ethics.” The very possibility of developing this kind of an “equivalent,” however, is very doubtful in the light of the cogent criticism that has been leveled at modern moral theory by Alasdair MacIntyre as well as the well argued accusations that positive psychology, despite its official normative neutrality, is pervaded by specifically Western individualism and instrumentalism. In order to evaluate whether the VIA project can be considered as substantially rooted in virtue ethical tradition, the classification was assessed against two fundamental features of the classical version of the latter: (1) the substantial interconnectedness of individual virtues, as expressed by the thesis of the unity of virtue, and (2) the constitutive character of the relationship between virtue and happiness. It turned out, in result, that the two above features are not only absent from but also contradicted by the VIA framework with the latter's: (1′) construal of individual virtues and character strengths as independent variables and (2′) official endorsement of the fact/value distinction. As soon as the arguments for the superiority of the classical virtue ethical perspective are provided, the potential responses available to the VIA's proponents are discussed.     

Genetic and environmental influences on the positive traits of the values in action classification,and biometric covariance with normal personality

Virtually all human individual differences have been shown to be moderately heritable. Much of this research, however, focuses on measures of dysfunctional behavior and relatively fewer studies have focused on positive traits. The values in action (VIA) project is a comprehensive and ambitious classification of 24 positive traits, also known as character strengths (Peterson, C., & Seligman, M. E. P. (2004). Character strengths and virtues: A handbook and classification. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association), the majority of which have received no behavior genetic attention. Using a sample of 336 middle-aged twins drawn from the Minnesota Twin Registry who completed the VIA inventory of strengths, we detected significant genetic and non-shared environmental effects for 21 of 24 character strengths with little evidence of shared environmental contributions. Associations with a previously administered measure of normal personality found moderate phenotypic overlap and that genetic influences on personality traits could account for most, but not all, of the heritable variance in character strengths.     

Refining our understanding of the VIA Classification: Reflections on papers by Han,Miller, and Snow

ABSTRACT

Han, Miller, and Snow have written three thoughtful critiques of the VIA Classification of Strengths and Virtues. In this response, I emphasize five points. First, I suggest the concept of practical wisdom may be understood in terms of three VIA strengths: prudence, judgment, and perspective. Second, recognizing that the VIA Classification is a structural model of individual traits, rather than a moral theory, can address some concerns about the model, including its failure to account for the unity of the virtues. Third, I review a three-virtue model that has emerged in recent research on the VIA strengths may provide essential elements for a taxonomy of virtue. Fourth, I raise several issues associated with the application of the VIA Classification to moral education. Finally, though the model demonstrates substantial generalizabilty across Westernized populations, research in traditional indigenous cultures remains insufficient. I conclude with a series of questions for future research.     

性格优点:创造美好生活的心理资本

性格优点是通过个体的认知、情感和行为而反映出来的一组积极人格特质,它是积极心理学的核心研究领域。研究表明性格优点存在跨文化的普遍性,并且性格优点与优良表现、主观幸福感以及创伤后成长呈显著的正相关。同时,研究表明遗传、年龄、性别以及个体的宗教信仰可能会影响个体性格优点的发展及其表现。文章对性格优点未来的研究方向及其应用进行了探讨。     

Personality Measurement in Cross-Cultural Perspective

I first provide an overview of general issues in personality measurement across cultures (e.g., measurement bias and equivalence, levels of test adaptation or indigenization). Then, in keeping with the organization of this special issue, I discuss personality measurement from alternative theoretical perspectives that have addressed, in varying degrees, personality and its measurement in cross-cultural perspective (i.e., trait perspectives, projective techniques, cultural psychology and constructivist perspectives, evolutionary perspectives). An integrated measurement approach is advocated, incorporating diverse aspects or levels of personality, while drawing on the complementary strengths of alternative approaches.     

