No Character or Personality

2003 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-94 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gilbert Harman
Keyword(s):  
Social Psychology ◽  
Business Ethics ◽  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
Virtue Ethics ◽  
Moral Psychology ◽  
Empirical Research ◽  
Academic Discipline ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Character Traits ◽  
Personality Theory

Abstract:Solomon argues that, although recent research in social psychology has important implications for business ethics, it does not undermine an approach that stresses virtue ethics. However, he underestimates the empirical threat to virtue ethics, and his a priori claim that empirical research cannot overturn our ordinary moral psychology is overstated. His appeal to seemingly obvious differences in character traits between people simply illustrates the fundamental attribution error. His suggestion that the Milgram and Darley and Batson experiments have to do with such character traits as obedience and punctuality cannot help to explain the relevant differences in the way people behave in different situations. His appeal to personality theory fails, because, as an intellectual academic discipline, personality theory is in shambles, mainly because it has been concerned with conceptions of personality rather than with what is true about personality. Solomon’s rejection of Doris’s claims about the fragmentation of character is at odds with the received view in social psychology. Finally, he is mistaken to think that rejecting virtue ethics implies rejecting free will and moral responsibility.

On Social Psychology, Business Ethics, and Corporate Governance

2000 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 725-733 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timothy L. Fort
Keyword(s):  
Social Psychology ◽  
Corporate Governance ◽  
Business Ethics ◽  
Virtue Ethics ◽  
Corporate Law ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Ethical Business ◽  
Large Numbers ◽  
Large Corporations ◽  
Business Behavior

Abstract:This paper is a response to a recent colloquy among Professors David Messick, Donna Wold, and Edwin Harman. I defend Messick’s naturalist methodology, which suggests that people inherently categorize others and act altruistically toward certain people in a given person’s in-group. This paper suggests that an anthropological reason for this grouping tendency is a limited human neural ability to process large numbers of relationships. But because human beings also have the ability to modify, to some extent, their nature, corporate law can organize small mediating institutions within large corporations in order to take ethical advantage of this grouping tendency. Within a corporate law taking seriously a mediating institution’s formulation of business communities, a virtue ethics approach can be integrated with a naturalist approach in a way that fosters ethical business behavior while mitigating the dangers of ingrouping tendencies.

Toward an Empirically Informed Approach to Medical Virtues

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Justin Oakley
Keyword(s):  
Virtue Ethics ◽  
Moral Psychology ◽  
Empirical Research ◽  
Strong Evidence ◽  
Evidence Based ◽  
Policy Changes ◽  
Limited Impact ◽  
Ethical Approaches ◽  
Medical Role ◽  
The Impact

Several philosophers have developed accounts of virtue ethics that are more empirically informed than previous versions of this approach; however, such accounts have had only a limited impact on virtue ethical approaches to medical ethics. This chapter demonstrates how empirical research can help in the development of a strong evidence-based moral psychology of medical virtue. It draws out some general desiderata for an adequate moral psychology of medical virtue, and shows how empirical research is crucial for devising well-grounded accounts of medical role virtues, such as medical beneficence and medical courage. It also explains how research into the impact of policy changes on medical practice and doctors’ medical virtues can help with deriving defensible policy applications from medical virtue ethics.

scholarly journals Virtue Theory against Situationism

Epistemology ◽  
2018 ◽  
pp. 171-190
Author(s):  
Ernest Sosa
Keyword(s):  
Social Psychology ◽  
Virtue Ethics ◽  
Moral Psychology ◽  
Virtue Epistemology ◽  
Logical Structure ◽  
Virtue Theory ◽  
Normative Content ◽  
Virtue Epistemologist

This chapter looks at the shocking but robust results obtained by social epistemologists in experiments that prompt a situationist attack on virtue theory. Based on a body of troubling results in social psychology, an intriguing critique has been pressed in recent years against virtue ethics, raising doubts both about its moral psychology and about its normative content. Similar discoveries have been made by social psychologists about belief management so that a similar critique can be pressed against virtue epistemology. The chapter shows how the logical structure of scholars' response to the critique of virtue ethics is closely replicated by a response available to the virtue epistemologist.

