## 1. Situationism in Philosophy



In the late 1960s and 70s, what became the situationist movement in
psychology took center stage. An intense 'person-situation
debate' ensued which called into question the existence of
traditional personality traits and even the need for the discipline of
personality psychology. Writers describing this era called it
"traumatic" and "intense", involving
"warfare" and "heated but futile battles"
(Mischel 2009: 283, 1999b: 39). By the 1980s, though, many
psychologists parted ways with the situationist movement, and today
very few would subscribe to the claims that were advanced at that
time.


### 1.1 An Argument Against Aristotelian Virtue Ethics



This entry will not delve into the debate in psychology (see Miller
2014: chapter 4 for extensive discussion). It is mentioned in order to
set the stage for the much later situationist movement in philosophy.
The main philosophers responsible for jumpstarting this discussion
were Gilbert Harman in a series of papers dating back to 1999, and
John Doris in several papers and most importantly in his 2002 book,
*Lack of Character: Personality and Moral Behavior* (Harman
1999, 2000, 2001, 2003, 2009; Doris 1998, 2002, 2010; and Merritt et
al. 2010. For others supporting their views, see Blackburn 1998:
36-37; Campbell 1999; Hurka 2001: 44; Goldie 2004: chapter 3;
Vranas 2005; Appiah 2008: chapter 2; Upton 2009; Badhwar 2009;
Sarkissian 2010; and Alfano 2013). Broadly speaking, Harman and Doris
used studies and claims that were influential during the situationist
movement in psychology, and applied them to debates in contemporary
ethical theory. In particular, their focus was on how the empirical
data, as they interpreted it, could cause trouble for Aristotelian
virtue ethics.



Their broad argumentative strategy proceeded in two stages:


* *Stage One*. Draw on studies in psychology to show that people
typically do not have what they call global character traits.
* *Stage Two*. Show that this is a serious problem for
Aristotelian virtue ethics, as well as any other view in normative
ethics which is committed in some central way to global character
traits.



First we need to clarify what global character traits are before
diving into the details of the two stages. According to Doris, global
character traits have two main features:


* *Consistency*. Character traits are reliably manifested in
trait-relevant behavior across a diversity of trait-relevant eliciting
conditions that may vary widely in their conduciveness to the
manifestation of the trait in question.
* *Stability*. Character traits are reliably manifested in
trait-relevant behavior over iterated trials of similar trait-relevant
eliciting conditions (Doris 2002: 22. A third feature he mentions,
evaluative integration, does not factor much into his
discussion.).



An example would help. Consider temperance. A person with this trait
is expected to exhibit it over time in the same kind of situation, say
when eating at restaurants. But she is also expected to exhibit it
across situations which are relevant to the trait, such as drinking,
sexual activity, and so forth, as well as eating at home, eating at
airports, eating with friends, eating alone, and the like. The same is
true for other examples of what we might call
"traditional" virtues, such as courage, honesty, and
kindness. Vices like cruelty and dishonesty count as global character
traits as well.



With this background in place, let us turn to the two stages.


#### 1.1.1 Stage One: Against Widespread Possession of Global Character Traits



On the basis of certain studies in psychology, Harman and Doris
reasoned roughly as follows (this reconstruction is from Miller 2014:
192):


* If there is widespread possession of the traditional virtues and
vices understood as global character traits, then systematic empirical
observation using appropriate psychology experiments will reveal most
people behaving in a certain kind of way.
* However, systematic empirical observation using appropriate
psychology experiments fails to reveal that most people act in this
kind of way.
* Therefore, there is not widespread possession of the traditional
virtues and vices understood as global character traits (for more, see
Doris 1998: 505-507; Merritt et al. 2010: 357-358).



The "behaving in a certain kind of way" is behaving
virtuously. This could pertain to behaving virtuously over time in the
same situations (stability) or behaving virtuously across situations
(cross-situational consistency).



Harman and Doris did not take the experimental evidence to challenge
the stability of character traits. As we will see below, they were
happy to accept the widespread possession of what they called
"local" character traits which are restricted to narrow
situations like eating at home. Instead, their focus was on the
cross-situational consistency of global traits. There they thought
there is good empirical reason to believe most people do not have
virtues and vices which exhibit consistent behavior across
trait-relevant situations.



One way they could have argued for this was by examining the
psychological literature with respect to a variety of different kinds
of moral behavior, such as stealing, helping, eating, hurting, and so
forth, and seeing whether the data was compatible with the
corresponding virtue (or vice). Instead, though, Harman and Doris
chose the strategy of focusing in great detail on just one
virtue--compassion--and using the literature in psychology
on pro-social behavior.



The choice of compassion made a great deal of sense given the state of
the empirical literature. There are numerous studies that have been
done over the past sixty years on helping behavior, in contrast to
other kinds of morally relevant behavior which might pertain to other
virtues. Nevertheless, Harman and Doris did not take the conclusion of
their argument to apply just to one virtue, and so expected that
future studies in other areas of morality, when combined with whatever
studies we currently have, would tell a similar story about absent
virtue.



Focusing on helping and compassion, here are three of the studies
which occupied a central place in their discussion:


* *Dime in the Phone Booth*. The psychologists Isen and Levin had
an experimental group find a dime in the coin return slot of a phone
booth, whereas the control group did not. Individuals in both groups
subsequently had a chance to help pick up dropped papers. 88% in the
experimental group helped; only 4% in the control group did (Isen and
Levin 1972). There were replication problems with this study, but
there are many other studies on the effect of mood on helping which
found a similar pattern (see Miller 2013: chapter 3).
* *Lady in Distress*. In the 1969 "Lady in Distress"
experiment, participants heard a loud crash in the next room together
with a woman's scream. It sounded like a bookshelf had topped
down on her, and cries of pain quickly followed. The question was
whether participants would do anything to help. Those who were by
themselves helped 70% of the time. But shockingly, if a participant
was in the same room with a stranger who didn't do anything to
respond, helping happened only 7% of the time (Latane and Rodin
1969: 193-195; Latane and Darley 1970: 60-63).
* *Obedience to Authority*. Stanley Milgram's shock
experiments are arguably the most famous in the history of psychology.
Especially relevant is experiment five, where a participant had to
give a test to an innocent person in another room, and turn up a dial
with increasingly greater shocks for each wrong answer. At 270 volts,
the test taker demanded to be released from the test and was making
agonizing screams. At higher levels the pleas became desperate and
hysterical. Nevertheless, under pressure from an authority figure, 80%
of participants went at least to 270 volts, and 65% went all the way
to the 450 volt XXX level, which was a lethal level of shock (so they
thought) (Milgram 1974: 60).



Other studies include the Princeton Theological Seminary hurry study
(Darley and Batson 1973) and the Zimbardo prison experiment (Haney et
al. 1973).



How are these studies supposed to tell against the widespread
possession of the virtue of compassion? It isn't just that they
show people behaving less than virtuously in all three experimental
situations. After all, when participants found a dime, or when
participants were alone in the next room, they *did* tend to
help. In another version of the Milgram setup, when participants at
the 150 volt level heard commands from two authority figures which
contradicted either other, they immediately stopped at that level or
one more level above it (Milgram 1974: 95, 105-107).



