Human Dimension Considerations for Character Development

Human Dimension Considerations for Character Development

White Paper

September - 2017

Concepts and Requirements Division Capability Development Integration Directorate

Mission Command Center of Excellence

Human Dimension Considerations for Character Development

September 2017

Concepts and Requirements Division (CRD) Capability Development and Integration Directorate (CDID)

Mission Command Center of Excellence 806 Harrison Drive Building 470

Fort Leavenworth, KS 66027-2302 913-684-4521

http://cgsc.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/landingpage/collection/p16040coll2

Produced by Booz Allen Hamilton for the United States Army Contract: W911S0-11-D-0012-0007

© (2017) United States Government, as represented by the Secretary of Army. All rights reserved.

Author: Dr. Dan Zupan Contract Team Lead: Don Kroening

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Mission Command Center of Excellence Mission Statement

The Mission Command Center of Excellence (MCCoE) develops, integrates and synchronizes Leader Development, Army Profession, and Mission Command requirements and solutions to prepare leaders and units to successfully exercise Mission Command during the execution of Unified Land Operations. The MCCoE is fully committed to developing and delivering current and relevant Leader Development, Army Profession and Mission Command DOTMLPF (Doctrine-Organization-Training-Materiel-Leadership and education-Personnel-Facilities) solutions for the warfighter based on lessons learned from current operations and analysis of future operations. The MCCoE was established in 2010 as the Army lead for implementing Mission Command across the force. The MCCoE was tasked to: determine MC war fighting functions (WfF) requirements; identify future MC capabilities; integrate MC across the DOTMLPF domains; and present resource-informed, outcomes-based MC and MC-related recommendations and solutions.

Capabilities Development Integration Directorate Mission Statement

The Mission Command (MC) Capabilities Development Integration Directorate (CDID) conducts analysis and integration to identify future requirements and manage current capabilities that enable the Army, as a part of the Joint Force, to exercise Mission command and operationalize the Human Domain.

The Army’s Human Dimension (HD)

The cognitive, physical, and social components of Soldier, Army Civilians, leader, and organizational development and performance essential to raise, prepare, and employ the Army in unified land operations.

Preface to MCCoE Human Dimension White Papers

The Capabilities Requirements Division (CRD) of the MCCoE CDID produces white papers in order to support the

core missions of the MCCoE and CDID and facilitate discussion concerning the human dimension. The papers

review academic and private sector research—including theory and applied practice—and contextualize it with

current Army doctrine, guidance, interests, and the anticipated operational environment of the future. Each paper

provides analysis on topics identified as critical to Mission Command, the Army’s human dimension, and the Army

of the future. This analysis informs recommendations after the conclusion of each paper on how the Army can

better leverage the human dimension in order to gain a decisive edge in operations now and in the future. The

intent of each paper is to provide a foundation of knowledge, expertise, and analysis in order to foster continued

discussion, inform Army efforts, and provide alternative perspectives.

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Executive Summary

The Army defines character as the sum total of an individual’s moral and ethical qualities, the

essence of “who a person is, what a person believes, and how a person acts.”1 Implicit in this

definition is that we all have vices as well as virtues. The Army defines leadership as “the

process of influencing people by providing purpose, direction, and motivation to accomplish the

mission and improve the organization.”2 Implicit in this definition is the moral element of

leadership. Bad leaders influence people, but the Army’s definition assumes good

leaders/leadership directed towards moral ends.

We think of character as a stable state, a constant disposition to do the right thing in the face of

moral challenges. But research in moral psychology indicates that our intuitive understanding

of virtue (a virtuous character) are in error. This is not to say that no one is virtuous or that no

one ever acts virtuously. It is just the case that most of us do not possess virtues/aren’t

virtuous. Rather, we have what are termed mixed character traits, “a set of specific dispositions

to form beliefs and desires that pertain to…” performing acts that resemble virtuous activity.3

Certain Army studies highlight the state of ‘virtue’ in the force. COL Brian M. Michelson notes

that a significant percentage of non-Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) criminal acts are

committed by NCOs and officers; subordinates do not believe that their leaders lead by

example; and that toxic leadership is prevalent.4

The Army Ethic provides the framework for our character development programs. But the Army

Ethic is not a systematic, codified list of character traits or virtues. Rather, the Army Ethic, the

basis of our professional values, derives from the enlightenment ideals expressed in the

Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. As such, perhaps we need to re-assess the

intellectual focus of our character development programs and adopt a Kantian (enlightenment)

versus Aristotelian perspective.

