Being Unimpressed with Ourselves: Reconceiving Humility

I first sketch an account of humility as a character trait in which we are unimpressed with our good, envied, or admired features, achievements, etc., where these lack significant salience for our image of ourselves, because of the greater prominence of our limitations and flaws. I situate this view among several other recent conceptions of humility (also called modesty), dividing them between the inward-directed and outward-directed, distinguish mine from them, pose problems for each alternative account, and show how my understanding of humility captures truths present but exaggerated in several of them. Responding to some problems for my view, including what I call “Driver’s Paradox”(i.e., the strangeness of someone’s proclaiming ‘I’m humble!’), I suggest that some over-ambitious claims about our moral responsibilities may indicate a lack of proper humility. I discuss the relationship of the character trait of humility both to what humiliates and to what humbles, concluding with consideration of the background assumptions against which, and the circumstances in which, humility may reasonably be classified as a moral virtue.

A practice-based study of cultural humility and well-being among psychotherapy clients

One trend in psychotherapy research involves examining client factors to better understand change. Some have framed client factors as virtues. Humility is one virtue that has gained attention with evidence that suggests humility may help facilitate therapeutic change. A specific type of humility, cultural humility, however, has not been closely examined as a client factor. Cultural humility is a relational virtue that addresses an individual's ability to be open towards cultural differences and can be helpful in buffering diverse relational dynamics (e.g., student and teacher, family members and friends with different beliefs). In this study, we examined client change in cultural humility and well-being using group-based trajectory modelling. We also examined differentiation as a predictor of trajectory membership and compared trajectories on levels of symptoms. Results suggested that a subgroup of clients showed significant increases in cultural humility and well-being. Further analyses found that clients with higher levels of initial differentiation were more likely to belong to the growth trajectory. This same trajectory also decreased in symptoms over time.     

The end of mental illness thinking?

Mental health theory and practice are in a state of significant flux. This theoretical article places the position taken by the British Psychological Society Division of Clinical Psychology (DCP) in the context of current practice and seeks to critically examine some of the key factors that are driving these transformations. The impetus for a complete overhaul of existing thinking comes from the manifestly poor performance of mental health services in which those with serious mental health problems have reduced life expectancy. It advocates using the advances in our understanding of the psychological, social and physical mechanisms that underpin psychological wellbeing and mental distress, and rejecting the disease model of mental distress as part of an outdated paradigm. Innovative research in genetics, neuroscience, psychological and social theory provide the platform for changing the way we conceptualise, formulate and respond to psychological distress at both community and individual levels.     

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.     

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.     

Development of the deontic advantage in reasoning: Reply to Cummins

In response to Cummins’s report that comments on our article (Dack & Astington, Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 2011, Vol. 110, pp. 94–114), this article clarifies our perspective on what constitutes the deontic advantage, and notes similarities and differences between Cummins’s perspective and our own. Like Cummins, we believe that young children are capable of deontic reasoning and that methodological factors alone cannot explain this ability. However, we maintain that it is important to be precise about methodology in order to facilitate investigation of how the deontic advantage changes over developmental time, and this question is our main interest, although as yet incompletely answered. Contrary to Cummins, we do not think that existing data can speak to the issue of the potential innateness of deontic reasoning. We also disagree with Cummins’s perspective on norm versus normative proposition and with some of her comparisons between deontic and epistemic phenomena.     

Saint Thomas Aquinas's Pagan Virtues?

Today's conversations in virtue ethics are enflamed with questions of “pagan virtues,” which often designate non‐Christian virtue from a Christian perspective. “Pagan virtues,” “pagan vices,” and their historied interpretations are the subject of Jennifer Herdt's book Putting On Virtue: The Legacy of the Splendid Vices (2008). I argue that the questions and language animating Herdt's book are problematic. I offer an alternative strategy to Herdt's for reading Thomas Aquinas's Summa Theologiae. My results are twofold: (1) a different set of conclusions and questions regarding the moral life that lend a fresh perspective to “pagan virtues” and (2) corresponding methodological suggestions for improving Herdt's project that would, to my mind, reaffirm her normative conclusions regarding the most viable ways forward for contemporary discussions of virtue.     

Some remarks on the bearing of model theory on the theory of theories

The present paper offers some remarks on the significance of first order model theory for our understanding of theories, and more generally, for our understanding of the “structuralist” accounts of the nature of theoretical knowledge that we associate with Russell, Ramsey and Carnap. What is unique about the presentation is the prominence it assigns to Craig’s Interpolation Lemma, some of its corollaries, and the manner of their demonstration. They form the underlying logical basis of the analysis.