Rather, the alleged conflict with the virtue of compassion stems from
the apparent failure on behalf of most participants to be
appropriately sensitive to the morally relevant considerations. A
compassionate person would not exhibit helping which is sensitive in
this way to finding a dime, or which is sensitive (in an emergency) to
the presence of an unresponsive bystander. Nor would they be so
*in*sensitive to the screams and eventual death of a test
taker. As Harman and Doris wrote,



> 
> 
> both disappointing omissions and appalling actions are
> *readily* induced through seemingly minor situations. What
> makes these findings so striking is just how *insubstantial*
> the situational influences that produce troubling moral failures seem
> to be (Merritt et al. 2010: 357, emphasis theirs; see also Doris 1998:
> 507, 2002: 2, 28, 35-36; Harman 2003: 90).
> 
> 
> 



It is important to be clear on exactly what Harman and Doris took
themselves to be arguing (here drawing on Miller 2014: 193-194).
They should not be read as advancing the following:



On metaphysical grounds the property of *being compassionate*
does not exist.



This is a matter of debate for metaphysics, and is not something that
these psychology experiments could establish. Furthermore, they should
not be read as arguing for the strong empirical claim that:



No human being has ever had any of the traditional virtues or vices
such as compassion, either as a matter of psychological necessity or
as a matter of contingent fact.



Doris admitted that, as far as the studies themselves showed, there
could be a few virtuous and a few vicious people (Doris 2002: 60, 65,
112, 122; see also Vranas 2005: 16).



At the same time, it would be a mistake to think that they were only
arguing for an absence of evidence claim like:



Given the psychological evidence, we are not justified in believing on
the basis of that evidence that most people possess the traditional
virtues or vices such as compassion.



They did indeed accept this, but they also made stronger claims as
well. Harman said that, "it may even be the case that there is
no such thing as character" (Harman 1999: 328; for recent
qualifications, see Harman 2009: 238, 241). Doris argued that,
"people typically lack character" (Doris 1998: 506, 2002:
2). In a co-authored article with Maria Merritt they together said
that, "Behavior is *not* typically ordered by robust
traits" (Merritt et al. 2010: 358, emphasis theirs).



Here, then, is how to understand their conclusion:



Given the psychological evidence, we are justified in believing on the
basis of that evidence that most people *do not* possess the
traditional virtues or vices such as compassion.



With this in mind, let us turn to the second stage of their
argument.


#### 1.1.2 Stage Two: The Problem for Aristotelian Virtue Ethics



Harman and Doris took the conclusion that most people do not possess
traditional virtues or vices and tried to show that it had problematic
consequences for certain positions in ethical theory. Specifically,
their main target was a broadly Aristotelian form of virtue ethics, as
well as any other theories which made use of empirical claims about
global character traits.



Here is Harman first, writing about Aristotelian views:



> 
> 
> this sort of virtue ethics presupposes that there are character traits
> of the relevant sort, that people differ in what character traits they
> have, and these traits help to explain differences in the way people
> behave (Harman 1999: 319).
> 
> 
> 



Next here is Doris in his 1998 paper:



> 
> 
> Aristotelian virtue ethics, when construed as invoking a generally
> applicable descriptive psychology...[is] subject to damaging
> empirical criticism (Doris 1998: 520).
> 
> 
> 



Their shared assumption seems to be that Aristotelians make not only
normative but also empirical claims, in particular that the moral
virtues and/or vices are widely held by most people (see also Merritt
2000: 366; Sreenivasan 2002: 48, 57, 63; Sabini and Silver 2005: 538).
Given that in the first stage they argued this is empirically
disconfirmed, it follows that Aristotelian virtue ethics is highly
problematic.



In his 2002 book, Doris's focus seemed to shift. Instead of
trying to show that the lack of virtue and vice provided evidence for
the falsity of Aristotelian virtue ethics, he instead appeared to take
the main upshot to be one about practicality, namely that virtue
ethics would no longer be practically relevant for most people who did
not have these traits (2002: chapter 6).



Here in this second stage it is hard to pin down exactly how the
argument was supposed to go. But Harman and Doris did succeed in
generating a lot of interest in these issues, mostly among
philosophers who ended up being critical of their work.



The remainder of this section briefly distinguishes seven leading
responses to Harman and Doris's situationist argument, and then
concludes with some comments about what our characters might look like
if indeed we do not have the traditional virtues.


### 1.2 Responses to the Argument



The responses are organized based on whether they address the first or
the second stage of the Harman and Doris argument.


#### 1.2.1 Responses that Address Stage One



The following responses address the argument against global character
traits.


* *Deficiencies of Particular Experiments for Evaluating
Character*. A natural question to ask is whether the experiments
cited by Harman and Doris really do show that most people lack the
virtue of compassion. Several philosophers have argued that they do
not.



For instance, Miller (2003) raised questions about *Dime in the
Phone Booth*. Serious concerns have arisen about the Zimbardo
prison experiment, with calls to remove it from psychology textbooks
(Blum 2018). Others have not been convinced that the Milgram
experiments and the Darley and Batson Princeton Seminary experiment
shed much light on the possession of compassion (see Sreenivasan 2002:
60-61; Annas 2003: 14 (see Other Internet Resources); Adams
2006: 147; Snow 2010: 103-107, 111-116. For general
discussion of this line of response, see Montmarquet 2003:
365-368; Russell 2009: 279-287). Concerning bystander
intervention studies like "Lady in Distress," it could be
objected that they are carried out artificially in a lab. In one of
the only naturalistic studies of bystander interventions ever
conducted, Philpot and colleagues (2019) analyzed 219 CCTV video
recordings of aggressive behavior in public urban areas in the
Netherlands, South Africa, and the United Kingdom. They found that,
"at least one bystander intervened in 90.9% of the situations,
with an average of 3.76 interveners per video," although on the
flip side the mean number of bystanders at any given incident was
16.29 (Philpot et al. 2019).



If a sufficient number of studies are called into question this way,
then stage one of the argument would not go through, and hence it
would not matter how exactly the second stage of the argument was
meant to go (for criticism of this response, see Russell 2009:
279-287).
* *Competing Virtues*. This next response can be seen as a
different version of the previous one. It calls into question the
first stage of the Harman/Doris argument by suggesting that the
results of the relevant studies are best interpreted, not as
demonstrating a lack of virtue, but rather as suggesting the
contribution of competing virtues. Or a weaker version of this
response would say that, at the very least, Harman and Doris have not
done enough to rule out this hypothesis.



For instance, instead of saying that the standard Milgram experiment
is evidence that most participants did not have the virtue of
compassion, perhaps a better interpretation is to say that their
compassion was being outweighed by the work of another virtue which
seemed at the time to have greater priority (perhaps mistakenly). One
candidate for this virtue could be obedience. Or take the *Lady in
Distress* study. Here again participants might have had their
compassion outweighed by another virtue, such as trust, as they
followed the example of the other person in the room who did not
respond. Additional candidates for competing virtues could likewise be
found for the other studies that get mentioned in this debate (for
discussion see Solomon 2003: 53, 55-56; Kamtekar 2004: 473;
Kristjansson 2008: 64-65; Snow 2010: 106. For criticism
see Harman 2003: 91; Prinz 2009: 123; Russell 2009: 282-283,
286).
* *Mental States are Important Too*. One claim commonly made in
the situationist literature in psychology, was that so-called
"situational forces", as opposed to global character
traits or even more familiar folk mental states such as beliefs and
desires, are part of the best explanation for our behavior (see for
instance Ross and Nisbett 1991: 59; Sabini and Silver 2005:
546-554). In a paper published in the journal *Ethics* in
2005, the leading psychologists John Sabini and Maury Silver engaged
with the work of Harman and Doris by primarily criticizing this claim.
Their approach was to reassess the leading studies such as *Lady in
Distress*, in order to show that mental states and perhaps even
character traits are indeed central to explaining the results.
Summarizing their view, they wrote that,