Another issue to address is the status of our in-coming Soldiers and officers. They constitute a

unique social class termed “emerging adulthood.” An analysis of the traits of these emerging

adults provides insights for designing our character development programs.

Finally, ethical lapses by senior leaders are particularly unsettling. The paper analyzes factors

that may make senior leaders more susceptible to ethical failure than the rest of us.

1 Department of the Army, Army Doctrinal Publication (ADP) 6-22, Army Leadership (Washington, DC: GPO, September 2012), 5. 2 Ibid, 1. 3 Miller, Christian, B. Moral Character: An Empirical Theory (2013) 157. Miller goes on to generalize his framework such that it applies for other MCTs that resemble what we would describe, in ordinary language, as virtues. 4 Michelson, Brian, M. “Character Development of U.S. Army Leaders: The Laissez-Faire Approach,” in Military Review, Fort Leavenworth, 93.5 (Sep/Oct 2013) 34-35.

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Recommendations

With the foregoing in mind, the Mission Command Center of Excellence (MCCOE) Capability

Development Integration Directorate (CDID) makes the following recommendations concerning

the human dimension considerations for character development.

1. Review extant research in moral psychology concerning the nature of virtue to determine

the viability of basing character development programs on efforts to inculcate Soldiers and

officers with virtue.

2. Research the challenge posed by the fundamental attribution error in order to understand

the extent to which our behavior is determined by external factors rather than internal features

of character.

3. Examine the concept of mixed character traits to determine if most of us are even capable of

developing true virtue.

4. Examine statistics of misconduct in the force as a form of assessment of the efficacy of our

character development programs and make adjustments to the programs as required.

5. Re-evaluate the intellectual focus of our character development programs. Currently, the

Army follows an Aristotelian model when a Kantian model might be more appropriate.

6. Examine the phenomenon of emerging adulthood to see its implications for character

development programs. This examination might bear on accessions and operational concerns

as well.

7. Recognize that senior leaders might be particularly susceptible to ethical lapses and design

programs to address this susceptibility.

8. Consider leveraging the PhD philosophers from West Point’s Department of English and

Philosophy when developing products concerned with character/ethical development.

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Table of Contents

MCCoE and CDID Mission Statements iii

Executive Summary iv

Table of Contents vi

Introduction 1

Scope 1

Significance 2

Structure 3

What is Character? 4

Character: An Extended Conversation 5

The Fundamental Attribution Error 6

Mixed Character Traits 9

Status of Virtue in the Force 12

The Goal of Character Development 15

Emerging Adulthood and the Future Operating Environment 20

Senior Leaders and Character Lapses 23

The Moral Psychology of Exception Making 26

Conclusion 28

Recommendations 29

References 30

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Human Dimension Considerations for Character Development

The central issues of ethics are also the central issues of leadership. Joanne B. Ciulla, The Ethics of Leadership5

Introduction

Character development is of immense importance for a democratic nation. Parents and educators attempt to instill civic sensibilities into children and students so these young people can become good citizens, citizens of character who understand, respect, and serve the republic; corporations try to instill positive corporate values in their employees to produce employees of character who serve well their corporations and customers. The Army strives to develop leaders/Soldiers of character who can exercise mission command in the service of the nation. Yet the concept of character development is not a unitary idea. In academic literature and Army doctrine, talk of character development is bound up with talk of leader development and ethical development. It is not so much that the three – leader, ethical, and character development – are conflated. Rather, they are interrelated. One could even make the case for synonymy among the three. When we talk of developing leaders, it is understood that we are building ethical leaders, and these ethical leaders are the leaders of character that our efforts seek to develop. When we use the term “character development,” we seldom feel the need to qualify the term with “good.” That is, character is a word used to describe a set of virtuous qualities that make a good person a good person. A person of character is said to be a good person. We need to specify that leaders are also followers; hence, followers experience ethical and character development. That is, all Soldiers develop character-wise; ethical development is not exclusive to leaders. In an attempt to synthesize the competing terminology having to do with character development, this white paper assumes a trinity-like relationship of leader, ethical, and character development (with the recognition that all Soldiers can be leaders and followers): the paper’s title, for example, could refer to “ethical” development (rather than “character” development) without changing the essential subject matter of the paper.

