DRAFT
PREFACEMy professional career has ended and I am now happily
retired. However, there are a few unpublished papers that I would
like to make available. While research on the hedonic view of
happiness and well-being has flourished very little has focused on
Aristotles eudaimonic theory. These might add something to the
existing literature.I believe that virtue is the most important,
but greatly misunderstood, idea in Aristotles theory. I have
included several chapters on the topic of virtue in a recent book
entitled THE PSYCHOLOGY OF HAPPINESS: A GOOD HUMAN LIFE, published
by Cambridge University Press.I have also included a study on
crowding that may be of interest. It suggests that crowding and
scarcity of resources may lead to both political and social
upheaval. Although the study was conducted in the 1970s it may
portend the future for some.AN EMPIRICAL EXAMINATION OFARISTOTLE'S
CONCEPT OF VIRTUEAND ITS RELATIONSHIP TOWELLBEINGSamuel S. Franklin
California State University, FresnoPAPER PRESENTED AT THE MEETING
OF THE WESTERN PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSOCIATIONLOS ANGELESAPRIL, 1994AN
EMPIRICAL EXAMINATION OF ARISTOTLE'S CONCEPT OF VIRTUE AND ITS
RELATIONSHIP TO WELL-BEINGSAMUEL S. FRANKLINCALIFORNIA STATE
UNIVERSITY, FRESNOAristotle's Nichomachean Ethics (NE) contains a
well developed and elaborate theory of the good life which he
called 'eudaimonia.' Although the eudaimonic theory has been
largely overlooked by contemporary researchers of well-being and
happiness, we believe it has much to offer. The theory is based
upon the assumption that a good life is achieved to the extent that
one actualizes or fulfills potentials. Aristotle would probably
very much agree with Ryff's observation that "Central emphasis has
been given to short-term affective well-being (i.e. happiness), at
the expense of more enduring life challenges such as having a sense
of purpose and direction, and achieving a sense of
self-realization" (Ryff, 1989).Actualization requires the
satisfaction of certain needs. According to Aristotle we have both
physical and psychological needs, or 'needs of the soul', as he
called them, such as the need for friends, art, learning, etc. In
eudaimonic theory, how we fulfill our needs is crucial. Aristotle
emphasizes the necessity of acquiring the things we need at the
right time, in the right amount and in the way. Most of the things
we need, or 'real goods' as Aristotle called them, are 'limited';
we need them for actualization, but only in certain amounts and
only at certain times, and they may be good only if obtained in
certain ways. Food, for example, is a real good but it is not
beneficial in unlimited quantities, at any time and under all
circumstances. Too little food is damaging and too much food is
equally harmful. The same may be said for most all the things we
need. In most things we are well advised to seek the 'golden
mean'.To correctly obtain what we need, virtue is required....if
virtue , like nature, requires more accuracy and is better than any
art, then it will aim at the mean.... In feeling fear, confidence,
desire, anger, pity, and in general pleasure and pain, one can feel
too much or too little; and both extremes are wrong. The mean and
the good is feeling at the right time, about the right things, in
relation to the right people, and for the right reason; and the
mean and the good are the task of virtue. Similarly, in regard to
actions there are excess, deficiency, and the mean. (Nichomachean
Ethics [NE] II, 5. Bambrough, 1963, p. 309)While Aristotle may
appear to be uncompromising about what is 'right', he is not. Right
is always defined relative to the person. Aristotle says "We may
now define virtue as a disposition of the soul in which, when it
has to choose among actions and feelings, it observes the mean
relative to us..." (NE II, 5. Bambrough, 1963, p. 309)Virtue is a
complex idea that became terribly misunderstood when it fell into
the company of words like sin and chastity during the middle ages
(Maclntyre, 1981). As the ancient Greeks used the term, however,
virtue is an extremely meaningful concept and I think translatable
into the language of contemporary psychology. It is the purpose of
this paper to attempt such a translation and to empirically examine
the relationship between virtue and well-being. First, I will
attempt to show that Aristotle's concept of virtue is composed of
several measurable psychological processes.VIRTUE AND REASONThe
first component of virtue is reason. For the Greeks, only humans
have the capacity to think. Reason is our ergon, our highest and
most unique function. "The function of man is activity of soul in
accordance with reason..." (NE I. 7. Bambrough, p. 293). According
to Aristotle there are two related but distinguishable types of
reason. Intellectual virtue refers to something like our general
intelligence, abstract reasoning, theory, and the understanding of
general principle. It appears to be somewhat similar to what we now
call fluid intelligence. Moral virtue, on the other hand, refers to
the ability to apply general principles to specific instances. It
is sometimes called practical intelligence. Moral virtue must be
learned by doing, by practice. "Moral virtue is a product of habit"
(NE II, 1. Bambrough, p. 303). And, it is important to acquire
moral virtue early in life: "It makes no small difference, then,
whether we form habits of one kind or another from our very youth;
it makes a very great difference, or rather all the difference."