> 
> 
> People who must act in such circumstances are confused and inhibited
> by the anticipation of embarrassment, and that we argue is the lesson
> to be drawn from social psychological research. People are also, we
> suggest, unaware of how potent fear of embarrassment is as a
> motivation for behavior (Sabini and Silver 2005: 559).
> 
> 
> 



Thus in contrast to the claim about situational forces, Sabini and
Silver held that psychological causes such as fear of embarrassment
are ineliminable from the best explanation and prediction of morally
relevant behavior. But they did accept that these studies provide
support for the influence of, "features of the immediate
situation which are not in themselves of moral significance"
(2005: 561). So putting the pieces together, they seemed to hold that
psychological dispositions do exist and constitute various character
traits, but those character traits end up not being virtuous (for a
similar line of response, see Kupperman 2001: 245-247; Solomon
2003: 48, 56; Wielenberg 2006: 471-490; for criticism see
Russell 2009: 288; Merritt et al. 2010: 367-369).
* *CAPS*. Philosophers such as Nancy Snow and Daniel Russell have
made use of the "cognitive-affective personality system"
or "CAPS" model in psychology, in developing an
Aristotelian response to situationism (Miller 2003; Adams 2006:
131-138; Russell 2009: chapters 8-10; Snow 2010: chapter
1). Because the CAPS model will be covered in the next section,
discussion of this response is postponed until then.


#### 1.2.2 Responses that Address Stage Two



The remaining responses address the link from the evidence against
global character traits, to the conclusion that Aristotelian virtue
ethics is problematic.


* *Rarity*. Perhaps the most widely used response by defenders of
Aristotelian virtue ethics, the rarity response just denies that any
reasonable form of the view is committed to the empirical claim that
most people have the virtues. Instead, virtue ethics could be true as
a normative theory while as a matter of contingent fact people in a
given society are doing a poor job of acquiring the virtues (for a few
references among many, see DePaul 1999: 150-153; Miller 2003;
Kamtekar 2004: 466; Wielenberg 2006: 490; Russell 2009: 170; for
criticism of the response, see Annas 2003 (see Other Internet
Resources), 2011: 173; Russell 2009: 284).



This is not an *ad hoc* revision to the view designed to defend
it against situationist challenges. Plato and Aristotle long ago
thought that virtue is rare, as have most philosophers working on
character throughout the intervening years (see DePaul 1999 on Plato
and *Nicomachean Ethics* 1099b29-32, 1103b16-31,
1152a30-34, 1179b25-29, 1180a1-5, 15-19). As
Aristotle wrote,



> 
> 
> the many naturally obey fear, not shame; they avoid what is base
> because of the penalties, not because it is disgraceful. For since
> they live by their feelings, they pursue their proper pleasures and
> the sources of them, and avoid the opposed pains, and have not even a
> notion of what is fine and truly pleasant, since they have had no
> taste of it (*Nicomachean Ethics* 1179b11-16).
> 
> 
>
* *Wrong Conception of Aristotelian Character*. Some
Aristotelians acknowledged that Harman and Doris succeeded in raising
problems for the empirical adequacy of a certain picture of character
traits, but they complained that this picture is not a sufficiently
nuanced and sophisticated Aristotelian one. Hence Rachana Kamtekar
wrote,



> 
> 
> the character traits conceived of as debunked by situationist social
> psychological studies have very little to do with character as it is
> conceived of in traditional virtue ethics. Traditional virtue ethics
> offers a conception of character far superior to the one under attack
> by situationism (Kamtekar 2004: 460; for similar claims, see DePaul
> 1999: 149-150; Kupperman 2001: 241-243; Annas 2003: 13
> (see Other Internet Resources), 2011: 172-176).
> 
> 
> 



Kamtekar noted several differences. One is that, on the Aristotelian
picture, virtues are supposed to be, "dispositions to respond
appropriately--in judgment, feeling, and action--to
one's situation" (2004: 477). Furthermore, Aristotle was
clear that they require practical wisdom, which is a
"disposition to deliberate well about what conduces to the good
life in general" (2004: 480). And while the virtues do require
cross-situational consistency, this needs to be handled carefully,
since it is consistency relative to the individual's own outlook
on life, as shaped by her values, goals, plans, and the like. So to
outside observers, someone might be acting very inconsistently, but
from her own perspective the pattern of behavior makes perfect sense
(2004: 485, for criticism of this response, see Adams 2006: 121; Sosa
2009: 280-283; Merritt et al. 2010: 358-360).
* *Aristotelian Conception of Character is the Wrong Conception*.
Other participants in this discussion have shown less interest in
defending Aristotelian conceptions of character. Instead they wanted
to see what non-Aristotelian accounts have to offer, and whether they
can better accommodate studies like those cited above. Three examples
of philosophers who have gone in this direction are Maria Merritt, who
supported a Humean account, Eric Wielenberg, who supported a Kantian
account, and Edward Slingerland, who supported a Confucian account
(Merritt 2000; Wielenberg 2006: 466, 469; Slingerland 2011).


#### 1.2.3 Conclusion



This is not the place to evaluate these different responses and see
which if any of them is the strongest. It is important to note,
however, that they should not be treated in isolation. For instance,
someone might combine a first stage response such as *Mental States
are Important Too* with a second stage response such as
*Rarity*.



Let me conclude this discussion with two points. First, we should
briefly consider what the empirical story about character might look
like if we grant that most people do not have the traditional virtues.
After all, philosophers can accept that conclusion without having to
accept the arguments Harman and Doris offered drawing on the
experimental literature. As noted already, Plato and Aristotle both
accepted it, as have many others.



Here, then, are a few of the leading options for what a positive story
about most people's actual character might look like:


* Most people have the vices, such as dishonesty and cowardice,
which are global character traits as well. Harman and Doris claim that
this position is empirically inadequate too, but not everyone agrees
(Bates and Kleingeld 2018).
* Most people have local character traits, which are virtues and
vices restricted to narrow types of situations such as the courtroom
or the bar. Harman seems to be amenable to this position, and Doris
explicitly accepts it (Doris 1998: 507-508, 2002: 23, 25,
64).
* Most people have mixed character traits, which are global traits
that are neither good enough to qualify as virtues nor bad enough to
qualify as vices. They are constituted by some morally positive and
some morally negative dispositions. Miller (2013, 2014) develops this
position at length.



Clearly much additional work is needed to better understand how our
characters are actually put together.



The second point is that discussions in philosophy of situationism are
showing no signs of slowing down, even twenty years after Harman and
Doris's original work appeared. A significant development, for
instance, has been to extend the debate to the epistemic virtues and
vices, with potentially troubling implications arising for certain
forms of virtue epistemology (Alfano 2012; Doris and Olin 2014; Alfano
and Fairweather 2017). A number of other topics related to
situationism remain underexplored (for examples, see Miller 2017).


## 2. The CAPS Model



One thread left over from the previous section had to do with the
so-called "cognitive-affective personality system" or
"CAPS" model. It will take a bit of work to introduce the
model. But it is worth doing, since CAPS is currently receiving a lot
of attention in the situationist literature in philosophy (Miller
2003; Adams 2006: 131-138; Russell 2009: chapters 8-10;
Snow 2010: chapter 1). Plus, regardless of its relevance to that
literature, the CAPS model might have some important resources of its
own to offer as an empirical approach to thinking about character.
This section first provides the needed background before turning to
some of the philosophical implications.