scholarly journals Business Ethics in Poland: A metatheoretical analysis

2017 ◽  
Vol 20 (8) ◽  
pp. 19-32
Author(s):  
Adam Zadroga
Keyword(s):  
Business Ethics ◽  
Virtue Ethics ◽  
Academic Discipline ◽  
Economic Life ◽  
The Other ◽  
Normative Ethics ◽  
Formal Aspect ◽  
Ethics Of Responsibility ◽  
Descriptive Ethics ◽  
Basic Approaches

From the beginning of the 1990s, a considerable interest in business ethics has been observed in Poland. It seems that the legacy of Polish researchers concerned with this academic discipline is already rich enough, and at the same time so diverse, that it is worth making an attempt to systematise it, exploring and appropriately naming the basic approaches to deal with business ethics in Poland. The carried-out analyses allowed to determine the following leading methods in the formal aspect: firstly, metaethics of business ethics; secondly, business ethics practised in the framework of various modifications of normative ethics (mostly deontology, utilitarianism, virtue ethics and ethics of responsibility; on the other hand, it has been observed that there is a complete lack of clear references to personalistic ethics); thirdly, business ethics practised as descriptive ethics in economic life.

Character Traits

2020 ◽  
pp. 84-108
Author(s):  
Gopal Sreenivasan
Keyword(s):  
Social Psychology ◽  
Virtue Ethics ◽  
Experimental Results ◽  
Character Trait ◽  
Character Traits ◽  
Scientific Psychology ◽  
Traditional Definition ◽  
Definition Of

This chapter defends the traditional definition of virtue against the situationist critique, which is wielded by empirically minded philosophers and originate in the situationist tradition in social psychology. It demonstrates philosophical arguments and position that are consistent with a scientific psychology. It also organizes the use of virtue terms as evaluations of rightness and connect this use to a significant additional way in which exemplars of virtue are relevant. The chapter defines virtue as a species of character trait, which exposes a theory of virtue to what has come to be known as the situationist critique of virtue ethics. It analyses experimental results in social psychology that demonstrate that most people do not have any character traits.

scholarly journals REASONABLE DISPOSITIONS: A RESPONSE TO THE SITUATIONIST CRITIQUE OF VIRTUE ETHICS

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Tobias Vandenberg
Keyword(s):  
Social Psychology ◽  
General Population ◽  
Virtue Ethics ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Virtue Theory ◽  
Character Traits ◽  
Nicomachean Ethics ◽  
The Mean

<p>In The Nicomachean Ethics Aristotle presents a theory of ethics as the development of character, specifically the cultivation of particular character traits lying on the mean between two vices which he calls the virtues. Since the revival of virtue ethics in the mid-20th century, the virtues have often been interpreted as stable, broad-based dispositions to act in virtue appropriate fashion in response to eliciting conditions. In more recent years virtue ethics has come under a sustained attack known as the ‘situationist critique’, which argues that experiments in social psychology show no evidence of broad-based dispositions in the general population. If there are no broad-based dispositions, there are no virtues – virtue ethics is therefore empirically inadequate. My analysis of the evidence the situationists present in favour of their critique will show that it fails to unambiguously support the conclusion that virtue ethics is empirically inadequate. An investigation into the causes of the ethical failings identified in those experiments allowed me to propose remedies that are perfectly consonant with Aristotelian virtue ethics, requiring dedicated and disciplined reflection on past actions with an ongoing commitment to bringing our thoughts and emotions into harmony with our values. In the process I show that the situationists’ evidence supports the “cognitive-affective” theory of virtue over the broad-based dispositional theory, that this cognitive-affective theory is also supported by a careful reading of Aristotle, and therefore that the situationist critique simply helps to replace an inadequate virtue theory with a more robust one.</p>

scholarly journals REASONABLE DISPOSITIONS: A RESPONSE TO THE SITUATIONIST CRITIQUE OF VIRTUE ETHICS

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Tobias Vandenberg
Keyword(s):  
Social Psychology ◽  
General Population ◽  
Virtue Ethics ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Virtue Theory ◽  
Character Traits ◽  
Nicomachean Ethics ◽  
The Mean

