1. Positive Psychology, Virtues, and the Problems
of Normativity and Adjudication
Kristján Kristjánsson
Professor of Character Education and Virtue Ethics
Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues
School of Education, University of Birmingham
Email: k.kristjansson@bham.ac.uk
Further reading:
Kristjánsson, K. (2010). Positive psychology, happiness, and virtue: The
troublesome conceptual issues. Review of General Psychology, 14(4), 296–
310
Kristjánsson, K. (2012). Positive psychology and positive education: Old wine
in new bottles? Educational Psychologist, 47(2), 86–105
Kristjánsson, K. (2013). Virtues and vices in positive psychology: A
philosophical critique. Cambridge: C.U.P.
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2. Psychological content: The pillars
Main pillar: A theory of happiness (well-being/flourishing) =
the “ungrounded grounder” of all human strivings
Three sub-pillars:
1) the study of positive traits: 1a) moral virtues and character
strengths; 1b) mental-health trait of resiliency
2) the study of positive emotions: 2a) flow; 2b) pleasant
emotions
3) the study of positive institutions, such as democracy,
strong families, and free public inquiry
My focus: 1a) moral virtues and character strengths
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3. Pursuing “the social science equivalent
of virtue ethics”....
2004 (Peterson & Seligman) = the virtue ethical turn
of positive psychology => program of virtue
education
MY PLAN:
• Intro to virtue program
• The pros
• Some slight concerns
• The two major concerns (problems of normativity
and adjudication)
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4. The “shocking discovery” of the “reluctant
moralists”…
Peterson & Seligman (2004): It so happens that for most
people well-being involves virtue
“Shocking discovery” for them
that the same virtues are
championed from Azerbaijan
to Zimbabwe! (75 nations, confirmed)
Empirically true that virtuous character is “what parents
look for in their children, what teachers look for in
their students, what siblings look for in their brothers
and sisters, and what friends look for in each other”
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5. A “manual of sanities”…
Six universal
core moral virtues,
The “High Six”:
Each virtue has 3-5 different manifestations => 24 empirically
measurable character strengths
Derived via conceptual and empirical (historical, social scientific)
considerations – comparing and contrasting different virtue
traditions in philosophy, religion, etc.
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6. Virtues on a standard virtue
ethical conception
Virtues are settled (stable and consistent) traits of character, concerned with
morally praiseworthy or blameworthy conduct in specific (significant and
distinguishable) spheres of human life. Each character trait of this sort
typically comprises a unique set of attention, emotion, desire and behaviour,
but also a certain comportment or style of expression, applicable in the
relevant sphere. The compassionate person thus notices easily and attends to
situations in which the lot of others has been undeservedly compromised,
feels for the needs of those who have suffered this undeserved misfortune,
desires that their misfortune be reversed, acts for the relevant (ethical)
reasons in ways conducive to that goal and exudes an outward aura of
empathy and care
Virtues as a sub-set of personality traits and as the main ingredients in
character (“personality evaluated” á la Allport)
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7. The pros (from the perspective of current,
Aristotle-inspired virtue ethics)
• Contributes to the ongoing cross-fertilization of (naturalistic)
virtue ethics and social science
• Builds bridges to character/virtue education
• Empirical evidence strengthens naturalistic foundation of
virtue ethics (link between well-being and virtuous living)
• Empirical evidence helps fend off relativism
• Grounded (increasingly so!) in an objective conception of
well-being as flourishing (eudaimonia) – Seligman’s Flourish
• Overcomes “the moral gap” in some previous accounts of
“prosocial” psychological functioning, e.g. EQ/SEL & SDT
• Takes seriously the idea of intrinsic value = anti-
instrumentalism (very rare in social science!)
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8. Some slight concerns…
• Unavailability of empirical data on how the 24 character strengths were
arrived at
• Unclear conceptual distinction between “virtues”, “character strengths”
and “situational themes” (“under-theorised, under-conceptualized, under-
researched”???) and between moral and (amoral) performance virtues
• Factor analyses of the 24 by non-PPs not does seem to yield the 6 virtues +
the incremental validity of the character strengths above the Big Five has
yet to be demonstrated (Bob McGrath: 5 or 3 factors)
• The tension between the idea of emotion virtues such as gratitude as
being intrinsically valuable (and irreplaceable) and positive emotions such
as gratitude as being instrumentally valuable (and in principle replaceable)
• The tension between the virtues and the other type of “positive
strengths”, esp. resiliency. Aristotle/virtue ethics versus Stoicism/CBT!