### 2.1 Background



Walter Mischel is often hailed as the leader of the situationist
movement in psychology, especially in his 1968 book *Personality
and Assessment*. But as he notes in a 1973 paper, that book



> 
> 
> has been widely misunderstood to imply that people show no
> consistencies, that individual differences are unimportant, and that
> "situations" are the main determinants of behavior
> (Mischel 1973: 254).
> 
> 
> 



Indeed, he writes, it



> 
> 
> would be wasteful to create pseudo-controversies that pit person
> against situation in order to see which is more important (Mischel
> 1973: 255-256).
> 
> 
> 



During the subsequent decades, he proceeded to develop what came to be
known as the CAPS model, along with the help of Yuichi Shoda and Jack
Wright among others (for a leading statement of the model, see Mischel
and Shoda 1995). Here we focus on just a few features of the model, in
particular cognitive-affective units,
if...then...situation-behavior contingencies,
psychologically salient features of situations, and intraindividual
behavioral signatures.


#### 2.1.1 Cognitive-Affective Units



*Cognitive-affective units* are the basic building blocks of
the CAPS model. They are not global character traits, but rather
specific mental states and processes. Here is Mischel's list
from the 1973 paper (Mischel 1973: 265, 275; for an updated version,
see Mischel and Shoda 1995: 252):


* Behavior-outcome and stimulus-outcome expectancies in particular
situations
* Subjective stimulus values
* Self-regulatory systems and plans
* Construction competencies
* Encoding strategies and personal constructs



Despite this sophisticated terminology, what Mischel is referring to
is perfectly familiar. The first item has to do with instrumental
beliefs (beliefs about the best means to an end), the second with
desires, the third with goals and plans, and the final two with
general capacities to process incoming information and perform mental
and physical behaviors (for further discussion, see Mischel 1973,
1984: 353, 2004: 4-5, 11, 2009: 284; Shoda 1999:
165-171).


#### 2.1.2 If-Then Situation-Behavior Contingencies



*If-then situation-behavior contingencies* are another central
feature of the CAPS model. These contingencies are conditional
statements representing some facet of an individual's
personality, where the "if" is a situation and the
"then" is a behavior. For example, Mischel and his
colleagues studied children's behavior at a summer treatment
camp. They found in one case that if a child was teased by a peer,
then he would be unlikely to exhibit verbal aggression. The same was
not true, though, for another child (for relevant data from this camp,
see Mischel 1984: 361-362; Wright and Mischel 1987; and Shoda et
al. 1993, 1994). This difference can be explained by appealing to
their different cognitive-affective units. Some children might want to
hurt someone who is teasing them, whereas others may want to run away
(for more on individual differences in the CAPS model, see Mischel and
Shoda 1995: 253, 1998: 237-240, 2008: 211-212). More
generally, Mischel and Shoda write that,



> 
> 
> Features of situations activate a set of internal reactions--not
> just cognitive but also affective--based on the
> individual's prior experience with those features (Mischel and
> Shoda 1995: 251).
> 
> 
> 



And those reactions can lead to subsequent behavior.


#### 2.1.3 Nominal versus Psychologically Salient Features of Situations



This distinction is always taken to be central to CAPS, and figures
prominently in the recent philosophical literature on character (for
two examples, see Russell 2009: chapters 8 to 10; Snow 2010: chapter
1). Psychologically salient features are defined as:



> 
> 
> the features of the situation that have significant meaning for a
> given individual or type, and that are related to the experienced
> psychological situation--the thoughts and affects and goals that
> become activated within the personality system (Mischel 2004: 15).
> 
> 
> 



Nominal characteristics are defined as more generic features that
third party observers would use in describing a situation, such as the
physical location, time, or event. Examples include being at the
bowling alley, eating lunch, doing taxes, talking on the computer with
Smith, and watching a movie (this distinction is related to the
technical terminology in psychology of idiographic versus nomothetic
approaches. Very roughly, idiographic approaches use criteria supplied
by the participant in question, whereas nomothetic approaches use
criteria supply by individuals besides the participant. For careful
discussion, see Lamiell 1997).



The idea is that situations might seem very different to observers on
the basis of their nominal features, but to the person in question
there could be important similarities (or *vice versa*). For
instance, a person could perceive criticism of himself at the bowling
alley and the office, and use the same defensive strategies in both
cases even though they might seem to be so different in other
respects. The more general lesson is that psychologists need to pay
attention to both nominal and psychologically salient features of
situations when studying personality.


#### 2.1.4 Intraindividual Behavioral Signatures



Putting all these pieces together, we can introduce the next component
of the CAPS model, the *intraindividual behavioral signature*.
Rather than focusing on the individual's behavior in just one
situation, the behavioral signature depicts her pattern of behavior
across multiple situations. And what individuates the situations is
their psychologically relevant features. For instance, Mischel and
colleagues came up with behavioral signatures for the children at the
summer camp, by examining their aggressive behavior across situations
such as peer teasing, "when approached by a peer", and
"when warned by an adult counselor" (Shoda 1999: 160). Not
surprisingly, the children tended to behave differently from one
situation to the next. Thus the CAPS model,



> 
> 
> predicts that the person's behavior in a domain will change from
> one situation to another--when the *if* changes, so will
> the *then*--even if the personality system were to remain
> entirely unchanged (Mischel and Shoda 1995: 257, emphasis theirs).
> 
> 
> 



(For more on behavioral signatures, see Shoda et al. 1994:
675-678, Mischel and Shoda 1995: 249, 251, 255, 258, 1998: 242,
245, 2008: 208, 224, 228, 233.)



Let me stop the presentation of CAPS at this point, although there is
much more to the view. Mischel offers a helpful summary of what we
have covered thus far:



> 
> 
> As the person experiences situations that contain different
> psychological features, different [cognitive-affective units] and
> their characteristic interrelationships become activated in relation
> to these features. Consequently, the activation of
> [cognitive-affective units] changes from one time to another and from
> one situation to another...Although cognitions and affects that
> are activated at a given time change, *how* they change, that
> is, the sequence and pattern of their activation, remains stable,
> reflecting the stable structure of the organization within the system.
> The result is a distinctive pattern of
> *if...then...*relations, or behavioral signatures,
> manifested as the individual moves across different situations (2004:
> 11, emphasis his).
> 
> 
> 



With this in mind, let us now turn to some of the philosophical
implications.


### 2.2 Philosophical Relevance of CAPS



Leaving aside the situationism debate for a moment, is there anything
in the CAPS model, at least as presented above, which could be
relevant to philosophers working on character? To address this
question, we first need to connect CAPS to character traits, as
nothing thus far in this section has explicitly mentioned traits.



Mischel and company are not very helpful when it comes to making this
connection. They say different things about traits in different
places, sometimes wanting to distance themselves from traits and other
times seeming to embrace them. When they do embrace them, they
understand them in different ways, for instance as causal dispositions
(in some passages) or as mere summaries of past behavior (in other
places).



