Empirical Approaches to Moral Character

plato.stanford.edu /entries/moral-character-empirical/

First published Wed Aug 3, 2016

The turn of the century saw a significant increase in the amount of attention being paid by philosophers to empirical
issues about moral character. Dating back at least to Plato and Aristotle in the West, and Confucius in the East,
philosophers have traditionally drawn on empirical data to some extent in their theorizing about character. One of the
main differences in recent years has been the source of this empirical data, namely the work of social and
personality psychologists on morally relevant thought and action.

This entry briefly examines four recent empirical approaches to moral character. It will draw on the psychology
literature where appropriate, but the main focus will be on the significance of that work for philosophers interested in
better understanding moral character. The four areas are situationism, the CAPS model, the Big Five model, and the
VIA. The remainder of this entry devotes a section to each of them.

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: 3637; 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-
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 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: 505507; Merritt et al. 2010: 357358).

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 virtuecompassionand 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

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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 womans 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
didnt do anything to respond, helping happened only 7% of the time (Latan and Rodin 1969: 193195;
Latan and Darley 1970: 6063).

Obedience to Authority . Stanley Milgrams 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 isnt 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 insensitive 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, 3536; 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: 193194). 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.

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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.

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In his 2002 book, Doriss 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 Doriss 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. 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: 6061; Annas 2003: 14 (see Other Internet
Resources); Adams 2006: 147; Snow 2010: 103107, 111116. For general discussion of this line of
response, see Montmarquet 2003: 365368; Russell 2009: 279287).

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: 279287).

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, 5556; Kamtekar 2004: 473; Kristjnsson 2008: 6465; Snow 2010: 106. For criticism see Harman
2003: 91; Prinz 2009: 123; Russell 2009: 282283, 286).

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 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: 546554). 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:
245247; Solomon 2003: 48, 56; Wielenberg 2006: 471490; for criticism see Russell 2009: 288; Merritt et al.
2010: 367369).

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: 131138, Russell 2009: chapters 810, 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: 150153; 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 1099b2932, 1103b1631, 1152a30
34, 1179b2529, 1180a15, 1519). 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
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 of what is fine and truly pleasant, since they have had no taste of it (Nicomachean Ethics
1179b1116).

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: 149150; Kupperman 2001: 241
243; Annas 2003: 13 (see Other Internet Resources), 2011: 172176).

Kamtekar noted several differences. One is that, on the Aristotelian picture, virtues are supposed to be,
dispositions to respond appropriatelyin judgment, feeling, and actionto ones 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 individuals
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: 280283; Merritt et al. 2010:
358360).

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.

To conclude this discussion, 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 peoples 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.
Most people have local character traits, which are virtues and vices restricted to narrow types of situations
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 such as the courtroom or the bar. Harman seems to be amenable to this position, and Doris explicitly accepts
it (Doris 1998: 507508, 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.

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: 131138; Russell
2009: chapters 810; 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: 255256).

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, ifthen
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 Mischels 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
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 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: 45, 11, 2009: 284; Shoda 1999: 165171).

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 individuals personality, where the if is a situation and the
then is a behavior. For example, Mischel and his colleagues studied childrens 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:
361362; 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: 237240, 2008: 211212). More generally, Mischel and Shoda write that,

Features of situations activate a set of internal reactionsnot just cognitive but also affectivebased
on the individuals 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 situationthe 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.

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

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Putting all these pieces together, we can introduce the next component of the CAPS model, the intraindividual
behavioral signature. Rather than focusing on the individuals 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 persons behavior in a domain will change from one situation to anotherwhen the if
changes, so will the theneven 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: 675678, 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 anotherAlthough 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 ifthenrelations, 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 Mischels 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: 131138;
Badhwar 2009: 279; Russell 2009: xii, 172, 292293, 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
persons 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
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for true ifthen 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 ifthen conditionals, and they are manifest in
the persons 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 casual powers. Plus they can be global character traits toothey 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 traitsone 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 itselfprovide 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, ifthensituation-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
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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 historyI 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: 449450).

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 traits
are all the rage, with thousands of papers appearing in journals in recent years. Now one sees the study of global
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: 1112; 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

Starting mainly in the 1980s, psychologists arrived at the Big Five taxonomy using two different paths (McCrae and
John 1992: 181187; 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: 141142, 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):
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 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: 187192). 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 dont get much pleasure from chatting with people.
I dont 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.

By now many such 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: 5256, 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: 4346, 7374; Caprara and Cervone 2000: 7375). What we see over and over
again is the emergence of 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)

The central idea is this. Take any given person. You can capture much (some Big Five researchers would even say
all) there is to 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.

Not only can you arrive at Big Five personality ratings for a given person, but studies have found that you can use
those ratings to predict other important information about her as well, including what kinds of thoughts, behavior, and
consequences of her behavior you might expect to see (for helpful reviews, Ozer and Benet-Martnez 2006; Roberts
et al. 2007; Funder 2007: chapter 7; John et al. 2008a: 141143). For example, those who are high in
conscientiousness have been found to avoid risky behaviors (Bogg and Roberts 2004) and to have greater success
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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-Martnez 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: 2427; McCrae and Costa 2003: 47; Ozer and Benet-Martnez 2006:
403). Here, though, is one widely used version from McCrae and Costas 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 lets 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; 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 Costas NEO-PI-R (where
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R is for a reversed item) (Costa and McCrae 1992: 72):

Some people think Im 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.
Im 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 persons 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. The Big Five taxonomy 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 from this kind of 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 everyones 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.

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) .

Now this is not at all to criticize the Big Five approach. Given what it aims to do in personality psychology, it has
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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 persons 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: 138139; Goldberg and Saucier 1995: 221;
Saucier and Goldberg 1996b: 2425, 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 devicesterms of classificationwhich
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: 170173; 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: 360361).

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 wont 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
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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 Pokmon characters (2004: 15, 3352). 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: 1727):

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 showselectivelythe 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 ingredientsprocesses or mechanismsthat 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: 2930):

Wisdom Creativity
Curiosity
Open-mindedness
Love of Learning
Perspective

Courage Bravery
Persistence
Integrity
Vitality

Humanity Love
Kindness
Social Intelligence

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 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 Kristjnsson 2013: 151152)?

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
(Kristjnsson 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 Seligmans framework that would preclude it from being added (for more on practical wisdom, see
Russell 2009).
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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: 2627). 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 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: 910). 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 (Kristjnsson 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 ones classification. Adding them, though, by canvasing 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.

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Acknowledgments
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Work on this paper was supported by a grant from the Templeton Religion Trust. The opinions expressed here are
those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Templeton Religion Trust. Sections 1, 2, and 3 are
drawn from Miller 2014, with permission of Oxford University Press, and have been revised for this entry. Thanks to
Mark Timmons for catching several typos.

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