Conclusion

The interdisciplinary science of virtue and character measurement is in its infancy. In this volume, we hope to have moved the conversation forward. We took the first step toward this in Chapter 1 by introducing our working conception of virtue. This is a modified Aristotelianism which we integrated with Whole Trait Theory (WTT). The point of doing this was to combine the richness of an extremely influential philosophical approach to virtue with a promising empirical framework of personality traits that allows for the psychological measurement of virtue. In ...

Strategies for Character Measurement

Chapter 5 takes offers strategies for the measurement of character as a whole, not just of specific virtues. Specifically, it discusses measuring virtue constellations to describe the co-manifestation of multiple virtues that (in part) constitute a person’s character; the measurement of the regulative function of practical wisdom (or phronēsis) as one way of explaining interrelations among virtues, and the measurement of the reflective function of practical wisdom as it contributes to conscious awareness of the dynamics among virtues and manifests in virtue-relevant goals, values, and identity.

Our Working Model of Virtue

Chapter 1, “Our Working Model of Virtue,” presents the conception of virtue that informs the authors’ thinking throughout the volume. This is a modified Aristotelianism, which the authors seek to integrate with Whole Trait Theory (WTT), an empirical account of traits recently developed by Will Fleeson and Eranda Jayawickreme. The authors argue that WTT provides an attractive framework within which to situate a robust account of virtue inspired by Aristotle, whose work on virtue has been especially influential in contemporary virtue ethics. They develop this integrated account of virtue in Chapter 1. They regard it as “ecumenical” in the sense that their account should appeal to a large number of virtue ethicists and virtue theorists, namely, those who endorse a conception of virtue as a type of global trait.

Strategies for Measuring Virtue

Chapter 2 provides a review and evaluation of work that has been and is currently being done on virtue measurement. It is divided into five parts. The first provides a brief primer on quantitative measurement. The second discusses strategies for measuring discrete, single virtues, namely, gratitude, courage, honesty, compassion, and humility. The third section takes up strategies for measuring clusters of virtues, and the fourth, the few efforts that have been made to measure virtues comprehensively. The fifth section concludes by evaluating the conceptual and methodological strengths and weakness of these approaches. The chapter highlights the need for the more thorough and theoretically framed approach offered throughout the rest of the book.

Introduction

The Introduction discusses the main objectives of the book, describes who it will be relevant for and why, and lays out the plan for each chapter. The main objective of the book is twofold. First, it offers accounts of virtue and character that are both philosophically sound and psychologically realistic—and thus, able to be operationalized into empirically measurable variables. Second, it offers a range of strategies for how virtue and character (so conceived) can be systematically measured. This work will be of interest to philosophers, psychologists and education theorists who are interested in virtue and character.

Integrating Virtues

Chapter 4 moves beyond providing an account of individual virtues to advance a conception of character. Here “character” means the integration of a constellation of virtues within personality. The chapter presents and defends an “integration” thesis, which means that the distinctiveness of individual characters can be explained by investigating interrelations among the unique arrays of virtues that people possess and display. The integration thesis is essentially practical, maintaining that virtues develop together uniquely in individual personalities as people respond to the virtue-relevant circumstances of their daily lives. Character has been much discussed in the history of philosophy, especially in debates about the unity or reciprocity of the virtues. The chapter situates the integration thesis vis-à-vis this literature, arguing that it is preferable to a number of views on the virtues and how they are unified (or not) to form character.

Strategies for Measuring Virtues

In Chapter 3 we use our working conception of virtue developed in Chapter 1 to anchor an integrated proposal for virtue measurement. More specifically, we argue that what is needed to accurately measure any virtue is a multilayered research program that allows us to track the degree to which a person exhibits each of several aspects of trait manifestation: (1) the perception of virtue-relevant stimuli (the “inputs”); (2) the processing of those inputs by various social-cognitive systems (the “intermediates”); and (3) the production of situation-specific virtue-appropriate behaviors (the “outputs”). Sensitivity to the connections between these components is of prime importance for accurately measuring virtue. We provide an inclusive overview of these elements of virtue and strategies for their measurement.