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.     

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.     

Virtue-Based Management

Drawing on Alasdair MacIntyre's book, After Virtue, we criticize current approaches to business ethics and corporate social responsibility. Both Kantian approaches that stress the importance of good intentions, and utilitarian approaches that stress the importance of good results come under MacIntyre's critique, as do Moore's ethical intuitionism and Stevenson's emotivism. In their place, a return to Aristotle shows us the importance of good habits, good practices, and the unity of the several virtues. The example of Winston Churchill is used to illustrate virtue-based leadership.     

Intention matters to make you (im)moral: Positive-negative asymmetry in moral character evaluations

ABSTRACT

Is intention, even if unfulfilled, enough to make a person appear to be good or bad? In this study, we investigated the influence of unfulfilled intentions of an agent on subsequent moral character evaluations. We found a positive-negative asymmetry in the effect of intentions. Factual information concerning failure to fulfill a positive intention mitigated the morality judgment of the actor, yet this mitigation was not as evident for the negative vignettes. Participants rated an actor who failed to fulfill their negative intention as highly immoral, as long as there was an external explanation to its unfulfillment. Furthermore, both emotional and cognitive (i.e., informativeness) processes mediated the effect of negative intention on moral character. For the positive intention, there was a significant mediation by emotions, yet not by informativeness. Results evidence the relevance of mental states in moral character evaluations and offer affective and cognitive explanations to the asymmetry.     

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.