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Experiments and conclusions of ‘situationist’ social psychology have been seen by some as grounds for doubting that there are any virtues or vices, or more broadly any traits of character, at all. This chapter explores the experimental and theoretical basis of doubts that human behaviour is consistent enough from one type of situation to another to manifest anything worth calling a virtue. It argues that behavioral dispositions are probably acquired as merely probabilistic tendencies or as situation-specific modules, but that even so some of them may be virtues or parts of virtue. Less situation-specific and arguably more important as traits of character are qualities that are not directly behavioral dispositions, but lie behind them, such as important desires, cognitive states, and political and religious affiliations.

Psychological experiments and other empirical data seem to show that good traits of character (even if real) are frail, rather easily overcome by some types of temptation, and are dependent on social context and social support (and thus on ‘moral luck’) for their development, continuance, and behavioural manifestation. It is argued that excellence is not incompatible with fragility, and that the excellence of virtue is no less valuable for being in large part a gift rather than an individual achievement.

Virtue, comprehensively considered, is intrinsic excellence of persisting moral character, and excellence of moral character must be excellence in being for what is good. This chapter elaborates the concepts of being forsomething, of the good that virtue is for, and of excellence. The concept of a particular virtue or excellent trait of moral character is distinguished from, and related to, the more comprehensive concept of virtue.

Emotion, mood, and character are entwined in a life narrative. Moods are intentional; drawing on Robert Musil's work on the emotions, it is argued that emotion and mood are distinguished by the degree of specificity of their object. Character traits are dispositions to have thoughts and feelings of a certain sort. The idea that the notion of character is fundamentally mistaken—the fundamental attribution error—is challenged. Sometimes people fail to act according to their traits, and this can be explained by reference to an excusing reason: a non‐rational influence on thinking, or an undue influence on thinking. Milgram's obedience experiments are discussed in some detail.

This chapter has three central aims. First, it examines the validity of the claim that mainstream psychology has neglected the study of positive character traits and argues that the field of personality psychology has actually led to important advances in the understanding of character traits and their outcomes. Second, it evaluates the Values in Action (VIA) classification of character strengths and summarizes research testing its empirical structure, assessing its overlap with the Big Five trait dimensions and comparing its predictive validity to the Big Five. Third, it suggests ways in which the field of positive psychology can move forward, applying the lessons of nearly a century of personality psychology. Future research needs to address validity concerns, forge links between the character strengths and underlying processes, and pursue large-scale longitudinal studies examining normative development, the efficacy of interventions, and long-term real-world outcomes.

It is argued here that reference to the agent's purpose or purposes is essential to action explanations and that in fact the belief‐desire theory presupposes such purposes in any case. Action explanations are thus essentially teleological. The suggestion is explored that reference to character traits can be used to meet ‘Davidson's Challenge’ to explain how reasons explanations could work without including a non‐teleological, causal mechanism.

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.

Moral psychology is central to modern virtue ethics, whose proponents have claimed greater psychological realism as a theoretical advantage. Yet much empirical research in personality and social psychology appears to unsettle familiar notions of character, prompting critics to advance skeptical views of character as portrayed in philosophical virtue ethics. In response, some defenders of virtue ethics have acknowledged the importance of incorporating the empirical literature into philosophical conceptions of character. This chapter moves the discussion forward by exploring avenues available to, and difficulties faced by, an empirically sensitive psychology of character. It considers virtue-ethical ideals of practical rationality, as well as certain basic moral norms, in light of the picture of human cognition now emerging in the cognitive sciences. The chapter interprets some of the classic psychological experiments as evidence that morally consequential behavior is pervasively influenced by cognitive processes resistant to intentional direction and at best insensitive to personal, reflectively endorsed moral norms, if not contrary to them. Lastly, on the basis of this understanding, the chapter surveys the prospects for using empirical findings to seek remedies for such adverse influences on moral thinking and behavior.