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9. The first of the two major concerns:
The problem of normativity
We refrain from making normative moral claims...
Background: The uneasy relationship of social science
to issues of normativity, e.g. Weber’s value-free social
science, Allport’s personality as “character devaluated”,
adherence to Hume’s two major distinctions between
facts and values (moral anti-realism) and descriptions
and prescriptions (moral anti-prescriptivism)
(Anti-realism: Moral facts only reside in the human mind and have no objective,
external grounding)
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10. So is positive psychology
morally anti-realist?
Unclear…
No: a) Anti-relativist - whereas most anti-realists are moral
relativists. b) The link to virtue ethics, and virtue ethics is
grounded in moral realism (namely naturalism).
Yes: One can offer empirical generalizations about individual
virtues and individual pathways to well-being but any overall
(prioritizing) theory of the virtuous, flourishing life will be
unscientific! Oddity: Why cannot one offer such an overall
theory also in the form of empirical generalizations?! If the
overall theory is unscientific = prescriptive, then the individual
moral judgements are also! (Some confusion here…)
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11. Trying to unpack the confusion…
Why would an overall theory of the morally good be prescriptive
and unscientific but not an overall theory of a healthy diet or a
healthy lifestyle? What is so unique about “the moral”?
I do not think the PPs are moral anti-realists at heart, witness
their inherent naturalism and their flirtations with virtue ethics
What is confusing them is a common conflation, esp. in social
science, between the normative as evaluative and the normative
as prescriptive (and, by implication, a conflation of Hume’s two
separate distinctions)
“This a good knife” does not imply “You should cut!”
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12. The source of the confusion:
Motivational internalism
Motivational internalism (inherited from Socrates/Kant
via Kohlberg) =
To say that x is good is to be
motivated to do => prescription!
Motivational externalism = One can say that x is a good
knife without wanting to cut or recommending cutting!
The same applies for moral goodness
Positive psychologist can uphold empirically derived
factual values about the morally good life without
violating the is–ought distinction! =>
Possible to solve the normativity problem, but it requires
an explicit change in philosophical assumptions!
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13. The second of the two major concerns:
The problem of adjudication
If we adjudicate virtue conflicts, we have started to
prescribe and stepped out of the scientific frame…
By refusing to adjudicate, however, the virtue
program does not only become ambiguous at times,
but significantly indeterminate, both morally and
educationally
The reason is that the most pressing problem about
virtue for good people is not the choice between
virtue and vice but an aggregation and adjudication
problem: the problem of choices and trade-offs
between competing virtues
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14. To solve the adjudication
problem…
What is sorely missing: A conceptual distinction between the moral virtues
and the intellectual virtue of practical wisdom (phronesis), not just one of the
“High Six”. Aristotle: We cannot be “fully good” without phronesis, nor can we
possess phronesis without virtue of character. For, while the moral virtues
make “the goal correct”, phronesis “makes what promotes the goal correct”.
The function of phronesis is to “deliberate finely” about the relative weight of
competing values, actions and emotions in the context of “what promotes
living well in general”. A person who has acquired phronesis has thus the
wisdom to adjudicate the relative weight of different virtues in conflict
situations and to reach a measured verdict about best course of action. This
mediating, overseeing and orchestrating role of phronesis gives it a clear
status as a higher-order intellectual virtue.
Just philosophical speculation?! No, lots of social scientific research on
wisdom (e.g. Sternberg and the Berlin Model)!
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15. To conclude…
Positive psychology has the potential to add much needed empirical gravitas
to contemporary virtues ethics. But…
• It is conceptually under-developed (virtue, strength, theme…)
• It is not fully coherent internally (between claims, between theorists…)
• It is ambiguous (with respect to moral realism/anti-realism)
• It confuses the normative as evaluative with the normative as prescriptive
(by assuming without argument the contested view of motivational
internalism)
• It fails to offer help in solving virtue conflicts and misconceives the nature
of wisdom (by not giving it the status of a meta-virtue)
• It has not fully overcome the psychological unease with virtue talk
(dabbles in virtue talk without engaging it fully!)
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16. Nevertheless…
…as a naturalistic moral philosopher, who believes that all moral
theorizing is in the end answerable to empirical evidence, my
advice to my colleagues is to avoid the Statler-and-Waldorf
syndrome and continue to engage positive psychologists in a
constructive dialogue, potentially beneficial to both parties!
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