Researching The Virtues

Big question: How can we identify, conceptualise, operationalise and evaluate the different kinds of virtue?

Our research has covered some of the most salient moral virtues. The most extensive research has focused on gratitude, and we have offered a new measure of the virtue. Our work on the civic virtues is listed in the section on ‘Civic Character and Engagement’.

Given that the integration of conflicting moral and civic virtues, and the resolution of virtue quandaries, is perhaps the most pressing problem for more advanced moral learners, our recent work has focused on the intellectual virtue of phronesis or practical wisdom. We have gathered extensive data on the virt ue and designed a longer and a shorter instrument to measure it.

Some of our most relevant resources on the virtues are listed here:

Resources

An Attitude for Gratitude (2015)

A major study of how this virtue is understood and how it can be measured.

Gratitude and Related Character Virtues (2017)

A practical study of how gratitude relates to other virtues such as compassion

Phronesis: Using an Aristotelian Model as a Research Tool (2021)

Phronesis: Developing and Validating a Short Measure of Practical Wisdom (2023)

Our most more extensive study of phronesis in the UK and USA (including its links to flourishing) and the design of a shorter instrument to measure it

Phronesis: Developing A Conceptualisation and an Instrument (2020)

Our first study of phronesis in the UK (including its links to prosocial behaviour) and the design of a long instrument to measure it