(NE II, 1. Ross, p.29)VIRTUE AND DESIREA second component of virtue
is desire. Today we might calldesire motivation. Action alone
cannot be virtuous; themotivation which propels the behavior must
also be considered.Wanting to do what is right and best (relative
to your life) isas important as the act itself. Urmson notes that
the virtuousperson wants to be virtuous and enjoys virtuous
action."..whether one has excellent character (virtue) ... depends
not merely on what one does but also on what one likes doing."
Virtue is a..."settled disposition to want to act and to act in a
way appropriate to the situation." (Urmson, 1988. p.26 ff)VIRTUE
AND CHOICEReason and desire combine to produce the third component
of virtue: choice. "Choice, therefore, is thought along with
desire, or desire along with thought." (NE VI. 2. Bambrough p.
345.) Adler (1980) notes "... moral virtues are habits of making
the right choices..." (p.94). Once we know the appropriate action,
and desire it, we must choose to behave appropriately. Choice
mediates between knowing - wanting and acting.VIRTUE AND
SELF-CONTROLA fourth component of virtue is self-control or
restraint. Aristotle acknowledges that desires may compete with
each other and that restraint is often required. We may know the
best thing to do, and desire it too, but we may also know and
desire a contrary action. Self control influences our choice.
"Virtue is within our power, and so, too is vice. The point is that
where we can act, we can also refrain, and vice versa" (NE III. 5.
Bambrough p. 323). To act one way frequently requires that we
inhibit an alternative response.VIRTUE AND ACTION/FEELINGFinally,
there is the virtuous action itself. Virtuous action includes
behavior and emotion appropriately chosen; at the correct time, in
the right amount, for the right reason. For Aristotle, action and
feeling go together, feeling 'supervenes upon acts'. That is why
punishment can be effective; pain and act go together. "...to feel
delight and pain rightly or wrongly has no small effect on our
actions." "...virtue then, is concerned with pleasures and pains,
and ....the acts from which [they arise]" (NE II, 3. Ross, p.
33).Virtue then, includes several psychological functions all of
which serve to guide us toward the goods we need for actualization.
Virtue "...is concerned with passions and actions, in which excess
is a form of failure, and so is defect, while the intermediate is
praised and is a form of success..." (NE II, 6. Ross p.
38).Summarizing what we have said above, the concept of virtue
includes the following psychological functions:KNOWING the
appropriate thing to do and feel, boththeoretically and
practically, by application of correct principle to the current
circumstance.DESIRING/WANTING to act and feel appropriately.
CHOOSING the appropriate action and feeling.SELFCONTROL, or the
inhibition of competing behaviors and emotions.ACTING and FEELING
appropriately.The present investigation was an attempt to examine
this theoretical structure of virtue and its relationship to
well-being.PROCEDURESSubjects were 68 advanced undergraduate
psychology students, 16 males, 48 females and 4 subjects who did
not declare their gender. Their mean age was 25.55 years. The
disproportionate number of females was the result of our psychology
department's student population in which females are strongly over
represented. This is not particularly disconcerting to the author
since in this study, and in earlier investigations of theproblem,
age and sex have not been important to the study of well-being and
its causes. (Costa, et. al., 1987; Franklin, LaMarca, & Barton
1991; Franklin and Torzynski, 1993).The subjects were given three
different packets of psychological scales over the course of a
semester. The scales were completed both in class and out of class.