Scope

This paper will discuss character development as it relates to the US Army, mission command, and the Army’s interest in the human dimension. The intent is to couch military, academic, and private-sector theoretical and empirical research concerning character development within the Army’s interest in its human dimension and its efforts to further institutionalize the mission command philosophy, system, and warfighting function.

5 Ciulla, Joanne B. The Ethics of Leadership, Wadsworth Cengage Learning (2003) xi.

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By highlighting key research on character development, this paper will help the Army remain responsive and broad-minded in its efforts to continually identify, develop, validate, and implement effective character development programs now and for the future operational environment. Furthermore, reviewing this literature will firmly root future investment and understanding of the topic in sound theoretical and empirical research.

Significance

This white paper will incorporate recent insights from moral psychology in an effort to provide the Army with different perspectives for designing its programs and assessing their viability. For instance, many character development programs attempt to inculcate character traits via some version of Aristotelian virtue ethics. The reasoning is that, through habituation, people can develop stable, reliable, predictable character traits that will enable them to do the right thing, at the right time, for the right reasons. However, some recent studies indicate that character traits are not independently stable. An important consideration for ethical action is the environment in which the ethical challenge occurs. Context has important implications for, among other things, the effect of command climate on ethical decision making by leaders and Soldiers. The Army Ethic is the foundation of our character development programs. ADRP 1, The Army Profession, states:

The Army Ethic is the heart of the Army and the inspiration for our shared professional identity—Who We Are – Why and How We Serve. It motivates our conduct as Army professionals, Soldiers, and Army Civilians, who are bound together in common moral purpose to support and defend the Constitution and the American people.6

The Army Ethic is a broad set of general prescriptions, prohibitions, and values to which any good citizen/ethical person should subscribe. How well do the Army’s character development initiatives fare in inculcating the Army Ethic into our leaders, Soldiers, and Department of the Army Civilians (DAC)? Are they adequate to produce citizens possessed of virtues appropriate for a modern liberal industrialized society? This white paper will explore the strengths, weaknesses, and possible limitations of Army character development programs and will attempt to focus the purview of these programs. Another issue character development programs have to address has to do with the future operational environment (OE) and the fact that radical changes have occurred (and will continue to do so at accelerated paces) in social, cultural, and behavioral norms. Technology, instruments of war, and media have changed the way we engage the world and the way the world perceives military actions. In a future OE that is volatile, unclear, complex, and

6 Department of the Army, ARDP1, The Army Profession, (June 2015), 2-1.

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ambiguous, perhaps our Soldiers will face unique ethical challenges that our character development programs must evolve to meet. Moreover, the Soldiers themselves are different from previous generations, constituting a unique social subset categorized as Emerging Adults. This white paper will examine character development in a holistic way to contribute to the important discourse of building leaders/people of character. It will examine how and whether character development programs work and will examine the assessment mechanisms we use to make judgments about our character development programs.