Rather than get bogged down in textual interpretation of
Mischel's work, we can simply note that there appears to be a
straightforward path from the CAPS model to the acceptance of
character traits understood as causal dispositions to think, feel, and
act in various ways (see Mumford 1998: 182; Kamtekar 2004: 472, 477;
Adams 2006: 131-138; Badhwar 2009: 279; Russell 2009: xii, 172,
292-293, 330; Sosa 2009: 279; Lukes 2009: 292). We have seen
that the CAPS model already accepts dispositions to form, say,
instrumental beliefs, desires, values, and goals. These were among the
"cognitive-affective units". These units tend to be
relatively enduring psychological structures in a person's mind,
they are sensitive to their own activating conditions, and, upon being
activated, they serve to cause the formation of occurrent mental
states like beliefs and (other things being equal) behavior. They are
also the basis for true "if...then..."
conditionals, as we saw earlier.



To take an example, I am disposed to be afraid of rats. So if one
lands on my bed, I am likely to run away (to say the least). Upon
seeing a rat, my fear of rats would be triggered, leading to an
occurrent feeling of fear of this rat at this particular moment, which
connects with other mental goings-on that together lead me to run.



This last bit about other mental goings-on is important. My
disposition to fear rats is connected to all kinds of other
psychological dispositions, such as a disposition to believe that rats
carry diseases and that I should run away from them, a desire to not
catch any diseases from rats, and so forth. In other words, the CAPS
model accepts that there are *clusters* of interrelated mental
state dispositions, and that upon being activated they cause multiple
occurrent thoughts and feelings to be formed. As Mischel and Shoda
write,



> 
> 
> cognitive-affective representations and affective states interact
> dynamically and influence each other reciprocally. It is the
> organization of the relationships among them that forms the core of
> the personality structure and that guides and constrains their effects
> (2008: 211, see also 212, 219, 233).
> 
> 
> 



These clusters are typically not fleeting, they can explain the true
"if...then..." conditionals, and they are
manifest in the person's behavioral signature over time. So if I
see a rat on my bed, I will tend to behave a certain way. Similarly if
a few months later I see a rat in the kitchen, and so forth.



But now that we have clusters of psychological dispositions, we have
everything we need for a person to have moral character traits too.
For we can just *equate* a moral character trait with a cluster
of cognitive-affective units which pertain to a given moral domain (as
Mischel seems willing to do in some places; see Mischel and Shoda
1995: 257; Mischel 1999a: 456). Furthermore, they will be traits with
causal powers, since the psychological dispositions which are their
components have causal powers. Plus they can be global character
traits too--they can be activated in a variety of different
situations. In my simple example, the cluster of psychological
dispositions associated with my seeing rats can be activated in
situations ranging from the office to the pool to the bedroom. The
same could be true for clusters which are more centrally morally
relevant. But it is also important to note that the CAPS model by
itself does not entail that there are global traits--one could
accept only highly narrow or local traits instead. This is an
empirical matter.



Hence it appears that philosophers may have found a rich psychological
model to use in helping them to develop a more empirically informed
account of character traits. This model would allow for character
traits to exist, and for them to be widespread, have causal powers,
and be grounded in enduring psychological structures which are already
familiar from the philosophy of mind.



Two points of caution are worth making, though. The first concerns the
relevance of CAPS in responding to situationism. As we just noted, the
CAPS model does not by itself support the widespread possession of
global as opposed to local character traits. Furthermore, even if we
just focus on global character traits, the model does not--by
itself--provide any reason to think that the character traits
most people have are the traditional moral virtues like honesty. They
could be moral vices, or mixed traits, or something else altogether.
So it turns out that Harman and Doris could accept much of the CAPS
model, and still advance the first stage of their situationist
argument for the conclusion that most people do not have the
traditional moral virtues.



Secondly, while it would take more space than is available here to
properly explore, another reason for caution about the relevance of
CAPS has to do with whether it provides much of a theoretical advance
over commonsense folk psychology about the mind. The language of
cognitive-affective units, if...then...situation-behavior
contingencies, psychologically salient features of situations, and
intraindividual behavioral signatures might sound impressive, but
stripped away of this jargon, the model might not have much new to
offer to philosophers. Even some psychologists have expressed this
worry. For instance John Johnson, in a 1999 commentary in *European
Journal of Personality*, wrote:



> 
> 
> One limitation of the CAPS model is its failure to advance our
> scientific understanding of personality dynamics beyond how we already
> understand human action from common sense. As far as I can tell, the
> labeling and re-labeling of desires, beliefs, and abilities has simply
> reflected the psychological jargon popular at that point in
> history...I am surprised and somewhat depressed about the
> enthusiasm for the CAPS model, but not because the model is wrong. The
> problem is that settling for this model indicates that we are content
> to merely re-label common sense concepts with jargon, as opposed to
> developing a truly scientific model of personality dynamics (Johnson
> 1999: 449-450).
> 
> 
> 



Johnson focused here on the cognitive-affective units, but his claims
apply more generally to the rest of the CAPS model.



None of this calls into question the truth of the CAPS model. It just
raises a concern about how much of an advance the model will prove to
be to philosophers working on character, if it turns out to not offer
any additional theoretical insights, explanatory resources, or novel
predictions beyond what philosophers can infer based on their own
careful reflection on folk psychology (for much more on these issues,
see Miller 2016).


## 3. The Big Five



Back to psychology for a moment. As time went on, the situationist
movement ended up not ushering in the downfall of the study of
personality. In fact, global character traits have come to dominate
the field of personality psychology. The primary reason for this has
been the emergence of the Big Five or Five-Factor model. Today the Big
Five personality traits are all the rage, with thousands of papers
appearing in journals in recent years. Now one sees the study of
global personality traits described in terms of a
"renaissance" with "real progress toward
consensus" after "decades of floundering" (McCrae
and Costa 2003: 21, 20, 2008: 159).



Surprisingly, though, philosophers have said almost nothing about the
Big Five (for exceptions see Doris 2002: 67-71; Snow 2010:
11-12; Slingerland 2011: 397; Miller 2014: chapter 6). This
section first provides some background from the psychology literature,
before raising some relevant philosophical issues.


### 3.1 Background



The Big Five model is a taxonomy of personality traits. But before
jumping into the details, something should be said, even if too
briefly, about the relationship between personality traits and
character traits. Strikingly, for many decades in the twentieth
century, psychologists rarely invoked the language of "character
traits," although in recent years this has been changing. The
historical story is complex and beyond the scope of this article, but
one factor responsible for this aversion was the rise of positivism
and its dismal of value-laden concepts from scientific investigation,
with "character" begin regarded as one such concept.
Another factor was the rise of situationism in social psychology and
its related skepticism about the empirical adequacy of traditional
character traits (for more see Peterson and Seligman 2004: 55-9).



Such factors do not play as much of a role in the recent history of
psychology, but questions remain about how to classify traits,
especially personality and character traits. On one approach, for
instance, they are the very same thing. A trait like extraversion
would be both a personality trait and a character trait. An
alternative approach, and one likely favored by philosophers working
on character, is to claim that character traits are only one kind of
personality trait. How then would we distinguish between character
versus non-character personality traits?



There are several answers that can be given, but no consensus about
what is the right one. One answer is to say that the key issue is
responsibility; a character trait is a personality trait for which a
person who possesses it is (at least to some degree) responsible for
doing so. Another answer is to say that the key issue has to do with
normative standards; a character trait is a personality trait for
which a person who has it is, in that respect, an appropriate object
of normative assessment by the relevant norms (for details about these
approaches, see Miller 2014: chapter one).