The rate of return was 86%. Not all subjects completed all scales
or all items of each scale so the N's for different variables and
analyses vary slightly.SCALESREASON/THINKINGThree scales were used
to measure virtuous thinking. Moral virtue or practical thinking,
was measured by the Decision Making Scale (DMS) consisting of 12
items. The items identified 12 different domains of life; family,
education, friends, work, etc., and Ss rated their 'decision making
ability' and 'the quality of the solutions they usually find' for
the day to day problems in each domain. A Likert type scale was
used where 1 was bad and 5 described excellent decision making.
This was the first time the DMS has been used and the correlation
alpha of .72 seems quite reasonable. Because the 12 items of the
scale refer to different life domains we might expect a less than
perfect inter-item correlation.A second measure of moral virtue
consisted of the four 'ways' items fromthe Will And Ways Scale ().
A similarLikert type scale was used here to rate statements like "I
can think of many ways to get out of a jam" and "Even when others
get discouraged, I know I can find a way to solve the problem." The
alpha obtained in the present study was .69, not especially
impressive, but since the scale had only 4 items and since it
correlated reasonably well (r = .55, p < .00) with the DMS
measure it was decided to combine the two to derive our measure of
moral virtue.The third measure of reason was an attempt to tap the
more generalized, theoretical thinking that Aristotle called
intellectual virtue. For this purpose four subscales from the
Constructive Thinking Inventory (Epstein & Meier, 1989) were
used. The subscales are designed to measure categorical thinking,
superstitious thinking, esoteric thinking, and naive optimism. All
these subscales are potential impediments and blocks to good
generalized thinking. A person high in 'categorical thinking',
('making... undifferentiated judgments'), for example, would be
likely to exhibit poor intellectual virtue because of a prevailing
tendency toovergeneralize. A person high in superstitious thinking,
e.g.one who agrees with the statement 'When something bad happens
tome, I feel that more bad things are likely to follow' would
alsoseem to reason poorly. Of the four intellectual virtue
measures, only two; the Superstitious Thinking and the Categorical
Thinking scales were shown to be statistically tied to the
variables of the present study. Therefore, early in the data
analyses a new measure consisting of the 8 item Superstitious
Thinking scale and the 12 item Categorical Thinking scale was
created and used in all analyses involving intellectual virtue. In
the present study, the inter-item alpha's of the two measures were
.80 and .74 for the superstitious and categorical thinking scales,
respectively. Since intellectual virtue was measured by scales
designed to tap the opposite of good generalized thinking, the
label 'Contra-Intellectual Virtue' is used throughout the paper to
refer to performance on this scale.DESIRE AND CHOICEAristotle
claims that the truly virtuous persons wants to feel and act
appropriately. Some like and enjoy doing the right thing while
others do not. The present study does not include the data on
desire and choice but leaves them for examination in later
papers.SELF-CONTROLSeveral measures of self-control were employed.
The Deferred Gratification Scale (Ray and Najman, 1986), the NEO
Impulsiveness subscale (Costa and McRae, 1985), The Procrastination
Scale (Tuckman, 1991), and two subscales from Epstein and Meier's
(1989) Constructive Thinking Inventory: The Emotional Coping
(CTIEC) and the Behavioral Coping (CTIBC) subscales. These two
subscales consisted in a combined total of 37 items all of which
refer to the subjects capacity to moderate his or her feelings and
actions. Sample guestions from the emotional coping subscale read
as follows: "The slightest indication of disapproval gets me upset"
and "I don't worry about things I can do nothing about." Sample
behavioral coping items are: "When I realize I have made a mistake,
I usually take immediate action to correct it" and " When I have a
lot of work to do by a deadline, I waste a lot of time worrying
about it instead of just doing it." All self-control measures
correlated significantly with each other but a hierarchical
regression analysis to virtuous behavior (see below) led us to
restrict our attention to only the two coping scales from the
Constructive Thinking inventory. Their correlation alpha's reached
respectable levels; .89 and .85 for the Emotional Coping and
Behavioral Coping scales respectively.VIRTUOUS BEHAVIORThe present
investigation did not measure virtuous behavior directly but did
examine the disposition to respond appropriately. The Self
Appraisal Scale (SAS) was constructed to assess ones ability to
attain the right amount, at the right time, and in the right way.