Envisioning more virtuous virtues

ABSTRACT

This response addresses three key themes related to the interdisciplinary study of virtue: limitations of self-reports, demoting of the virtues, and concerns about cultural issues. I suggest that self-regulation theories of how people develop virtues are needed in order to understand how virtues (even just two at a time) may work in tandem to influence behavior. I suggest that psychologists and philosophers approach an interdisciplinary conversation about virtue with an eye towards the limitations in our field’s typical way of approaching constructs. Such an approach provides an opportunity to see problems that are typically masked by disciplinary habits.     

Accuracy, Sincerity and Capabilities in the Practice of Teaching

This paper examines the relative strengths of two conceptions of teaching. The thinner conception, which underpins a report of the Ministerial Committee on Teacher Education in South Africa, takes the definitive purpose of teaching as the organization of systematic learning. The thicker conception draws on work by Martha Nussbaum and Bernard Williams and comes from my ongoing thinking about the conditions for trustworthy practice. I propose that educative teaching is a practice whose definitive purpose is to enable people’s flourishing by developing their capabilities as these are connected to what Williams calls ‘the virtues of truth’—‘Accuracy’ and ‘Sincerity’. I consider the case for claiming (i) that the purpose of educative teaching is to enable learners to develop the virtues of truth and (ii) that trustworthy practice depends on teachers having these virtues themselves. En route I challenge MacIntyre’s grounds for refusing to admit teaching as a practice.     

Virtues as Qualities of Character

Over the last two decades, a growing philosophical literature has subjected virtue ethics to empirical evaluation. Drawing on results in social psychology, a number of critics have argued that virtue ethics depends upon false presuppositions about the cross-situational consistency of psychological traits. Alasdair MacIntyre’s After Virtue has been a prime target for the situationist critics. This essay assesses the situationist critique of MacIntyre’s account of virtue. It argues that MacIntyre’s social teleological account of virtue is not what his situationist critics take it to be. Virtues, for MacIntyre, are not reducible to psychological traits. They are qualities of one’s socially constituted character, and their intelligibility as virtues derives from their role in the narrative of one’s life. Recognizing this both clarifies and complicates debates about the implication of situationist social psychology for virtue ethics. It also grants a new significance to MacIntyre’s attention to the socio-historical context of virtue, a significance that should be especially interesting to religious ethicists.     

Values in action scale and the Big 5: An empirical indication of structure

Within this study we used self-report measures completed by 123 undergraduate students from an Australian university to investigate the validity of Peterson and Seligman’s [Peterson, C., & Seligman, M. E. P (2004). Character strengths and virtues. New York: Oxford.] classification system of 24 character strengths and six virtues. We also looked at how the 24 character strengths relate to the Five Factor Model of personality and to a measure of social desirability. Using a second order factor analysis of the 24 character strengths, we found that these 24 character strengths did not produce a factor structure consistent with the six higher order virtues as proposed by Peterson and Seligman [Peterson, C., & Seligman, M. E. P (2004). Character strengths and virtues. New York: Oxford.]. Instead, the 24 character strengths were well represented by both a one and four factor solution. Patterns of significant relationships between each of the 24 character strengths, the one and four factor solutions and the Five Factor Model of personality were found. The results have implications for [Peterson, C., & Seligman, M. E. P (2004). Character strengths and virtues. New York: Oxford.] classification.     

Integrating psychological and cultural perspectives on virtue: The hierarchical structure of character strengths

The VIA Classification characterizes six culturally defined virtues as latent variables underlying 24 character strengths. Factor analyses of measures based on the Classification usually suggest 4–5 factors that do not correspond well to traditional lists of virtues. This article describes the identification of a three-virtue model across multiple measures of strengths in four samples encompassing 1,070,549 cases. The general pattern involved a first component representing good character that split into two components reflecting Goodness and Inquisitiveness. The former divided further into components reflecting Caring and Self-Control. This pattern recurred in all data sets. The model consisting of Caring, Inquisitiveness, and Self-Control is proposed as a reliable latent structure for the VIA Classification strengths, an intuitive classification of traditional cultural virtues, and a framework for social efforts encouraging the development of virtue.