But instead of unpacking these issues more, let's turn to the
Big Five directly. Starting mainly in the 1980s, psychologists arrived
at the Big Five taxonomy using two different paths (McCrae and John
1992: 181-187; Goldberg 1993: 30; for a review of earlier work,
see John et al. 2008a). Lewis Goldberg is most famously associated
with the first. He held that we can learn about personality traits
from ordinary language, as over long periods of time the way we speak
is shaped by the different ways people tend to be. Here is one
statement of his so-called "lexical hypothesis":



> 
> 
> The most promising of the empirical approaches to systematizing
> personality differences have been based on one critical assumption:
> Those individual differences that are of the most significance in the
> daily transactions of persons with each other will eventually become
> encoded in their language...[this] has a highly significant
> corollary: The more important is an individual difference in human
> transactions, the more languages will have an item for it (Goldberg
> 1981: 141-142, see also Saucier and Goldberg 1996b).
> 
> 
> 



Using this idea, Goldberg compiled long lists of trait words found in
ordinary language. These are three adjectives from his 1992 list of
100 Unipolar Markers (Goldberg 1992: 41):


* Fearful
* Fretful
* Generous



To pare down his list, Goldberg asked study participants to rate from
1 (extremely inaccurate) to 9 (extremely accurate) how well a
particular trait described themselves or others. Then using factor
analysis, Goldberg could see which trait adjectives are closely
related to each other, thereby making it reasonable to posit a
"factor" or "latent variable" which could
serve as a more fundamental underlying trait (Goldberg 1990, 1992,
1993 and Saucier and Goldberg 1996a; for an introduction to factor
analysis in psychology, see Leary 2004: 187-192). Fearful and
fretful, not surprisingly, were highly correlated, and were
categorized under the heading of "neuroticism" in the Big
Five.



A separate line of research also arrived at the Big Five taxonomy.
Here the idea was not to use trait adjectives, but rather to give
participants entire sentences to use as part of a personality
questionnaire. That way, some confusion could be avoided if, for
example, they did not know what a word like "fretful"
meant.



While there are many personality questionnaire used in Big Five
research (such as the NEO-FFI, HEXACO, TDA, BFAS, and BFI), it appears
that the NEO-PI-R, developed by the prominent personality
psychologists Robert McCrae and Paul Costa, continues to be the most
popular choice. Here are three examples of items participants might
have to respond to in taking it (NEO-PI-R Item Booklet-Form S: 3):


* I am easily frightened.
* I don't get much pleasure from chatting with people.
* I don't take civic duties like voting very seriously.



They would be asked to respond on a 1 to 5 scale anchored on
*strongly disagree* to *strongly agree*. Factor analysis
would then be run on this questionnaire data as well.



Many more analyses have been performed with both adjective and
questionnaire data, and using self, friend, spouse, employer, and
expert reports (McCrae 1982; McCrae and Costa 1987; Piedmont 1998:
52-56, chapter 5). Extensive cross-cultural work has also been
done with the items being translated into dozens of languages (McCrae
and Costa 1997; Piedmont 1998: 43-46, 73-74; Caprara and
Cervone 2000: 73-75). What often seems to
emerge are five basic or core personality traits (for a very
helpful review, see John et al. 2008a):


* Extraversion (also labeled Surgency, Energy, Enthusiasm)
* Agreeableness (also labeled Altruism, Affection)
* Conscientiousness (also labeled Constraint, Control of
Impulse)
* Neuroticism (also labeled Emotional Instability, Negative
Emotionality, Nervousness)
* Openness (also labeled Intellect, Culture, Originality,
Open-Mindedness)



If it turns out that these five core personality traits are
cross-culturally universal, then for any given person, you
can capture much (some Big Five researchers would even say all) of her
personality by determining her standing on these five dimensions. In a
large group of people, you would naturally expect to see differences
in their comparative standings, with some individuals being high on
agreeableness and others not, for instance.



It is important to note that in recent years some empirical challenges
have emerged about the cross-cultural universality of the Big Five.
This includes divergent findings in some locations in Africa
(Thalmayer et al. 2020, 2021), South America (Gurven et al. 2013), and
South Asia (Kunnel et al. 2019). Doubts have been expressed more
generally about the applicability of the framework to non-WEIRD
(western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic) populations
(Laajaj 2019), and a computational model has been developed to explain
cross-cultural differences in personality (Smaldino et al. 2019). 



In cases where you can arrive at Big Five personality ratings for
a given person, studies have found that you can also use those
ratings to predict other important information about the
person as well, including what kinds of thoughts, behavior, and
consequences of her behavior you might expect to see (for helpful
reviews, Ozer and Benet-Martinez 2006; Roberts et al. 2007;
Funder 2007: chapter 7; John et al. 2008a: 141-143). For
example, those who are high in conscientiousness have been found to
avoid risky behaviors (Bogg and Roberts 2004) and to have greater
success on various job performance criteria (Mount and Barrick 1998).
In contrast, high neuroticism predicts job dissatisfaction and
criminal behavior (perhaps not surprisingly) (Ozer and
Benet-Martinez 2006).



The five personality traits in the Big Five taxonomy do not, however,
constitute the only personality traits. With respect to each of these
traits, researchers have identified various sub-traits or
"facets" that are less broad and are said to have the
advantage of being more accurate. Unfortunately, when it comes to the
facet level of traits, there is a lot more controversy in the
literature, including how many facets there are for each of the Big
Five traits as well as what to call them (Costa and McCrae 1995:
24-27; McCrae and Costa 2003: 47; Ozer and Benet-Martinez
2006: 403; Crowe et al. 2018). Here, though, is one widely used
version from McCrae and Costa's work, which appeals to 30 facets
(Costa and McCrae 1995: 28):




|  |  |
| --- | --- |
| Neuroticism | Anxiety, Angry Hostility, Depression, Self-Consciousness,
Impulsiveness, Vulnerability |
| Extraversion | Warmth, Gregariousness, Assertiveness, Activity, Excitement
Seeking, Positive Emotions |
| Openness to Experience | Fantasy, Aesthetics, Feelings, Actions, Ideas, Values |
| Agreeableness | Trust, Straightforwardness, Altruism, Compliance, Modesty,
Tender-Mindedness |
| Conscientiousness | Competence, Order, Dutifulness, Achievement Striving,
Self-Discipline, Deliberation |



Recall that McCrae and Costa were the ones who developed the NEO-PI-R
personality survey, which has 240 items. Not by accident, 8 items are
specifically tailored to measure each of these facets. As examples,
"I keep my belongings neat and clean" and "I like to
keep everything in its place so I know just where it is" fall
under the heading of the consciousness facet of order (Costa and
McCrae 1992: 73).



There is much more to the Big Five approach than can be covered here,
but let's move on to its relevance to philosophical issues about
character (for helpful reviews of the Big Five model, see McCrae and
John 1992; Goldberg 1993; Piedmont 1998; McCrae and Costa 2003:
chapters 2 and 3; John et al. 2008a).


### 3.2 Philosophical Relevance of the Big Five



On the surface, the Big Five taxonomy might seem to be a very
promising resource for philosophers working on the virtues, whether
from within a virtue ethical framework or not. However, there are at
least four reasons to be cautious about the relevance of this taxonomy
to philosophical discussions of moral character.



First, moral character traits are strikingly absent from the Big Five,
even at the facet level. Modesty and altruism are there, to be sure,
but what about justice or honesty or courage? Any taxonomy which
leaves them out will not be of much use to moral philosophers.