<p>In The Nicomachean Ethics Aristotle presents a theory of ethics as the development of character, specifically the cultivation of particular character traits lying on the mean between two vices which he calls the virtues. Since the revival of virtue ethics in the mid-20th century, the virtues have often been interpreted as stable, broad-based dispositions to act in virtue appropriate fashion in response to eliciting conditions. In more recent years virtue ethics has come under a sustained attack known as the ‘situationist critique’, which argues that experiments in social psychology show no evidence of broad-based dispositions in the general population. If there are no broad-based dispositions, there are no virtues – virtue ethics is therefore empirically inadequate. My analysis of the evidence the situationists present in favour of their critique will show that it fails to unambiguously support the conclusion that virtue ethics is empirically inadequate. An investigation into the causes of the ethical failings identified in those experiments allowed me to propose remedies that are perfectly consonant with Aristotelian virtue ethics, requiring dedicated and disciplined reflection on past actions with an ongoing commitment to bringing our thoughts and emotions into harmony with our values. In the process I show that the situationists’ evidence supports the “cognitive-affective” theory of virtue over the broad-based dispositional theory, that this cognitive-affective theory is also supported by a careful reading of Aristotle, and therefore that the situationist critique simply helps to replace an inadequate virtue theory with a more robust one.</p>

Does Situationism Threaten Free Will and Moral Responsibility?

2017 ◽  
Vol 14 (6) ◽  
pp. 698-733 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael McKenna ◽  
Brandon Warmke
Keyword(s):  
Social Psychology ◽  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
Free Will ◽  
Moral Psychology ◽  
Ethical Theory ◽  
Situational Influences ◽  
Reasons Responsiveness ◽  
The Face ◽  
Gilbert Harman

The situationist movement in social psychology has caused a considerable stir in philosophy. Much of this was prompted by the work of Gilbert Harman and John Doris. Both contended that familiar philosophical assumptions about the role of character in the explanation of action were not supported by experimental results. Most of the ensuing philosophical controversy has focused upon issues related to moral psychology and ethical theory. More recently, the influence of situationism has also given rise to questions regarding free will and moral responsibility. There is cause for concern that a range of situationist findings are in tension with the reasons-responsiveness putatively required for free will and moral responsibility. We develop and defend a response to the alleged situationist threat to free will and moral responsibility that we call pessimistic realism. We conclude on an optimistic note, exploring the possibility of strengthening our agency in the face of situational influences.

Moral Responsibility, Socially Embedded

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisa Herzog
Keyword(s):  
Social Psychology ◽  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
Moral Agency ◽  
Human Behaviour ◽  
Shared Responsibility ◽  
The Face ◽  
Moral Theorizing ◽  
The Impact

This chapter asks whether we can hold on to the picture of the morally responsible subject as we knew it in the face of evidence from social psychology about the impact of contexts on human behaviour. Some theorists have taken this to present a major challenge to moral theorizing. However, the chapter argues that, while we should acknowledge the malleability of human behaviour, we should not give up the notion of responsible agency. Rather, we need to broaden our theoretical horizon in order to include individuals’ co-responsibility for the contexts in which they act. This argument is a general one, but it is of particular relevance for organizations: it is our shared responsibility to turn them into contexts in which moral agency is supported rather than undermined.

Effect of Power on Moral Judgment

1978 ◽  
Vol 42 (2) ◽  
pp. 387-394
Author(s):  
Russell Hamby
Keyword(s):  
Social Psychology ◽  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
Low Power ◽  
Moral Judgment ◽  
Factorial Design ◽  
High Power ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Need For Power ◽  
Experimenter Effects

Ambiguous effects of power on attributions of moral responsibility for an accident are interpreted to result from the intervening effects of need for power, which is aroused by the anticipation of exercising power over another. 160 subjects from introductory social psychology classes participated in a questionnaire-type experiment comparing effects of high/low carelessness, severe/minor consequences, and high/low power of the attributor in a 2 × 2 × 2 factorial design. In a follow-up experiment 30 subjects were assigned to conditions of high or low power, and their needs for power and moral attributions were measured. High power seemed to arouse need for power, which was curvilinearly related to moral judgments. Those high and low in need for power attributed more moral responsibility to the perpetrator of an accident than those with moderate levels of need for power. The results suggest complicated models of both moral judgments and experimenter effects related to the level or arousal of motivations.

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