Building virtue: environmental and social influences on the development of fairness, forgiveness, honesty, and trustworthiness

How do we become virtuous? Although this question has been at the heart of philosophical inquiries into human nature for centuries, we know little about how virtue develops over time and across cultures. Here we address two Big Questions: (1) how is virtue cultivated and sustained and (2) how does virtue development vary across cultures? We examine the roles of environmental and social variables in generating variation in virtue, the routes through which virtue is cultivated in different societies and the forces that sustain it in adulthood. We focus specifically on the influence of explicit instruction, moral exemplars, and habit formation. Our approach is based on a belief that virtue is a flexible process, one that evolves within the individual over time and across contexts. Focusing on fairness, forgiveness, honesty, and trustworthiness, our studies will contribute new empirical insights and a detailed theoretical model of virtue. Outputs include: peer-reviewed articles, conference presentations, op-eds, two courses on virtue, public lectures, an interdisciplinary workshop on virtue, and a virtue website for the general public. Our project seeks insights that may be leveraged to close the gap between what we ought to do and what we actually do, informing core issues in psychology and religious studies and fostering fairness, forgiveness, honesty, and trustworthiness.