To be fair, the psychologists Ashton and Lee have long argued that the
Big Five list of traits is incomplete. They have added a sixth
personality dimension called "honesty/humility", which has
four facets for sincerity, fairness, greed-avoidance, and modesty
(Ashton and Lee 2001, 2005, 2020; Lee and Ashton 2004). And their
HEXACO personality assessment instrument has become widely used among
personality psychologists. Relevant to the point at hand, this six
trait taxonomy does a much better job of capturing moral traits,
although it too is incomplete (what about gratitude or courage?).



Suppose further additions were made to get to a complete taxonomy. The
second worry that arises is methodological. Measures of Big Five
traits are questionnaire measures. Unfortunately, the items used tend
to have questionable relevance to the traditional moral virtues.
Consider, for instance, the agreeableness facet of
"altruism", which researchers tend to characterize in a
way that makes it sound quite close to the virtue of compassion (Costa
and McCrae 1992: 18). Here are the questionnaire items for altruism
from McCrae and Costa's NEO-PI-R (where "R" is for a
reversed item) (Costa and McCrae 1992: 72):


* Some people think I'm selfish and egotistical. (R)
* I try to be courteous to everyone I meet.
* Some people think of me as cold and calculating. (R)
* I generally try to be thoughtful and considerate.
* I'm not known for my generosity. (R)
* Most people I know like me.
* I think of myself as a charitable person.
* I go out of my way to help others if I can.



Four of the items are concerned with the impressions we make on others
and how they think of us, rather than how we ourselves are. Arguably
two of them are better connected to manners and politeness, and one to
social liking, with not one item assessing altruistic motivation.
Indeed, only the final item asks directly about helping behavior at
all.



Not to mention that questionnaires, even with better items for
assessing the virtues, are considered by many philosophers to have
limited value. Among several weaknesses, they omit the role of
subconscious processes in influencing behavior, and could instead
reflect a person's significantly misinformed understanding of
her own character.



The third reason for philosophers to be cautious about adapting work
on the Big Five to the study of moral character is also
methodological. On at least one way of understanding the Big Five
taxonomy, it classifies people, not on the basis of whether they have
traits like extraversion or not, but rather on the basis of the
*degree to which* they have these traits. In other words, it
assumes that *everyone* has the trait of extraversion, and the
main question is only to what extent a given individual comes out on
the extraversion scale. What goes for extraversion also applies to
introversion. Everyone has that trait too.



In fact, it is going to follow, at least on this particular way of
unpacking the Big Five approach, that everyone has *all the traits
there are*, at least to some degree or other. If we extend the Big
Five taxonomy to include all the moral character traits as well, then
everyone will be virtuous to some degree. But that is not all.
Everyone will also be vicious to some degree as well. This will be
true, even with respect to opposing virtues and vices such as courage
and cowardice.



Many moral philosophers are likely going to be concerned about how
helpful such an approach will be to their own work on character. For
they typically accept the following assumption:


* (A1) A person
cannot have the virtue of honesty and the opposing vice of dishonesty
as part of her character at the same time.



But that assumption is rejected in this research. Furthermore, many
philosophers would also accept that:


* (A2)Virtues and
vices are threshold concepts.



What this means is that not everyone's character automatically
qualifies as having a given virtue or vice. There are normative
standards that a character trait has to meet to be "good
enough" to count as a virtue or "bad enough" to
count as a vice. But again this assumption is violated by the Big Five
taxonomy, at least as understood above.



Amongst philosophers, Aristotle for instance clearly endorses both of
these assumptions. Virtue is rare on his view, and most people fail to
meet the relevant requirements. Plus vice is diametrically opposed to
virtue. Virtue ethicists in the Aristotelian tradition would follow
him in accepting
 (A1)
 and
 (A2)
 (for further discussion of these assumptions, see Miller 2019a).



Now this is not at all to criticize this particular version of the Big
Five approach. Given what it aims to do in personality psychology, it
has clearly been a very rich and important approach. The only point
here is that it may be ill-suited for incorporation into philosophical
discussions of character.



There is a fourth and final reason why this might be true. Many
philosophers, especially those working in the Aristotelian tradition,
understand character traits to be metaphysically real dispositions
with causal powers of their own that give rise to relevant thoughts
and, in turn, to trait relevant actions. The trait of honesty, for
example, is a real feature of an honest person's psychology
which, when triggered, can lead to the formation of honest occurrent
thoughts and feelings. It can figure into causal explanations for
action, and can be a reliable basis for predicting future
behavior.



Up to this point, the metaphysical status of traits on the Big Five
approach has not been specified. It turns out that there is some
disagreement about this amongst personality psychologists, but the
clear majority position seems to be that they do not have any
metaphysical existence. The leading Big Five psychologists Oliver
John, Richard Robins, Lewis Goldberg, Gerard Saucier, Robert Hogan,
Jerry Wiggins, Paul Trapnell, Laura Naumann, and Christopher Soto all
seem to hold this view (John and Robins 1994: 138-139; Goldberg
and Saucier 1995: 221; Saucier and Goldberg 1996b: 24-25, 34,
43; Hogan 1991, 1996; Wiggins and Trapnell 1996; John et al. 2008:
140). McCrae and Costa seems to be two of the rare exceptions in
holding a causal view of Big Five traits (McCrae and Costa 2003,
2008).



If Big Five traits are not real entities with causal powers, then what
are they? The standard view is that they are just descriptive labels
for how people tend to be. Put differently, they are useful
devices--terms of classification--which are far more
economical to use than is appealing to the thousands of trait terms in
the English language. Grouping people into only five categories is
thus highly efficient (Hogan 1996: 170-173; McCrae and Costa
2003: 36), but it is a further step to say that there actually
*is* a trait of extraversion which causally explains individual
differences between people. As Daniel Ozer and Steven Reise note, the
Big Five taxonomy,



> 
> 
> provides a useful taxonomy, a hierarchical coordinate system, for
> mapping personality variables. The model is not a theory; it organizes
> phenomena to be explained by theory (1994: 360-361).
> 
> 
> 



In particular, it does not specify what the actual psychological
processes are which lead people to act the way that they do.



But again, all of this is much less interesting to the moral
philosopher than it is to the personality psychologist. The moral
philosopher working on character typically wants to know about the
psychological processes involved in virtue and vice, as well as
whether most people do or do not have such traits understood as causal
dispositions. The Big Five approach won't be of much help in
furthering that kind of work.


## 4. Positive Psychology and the VIA



Of the four approaches to the empirical study of character that we are
examining here, the one coming out of the positive psychology movement
is the most recent. That movement itself only really got going at the
turn of the century, and character traits were one part of a much
larger focus that will not concern us here (for overviews of positive
psychology, see Snyder and Lopez 2009; Moneta 2014; Lopez et al.
2015). As before, we need some background first before we get to the
philosophical implications.


### 4.1 Background



The canonical approach to character traits in positive psychology is
found in *Character Strengths and Virtues: A Handbook and
Classification*, edited by Christopher Peterson and Martin
Seligman and published in 2004. Peterson and Seligman, with the help
of over 50 leading scholars working on character, put together a
classification of character traits which they saw as a "manual
of the sanities" (2004: 4) by focusing on psychological health
rather than illness, as so much of the field had done prior to the
positive psychology movement.