This chapter identifies various ways in which prosecutorial actions might relate to value and elaborates five kinds of value that prosecutorial action may have: (1) consequential value, the value prosecutorial action may have in virtue of its actual or expected consequences, and four kinds of intrinsic value; (2) telic value, the value prosecutorial action may have insofar as it attempts to secure valuable consequences, even when those consequences are neither expected nor actually realized; (3) expressive value, the value prosecutorial action may have insofar as it denounces wrongdoing or exonerates the blameless; (4) retributive value, the value prosecutorial action may have insofar as it imposes suffering upon wrongdoers commensurate to their wrongdoing; and (5) constitutive value, the value prosecutorial actions may have insofar as they are constitutive of valuable character traits in the prosecutor's state and/or community.

Results in social psychology cast doubt on the existence of robust character traits of the sort that people normally take for granted, and the sort that virtue ethics must appeal to. We should try to stop thinking in terms of character traits.

This chapter does some preliminary conceptual work in order to clarify how terms such as ‘character traits,’ ‘dispositions,’ and ‘virtues’ will be used. Most important of all, by getting clearer conceptually in this area, the chapter aims to show that we can make sense of the idea that there are character traits which are neither virtues nor vices. This will then set the stage for the chapters to come which argue that these are precisely the traits that most of us actually possess.

This chapter offers an alternative to the standard success-oriented epistemological theories by arguing that the highest epistemic good is a state which includes much more than the achievement of true beliefs and the avoidance of false ones. Indeed, it includes much more than knowledge: it requires understanding of important truths. For some of the intellectual virtues are best understood as directed at understanding rather than truth or knowledge. Whether the goal of the intellectual virtues is truth or understanding, reliable success cannot be necessary for the possession of an intellectual virtue given that some of the most impressive intellectual giants such as Aristotle, Newton, and Galileo are not noted for their success. The intellectual virtues should therefore be understood in terms of the values at which they aim, not the values they reliably bring about. The upshot of giving up success oriented approaches in epistemology will provide greater clarity in understanding intellectual virtues.

This chapter illustrates and analyzes an important coping strategy that has been neglected in the literature on procrastination: the leveraging strategy. Although one must know oneself quite well to use it, it has some significant advantages and so is worth considering, particularly when other strategies are not working or are out of place. Its main advantages are that it can be used even when no external incentives or constraints are conveniently available, and it avoids the dangers associated with magnifying the significance of lapses by casting every relevant choice as a crucial test of one’s self-control. Theoretically, the strategy is initially somewhat puzzling, since it seems to rely on having a significant amount of self-control; but such self-control is, it seems, precisely what is lacking. The puzzle dissolves once one recognizes the possibility that self-control can figure as a local trait rather than a robust character trait.

The various helping studies in psychology seem to challenge the widespread possession of the virtue of compassion. That is a negative conclusion. But collectively these studies point in the direction of a positive account of character traits related to helping, one that has not been discussed much if at all. The goal of this chapter is to systematically introduce this positive account.

The goal of this book is to outline a framework for thinking about what moral character looks like today, and then apply that framework to a number of different topics in both psychology and philosophy. First, though, this chapter does some preliminary conceptual work in order to clarify both how terms such as ‘character traits,’ ‘dispositions,’ and ‘virtues’ will be used as well as their relationship.

This chapter begins by addressing a challenge to the proposal that comes from a rival psychological model of character and helping. Then section two sketches some of the aspects of the account of Mixed Helping Traits which can be carried over to thinking about our character traits in general. Section three examines a few important studies of non-moral traits which, if they had arrived at similar results for moral traits, would have supported the general framework that is being advanced here. Section four briefly reviews an important set of studies on specifically moral behavior which found results very much in line with the framework. Finally, section five develops some general principles for the experimental study of moral character which should seem plausible in light of the previous chapters.

This chapter discusses an issue raised in David Charles' Meaning and Essence in Aristotle, Chapter 12: can the intimate relationship between definition and explanation that Aristotle defends in the Posterior Analytics be maintained in a scientific study of animals in the face of their complex natures? It is argued that the concept of bios (way of life) plays a critical role in this respect, accounting for why different animals have the particular constellation of parts and activities they have. By looking at the central role this concept plays both in the organization of biological information in the History of Animals and in the explanation of animal differentiation in the Parts of Animals, the chapter argues that an animal's way of life is that defining feature which explains the coordinated differentiation of its parts and activities into a functional unity.