Purpose
The Virtues Web Site was created in 2002 to support my collaborative research with my former undergraduate advisor, Jim Martin, and his graduate student, Michael Cawley, on the psychology of virtue. Jim passed away in 2019 and Mike Cawley now focuses on his clinical practice rather than research, so now this site is concerned primarily with my own research on the evolutionary psychology of morality.
Mike Cawley’s Research on Virtues
My publication with Mike Cawley and Jim Martin, A Virtues Approach to Personality, was based on Mike’s dissertation. Over the years have received inquiries about the Virtues Scale that Mike developed. For those who are interested, here are links to his Virtues Scale, information on scoring the Virtues Scale, norms for 390 college students (163 male, 227 female) for individual virtue items and the four factor scales, for both real virtues and ideal virtues from Table 1 of his dissertation, and his complete dissertation.
Psychology Today Blog Post Response to Sam Harris
I have published a number of Psychology Today blog posts on the psychology of morality, including a three-part response to Sam Harris’s Moral Landscape challenge.
A Response to Sam Harris’s Writings on Moral Truth Pt 1 of 3
A Response to Sam Harris’s Writings on Moral Truth Pt 2 of 3
A Response to Sam Harris’s Writings on Moral Truth Pt 3 of 3
Selected Writings on the Evolutionary Psychology of Morality
I first became interested in ethics and morality as an undergraduate, when I wrote a research paper on the possible impact of different ethical systems on biological survival and reproductive success. The question that motivated the paper was as follows: If a group of people actually followed the guidelines of a particular ethical system, how would their survival and reproductive success compare to a second group of people who followed the ethical guidelines of a different ethical system? My ancient undergraduate paper is now available for reading as a pdf file. Forewarning: I think that the research question (How would following particular ethical systems affect survival and reproduction?) was pure genius, but the writing style and specific proposals in the paper are pretty sophomoric.
My first professional publication was a book chapter, coauthored with Robert Hogan and Nicholas Emler, on an evolutionary theory of moral development. For a pdf copy of that chapter, follow the link in the reference below:
Hogan, R., Johnson, J. A., & Emler, N. P. (1978). A socioanalytic theory of moral development. In W. Damon (Ed.), New directions for child development: Vol. 2. Moral development (pp. 1-18). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
My more recent research continues to be concerned with the practical consequences of following particular moral systems. Philosophers use the label consequentialism to describe the view that behavior is moral when it produces good consequences. Different schools of consequentialism have suggested what could be meant by “good consequences.” Utilitarianism, a particular form of consequentialism, argues that the most important consequence of behavior is pleasure or happiness for the greatest number of people. My own concern with the consequences of moral behavior is scientific rather than philosophical. That is, instead of arguing that we should define moral goodness in terms of the goodness of behavioral consequences, I strive to examine the actual consequences of making moral pronouncements and behaving in ways that are typically described as “moral” or “ethical.” Some of those actual consequences concern the psychological wellbeing (pleasure, happiness) of oneself and others. But there are other interesting consequences as well, including social power and influence, the formation and maintenance of coalitions, reputation management, and, ultimately, survival and reproduction. My first attempt at describing my approach I called, tongue-in-cheek, Real Utilitarianism (in contrast to a limited utilitarianism confined to promoting happiness).
A central argument of Real Utilitarianism is that behaviors have no inherent goodness, that no act is “good in itself.” Our sense of the goodness of acts, I hypothesize, is grounded in what an act is “good for,” that is, what consequences it can bring. But this raises the question of why so many people believe that certain acts are simply good or bad, right or wrong, in and of themselves rather than in terms of their consequences. This belief is captured in the familiar phrase “That’s just wrong!” People who use that phrase often cannot articulate why the act is wrong, in and of itself, and are at a loss to point out bad consequences of the act. I have proposed a theory about why people hold beliefs about the inherent goodness or badness of behavior, which I discussed in a presentation at the 19th annual meeting of the Human Behavior and Evolution Society. I am currently developing a full-length paper based on that conference paper, and I have a short summary of the argument in a Psychology Today blog post.
Site maintained by John A. Johnson, j5j@psu.edu
First posted: May 30, 2002.
Last update: July 26, 2023.