To develop their classification, they scoured writings from traditions
such as Confucianism, Buddhism, ancient Greek philosophy, and medieval
Islam. They examined lists of traits from Charlemagne, Benjamin
Franklin, the Boy and Girl Scouts, Hallmark greeting cards, and
Pokemon characters (2004: 15, 33-52). Naturally they came
up with a huge list of traits, and needed some criteria to use to pare
them down. Here are the 10 criteria they came up with (2004:
17-27):


1. A strength contributes to various fulfillments that constitute the
good life, for oneself and for others.
2. Each strength is morally valued in its own right, even in the
absence of obvious beneficial outcomes.
3. The display of a strength by one person does not diminish other
people in the vicinity.
4. Being able to phrase the "opposite" of a putative
strength in a felicitous way counts against regarding it as a
character strength.
5. It should be traitlike in the sense of having a degree of
generality across situations and stability across time.
6. The strength is distinct from other positive traits in the
classification and cannot be decomposed into them.
7. The character strength is embodied in consensual paragons.
8. An additional criterion where sensible is the existence of
prodigies with respect to the strength.
9. The existence of people who show--selectively--the total
absence of a given strength.
10. The larger society provides institutions and associated rituals
for cultivating strengths and virtues and then for sustaining their
practice.



Using these criteria, Peterson and Seligman arrived at a
classification with 6 "virtues" and 24 "character
strengths", which today goes by the name of the Values in Action
or VIA classification. Virtues are defined as "core
characteristics valued by moral philosophers and religious
thinkers" (2004: 13). Character strengths are:



> 
> 
> the psychological ingredients--processes or mechanisms--that
> define the virtues. Said another way, they are distinguishable routes
> to displaying one or another of the virtues (2004: 13).
> 
> 
> 



Together the virtues and character strengths make up the official VIA
classification (2004: 29-30):




|  |  |
| --- | --- |
| Wisdom | Creativity

Curiosity

Open-mindedness

Love of Learning

Perspective |
| Courage | Bravery

Persistence

Integrity

Vitality |
| Humanity | Love

Kindness

Social Intelligence |
| Justice | Citizenship

Fairness

Leadership |
| Temperance | Forgiveness and Mercy

Humility/Modesty

Prudence

Self-Regulation |
| Transcendence | Appreciation of Beauty and Excellence

Gratitude

Hope

Humor

Spirituality |



Naturally Peterson and Seligman have a great deal to say in clarifying
what each of these means. But here it is important to keep a few more
general points in mind.



First, Peterson and Seligman are explicit that they do not think this
classification is exhaustive, and are open to additions or deletions
(2004: 13; see also Peterson and Park 2009: 27). Second, they
acknowledge that "In some cases, the classification of a given
strength under a core virtue can be debated" (Peterson and
Seligman 2004: 28, 31). And finally, they "regard these
strengths as ubiquitously recognized and valued, although a given
individual will rarely, if ever, display all of them" (2004:
13).



Research making use of the VIA has been extensive, with many studies
in particular looking at correlations between particular character
strengths and other variables like health and educational success (for
a review, see Niemiec 2013). Peterson and Seligman have also developed
several assessment tools for character strengths, the main one of
which is the VIA-IS. This 240 item measure uses a 5-point Likert scale
anchored on "very much like me" and "very much
unlike me" (2004: 629). Some example of its items include (2004:
629):


* I am never too busy to help a friend. [kindness]
* I always keep my promises. [integrity]
* I have great difficulty accepting love from anyone. [love]



Anyone can take the survey for free at the VIA Institute for Character
website (see the Other Internet Resources) and learn what their
"signature strengths" are.



As always, there is much more to be said, but let us turn to the
philosophical relevance.


### 4.2 Philosophical Relevance of Positive Psychology and the VIA



Philosophers might initially have some questions about the VIA
classification. Where, for instance, is the virtue of patience? Or
self-respect? Why does humor fall under the virtue of transcendence
(for more questions like these, see Kristjansson 2013:
151-152)?



These are good questions, but not serious problems. For as we saw
Peterson and Seligman were the first to admit that their
classification could need revision. If anything, these questions might
help to make the VIA even better.



A larger revision will be demanded by many Aristotelians, namely that
the list of virtues include practical wisdom (Kristjansson
2013: chapter 7). On traditional Aristotelian approaches, practical
wisdom is necessary for the possession of any virtue. Leaving it off
the list would be a serious omission, but again there is nothing about
Peterson and Seligman's framework that would preclude it from
being added (for more on practical wisdom, see Russell 2009; Miller
forthcoming).



In fact, on the face of it philosophers should be quite amenable to
this framework, and be interested in incorporating it into their
thinking about character. For unlike the Big Five, the VIA is focused
specifically on character traits, rather than personality traits in
general (Peterson and Park 2009: 26-27). And while there might
be a few omissions, it is remarkably comprehensive. Plus, unlike most
advocates of the Big Five, Peterson, Seligman, and their colleagues
seem to be more comfortable describing character traits on
metaphysical grounds as dispositions with causal powers.



But caution is needed here (for a number of concerns, see Miller
2019b). For the VIA, unlike the other three approaches examined in
this entry, was *not* arrived at empirically. As Peterson noted
in a later article, "Our classification of character strengths
under core virtues is a conceptual scheme and not an empirical
claim" (Peterson and Park 2009: 31). We saw already that it is a
theoretical classification derived from the writings of philosophers,
religious thinkers, and famous exemplars of good character, as well as
more popular level expressions of character in greeting cards and
games (Peterson and Seligman 2004: 9-10). Furthermore, Peterson
and Seligman are explicit that they aligned their approach with virtue
ethics (2004: 10).



Unfortunately, subsequent empirical tests of the VIA have raised
problems. MacDonald and colleagues (2008) found that four factors,
rather than the six in the VIA, best fit the questionnaire data.
McGrath (2014) found support for five factors. Noftle and his
colleagues (2011) used confirmatory factor analysis to test existing
six factor, five factor, four factor, and one factor models, and could
not find support for any of them (2011: 212). They concluded that,



> 
> 
> Although it is possible that an alternative model that was not tested
> could capture the structure of the VIA scales, it seems more likely
> that the VIA simply does not have a clear hierarchical structure
> (2011: 212).
> 
> 
> 



See also the recent three virtue classification by McGrath 2015.



So it is not clear that the VIA is an empirically adequate framework
for thinking about character. It might have contributions to make in
other ways, but if the goal is for philosophers to be able to draw on
psychological research about character that is empirically informed,
then clearly more work is needed here.



Two other concerns arise as well. The first is methodological, in that
like the assessment measures for the Big Five, the VIA-IS is a
questionnaire measure which gathers self and other reports. When it
comes to character, philosophers are often worried about how much
questionnaires can tell us about what our characters are really
like.



The other concern is more conceptual. The VIA classification as
developed by Peterson and Seligman only appeals to positive character
traits. Strikingly absent are the vices (Kristjansson 2013: 7,
153). It may be an admirable goal to try to get psychologists to pay
more attention to psychological health rather than illness, but that
can be done without dropping the vices entirely from one's
classification. Adding them, though, by canvassing once again all the
same philosophical, religious, and cultural resources, will require
another herculean undertaking on a par with what Peterson and Seligman
did in their 2004 handbook.


## 5. Conclusion



This entry has briefly reviewed and critically evaluated four
different approaches which draw on empirical psychology to aid us in
thinking about issues of character. The amount of attention given here
to each of them is in line with discussions in the philosophy
literature. Philosophers in their writings have paid by far the most
attention to situationism followed by the CAPS model, with the Big
Five and the VIA classifications hardly getting mentioned at all. This
is in direct contrast to the current landscape in psychology,
especially personality psychology. Perhaps it is time for philosophers
to shift their attention accordingly.