Experimental Social Psychology, Situationism, and Creating a Virtuous Character

In an New York Times op-ed a couple of weeks ago, David Brooks drew on the work of Princeton philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah in order to suggest that the philosophical view of character and virtue is now being replaced by the “psychologist’s view” that there is no such thing as character. Instead of thinking of character as a firm and stable disposition to act and feel a certain way, Brooks explains that experiments in psychology suggest that character is actually more contextual, failing to exhibit what psychologists call “cross-situational stability.”

The psychologists thus tend to gravitate toward a different view of conduct. In this view, people don’t have one permanent thing called character. We each have a multiplicity of tendencies inside, which are activated by this or that context. As Paul Bloom of Yale put it in an essay for The Atlantic last year, we are a community of competing selves. These different selves “are continually popping in and out of existence. They have different desires, and they fight for control — bargaining with, deceiving, and plotting against one another.”

The philosopher’s view is shaped like a funnel. At the bottom, there is a narrow thing called character. And at the top, the wide ways it expresses itself. The psychologist’s view is shaped like an upside-down funnel. At the bottom, there is a wide variety of unconscious tendencies that get aroused by different situations. At the top, there is the narrow story we tell about ourselves to give coherence to life.

Brooks goes on to explain that philosophers see the development of character as a matter of “direct assault,” using reason and strength of will to distinguish virtue from vice. Psychologists, on the other hand, see the development of character as a more subconscious, indirect process:

In the psychologist’s version, the good life is won indirectly. People have only vague intuitions about the instincts and impulses that have been implanted in them by evolution, culture and upbringing. There is no easy way to command all the wild things jostling inside.

Brooks’ conclusion suggests that the psychological view may be more accurate, that the good life is not won through “heroic self-analysis but through mundane, self-forgetting effort, and through everyday routines.”

Brooks, in his use of Appiah, is referring to a debate that has existed for some time in moral philosophy over the “situationist” account of character. Situationists see the conclusions of experimental moral psychology suggesting that behavior changes according to situations in conflict with the philosophical view that behavior can be largely predictable due to stable virtuous and vicious dispositions in one’s character.

Some moral philosophers who embrace situationist social psychology argue that the conclusions drawn in empirical research have radical implications for virtue ethics. Gilbert Harman, who has written extensively on the implications of experimental social psychology on moral philosophy, argues that if we take a virtue to be a stable disposition to act in certain ways, than empirical studies indicating that human behavior is largely determined by the situation cast doubt on whether or not there is such a thing as a firm and consistent character, or whether or not character can be developed at all.

John Doris does not go so far as Harman in questioning the existence of character, but he does argue that situationist social psychology indicates that habits of character tend to be narrow rather than broad. That is, a virtue is not a general disposition to act in a certain way, but a disposition to act in a certain way under quite specific circumstances.

Doris and Harman both draw similar conclusions about the usefulness of virtue ethics. If there is no such thing as a virtue, meaning a firm and consistent disposition to act a certain way in a wide range of situations, than virtue ethics is not a useful moral theory and we would be better suited given the reality of our human nature to adopt a more deontological and utilitarian moral theory. In essence, virtue-based moral theories are more idealistic about human nature than the evidence tends to support. Situations, rather than character, are better predictors of behavior.

However, both Doris and Harman, and interestingly enough, David Brooks himself, have an inadequate understanding of character as it is conceived in traditional virtue ethics.

The understanding of characters offered by the situationists and traditional virtue ethics are not the same. The character traits that situationist psychological experiments investigate are dispositions to behave a certain way, apart from the reasoning process. They are studying character traits, such as the tendency not to lie or the tendency to help out strangers. These specific behaviors, however, are not the same as “character” understood in a more Aristotelian sense. Virtue ethics offers a more holistic view of character that is something more than particular traits, but rather consists of a complex set of desires, beliefs, and goals that dispose the person to act in certain predictable ways. That is, a person may consistently provide aid to a stranger in need not because of a disposition to help strangers, but rather because of an overall disposition of generosity and kindness. To pass by a stranger in need, for example, due to a hurried mood, a temporary bad mood, or any of the other factors that situationists claim cause us to behave unpredictably does not indicate that this person’s character is not generous and kind. It indicates rather that this person is acting out of character.

People may act “out of character” when their appetites conflict–say when a person’s emotions overcome his or her reason. A person may also act “out of character” due to competing obligations and the lack of resolutely good choices. Say our kind and generous individual in the above example has promised to give an important talk at a university about generosity and is running late. She may pass by a stranger in need because another obligation, an obligation she considers important because of her character, but which competes with another obligation to help a stranger in need. She may still be kind and generous, but the object of her kind and generous actions today is the university audience she has obligated herself to, rather than the needy stranger that passes her way.

What experimental social psychology provides moral philosophers like myself is not a challenge to an Aristotelian understanding of character that thereby undermines virtue ethics, but rather a warning that the temptations humans face in the goal to act virtuously comes not only from our own vices, but also from situations that we face, sometimes unconsciously, that challenge the sort of behavior that we would want to consider distinctive of our character. For example, I may be more prone to snap at my husband impatiently because somebody snapped at me impatiently earlier in the day. This tendency does not mean that my character is impatient (although in my case, it most definitely is), but rather that this external situation or getting snapped at predisposes me to act out of character. Once I become aware of the role this situation plays in determining my behavior, my reason can help resist such tendencies in order to allow the expression of my character to gain more cross-situational consistency.

So Brooks is wrong to suggest that the creation of the good life comes from self-forgetting. It is rather quite the opposite. The good life comes as a result of becoming conscious through the development of character of those situations when self-forgetfulness leads to out-of-character behavior, of rationally becoming aware of the inconsistencies of one’s actions with one’s desires, beliefs, and goals. Experimental social psychology does not challenge a virtue-ethics understanding of character or the existence of vice and virtue, but rather illuminates specific ways in which acts do not correspond to a person’s habits. Experimental social psychology is an ally in understanding character and virtue ethics, not a competitor.