From Personality Theory to Virtue Theory: Can We Make it Across?

Prof. Elina Karamatziani (University of Arizona)

Abstract: About a decade ago, the so-called “situationist” challenge to the very idea of the virtues was that social psychology had debunked the very idea of personality or character. But that was just wrong about the facts: actually, from social psychology have grown positive psychological theories of personality, most notably the social-cognitive theories. So now the challenge is whether, say, social-cognitive theory is the good news or the bad news for the very idea of the virtues. This is a challenge not just for moral psychologists interested in the virtues, but also for social psychologists who study the nature of moral development. In this paper I explore exactly how demanding and difficult that challenge is, but argue that the social-cognitive literature gives us every hope of meeting it—a hope that is both modest and sober, to be sure, but a hope that is very real nonetheless.