From Urmson's list (1988, p.34) of the ancient Greek virtues
several of the most commonly recognized (including temperance,
courage, liberality, justice, and pride) were selected and used to
construct 48 True / False items regarding the tendency to engage in
virtuous behavior. For example, the first item "I give too freely
of myself" is intended to tap ones ability to give the right amount
(liberality) of himself to others. Another item, "I tend to seek
the easy way out in most situations" concerns ones 'courage', the
ability to endure temporary discomfort for future gains. "I always
want to win" was used to measure the virtue Aristotle calls
justice. The SAS, designed as a measure of the disposition for
virtuous behavior, has been successfully used in previous
investigations (Franklin, LaMarca & Barton, 1992, Franklin
& Torzynski, 1993). It's alpha in the present investigation was
.88.NEED SATISFACTIONThe Satisfaction Index (SI) was developed to
assess the acquisition of real goods. The scale consisted of the
same 12 life domains appearing in the Decision Making Scale
(family, work, money, love, etc.) and subjects rated each on a 1
(terrible) to 5 (Great) Likert scale regarding "... the quality of
each area of your life over the last few years?" It was assumed
that a qualitative judgment regarding a particular domain would
reflect the level of need satisfaction in that area. The domain
items were presented in a different order than they assumed on the
DMS.WELL-BEINGThe recent literature on happiness and well-being
seems to be in general agreement regarding two fundamental
components a good life: life satisfaction and a favorable balance
of positive and negative affect (Diener, 1984). This modern view
seems quite consistent with Aristotle's notion of eudaimonia.
Surely, he would agree that happy people, people who fulfill their
potentials, would find their lives both satisfying and pleasurable.
Thus, well-being, the major dependent variable in this study, was
operationalized in this way. Life satisfaction was measured by the
Satisfaction with Life Scale (Diener, Emmons, Larsen and Griffen
1983). Affect was assessed by the Affect Balance Scale (Bradburn,
1969). Both measures are widely used by researchers in the area of
happiness and well- being and both have much to recommend them. In
the present study the alpha for the Satisfaction with Life Scale
(SWLS) was .87. Separate correlation alpha's for the positive and
negative affect sub-scales of the Affect Balance Scale (ABS) were
.91 and .50, respectively.RESULTSThe purpose of this investigation
was to empirically examine the theoretical structure of Aristotle's
concept of virtue and to further assess his claim that virtue is
essential to well-being. The scales used are presented in Table 1,
along with their means, standard deviations, and alpha's. Table 2
presents a correlation matrix of the variables. It may be noted
from Table 2 that most of the scales, although structured very
differently and intended to measure very different psychological
processes, are quite highly correlated. While alternative
explanations for these correlations may be possible, (e.g. all
measures may reflect the same psychological construct), we believe
the relationships shown in Table 2 lend strong support to the
eudaimonic theory.The model presented in Figure I will serve as a
guide for our discussion of the results.It should be noted at the
outset that neither age nor sex was significantly correlated with
any of the measures used in the study.VIRTUOUS THINKING AND MORAL
ACTIONIn the eudaimonic model the most important determinant of
virtuous behavior is good thinking. One can not do the appropriate
thing unless he or she knows what is appropriate. Such knowledge
consists of two distinct but related forms of reason. First,
intellectual virtue requires that we understand certain principles
which can be used to guide our actions. For example, to be just, we
must understand the idea of fairness. But an intellectual
understanding is not enough. We must also know how to use this
knowledge. We must be able to select the right amount of fairness
for the situation at hand. We need both intellectual virtue and
moral virtue. From Table 2 it can be seen that while
contra-intellectual and moral virtue are significantly correlated
(r = -.29, p = .03) the correlation is not especially high. This
finding is consistent with Aristotle's dichotomous treatment of
virtuous thinking.Table 2 also reveals that both
contra-intellectual and moral virtue are significantly related to
moral action. Poor general thinking, assessed by the categorical
and superstitious thinking subscales of the CTI, correlated -.53
(p