Structure This paper begins by defining key character development terms and concepts and moves on to an extended conversation about character. It explores issues having to do with the fact that we have both good and bad character traits and discusses the Aristotelian nature of our character development programs. The paper will turn to a discussion of the fundamental attribution error, which is the mistake of attributing the entire cause of our behavior to internal factors, i.e., character. The discussion points out that external factors have a surprisingly large influence on our behavior; several studies are described that show the extent of the external factor influence. We will examine some challenges to the very notion of virtue and whether character development is even possible. The paper will explore the concept of Mixed Character Traits and the concomitant diminution of the importance/relevance of the concept of a virtuous character. The paper will then provide some alarming statistics that cause concern for the efficacy of extant character development programs. Then will ensue an attempt to gain clarity on just what the goal of our character development programs should be. In the course of a discussion about the Army Ethic, the conversation will turn to a comparison of an Aristotelian model versus a Kantian or deontic model for character development programs. The concept of emerging adulthood is the next topic we explore. Most of our incoming Soldiers and officers are emerging adults, and we discuss what this implies for character and leadership in the radically uncertain future operating environment. The next section of the paper addresses senior leaders and their ethical lapses. This discussion will include an examination of the moral psychology of exception making. The paper will conclude with recommendations.

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What is Character? The Army defines character as the sum total of an individual’s moral and ethical qualities, the essence of “who a person is, what a person believes, and how a person acts.”7 Implicit in this definition is that we all have vices as well as virtues. The Army defines leadership as “the process of influencing people by providing purpose, direction, and motivation to accomplish the mission and improve the organization.”8 Implicit in this definition is the moral element of leadership. Bad leaders influence people, but the Army’s definition assumes good leaders/leadership directed towards moral ends. The philosopher Martin Cook notes, for instance, that military personnel, when they speak of character “rarely feel the need even to qualify the notion of character with the adjective ‘good’ – so fundamental is the assumption of its inherent goodness.”9 ADRP-1 provides an operational definition of character: “Dedication and adherence to the Army Ethic, including Army Values, as consistently and faithfully demonstrated in decisions and actions.”10 This definition tells us that character is understood to include ethical traits. Noted leadership scholar Edwin P. Hollander defines leadership in terms of the relationship between the leader and the followers. He “describes the leader-follower relationship as a unified interdependent relationship held together by loyalty and trust, and rooted in the leader’s commitment to principles of justice, equity, responsibility, and accountability in the exercise of authority and power.”11 This definition clearly ensconces leadership in the heart of ethics. It also has the merit of highlighting the fact that leadership inherently involves followers and the relationships between the leader and the led. We usually assume character development programs have a positive impact, but it is important to understand that our programs have the potential to produce poor leaders with bad character; or our programs could have little or no effect either way. Since our characters amount to the essence of who we are, understanding the content of character empowers us (by explicitly acknowledging that we have both positive and negative qualities). This understanding of character is phenomenologically accurate. When we judge ourselves or others, we recognize that, however virtuous we might be in general, we nonetheless have faults, and we have these faults in spite of our own best efforts or the efforts of others to guide us on the path of righteousness. This understanding provides an empirically, holistic start point for understanding character development programs.

7 Department of the Army, Army Doctrinal Publication (ADP) 6-22, Army Leadership (Washington, DC: GPO, September 2012), 5. 8 Ibid, 1. 9 Cook, Martin. “Military Ethics and Character Development,” in Routledge Handbook of Military Ethics, ed. George Lucas, Routledge Press (2015) 101. 10 Department of the Army, Army Doctrinal Reference Publication (ADRP) 1 (14 June 2015), Glossary – 1. 11 Ciulla, Joanne B. The Ethics of Leadership, Wadsworth Cengage Learning (2003) xvii.

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Character: An Extended Conversation We tend to think that character is stable. A person of good character is predicted to behave in a virtuous manner consistently; a person of bad character would presumably manifest certain vices consistently. But as we noted above, we have both good and bad traits. Our challenge is to ensure that the good traits have ascendency over the bad ones. How do we develop a stable character disposed to virtue rather than vice in a character somewhat schizoid in nature? A traditional response to this question, and the one around which many character development programs coalesce, is Aristotelian in nature. We become virtuous by doing virtuous acts, that is, through habituation. The military academies and initial military training, for instance, try to inculcate certain habits in cadets and Soldiers through, usually, rigorous requirements and regimens. We instill discipline through repeated instances of stress. We instill courage, for example, by requiring Soldiers to do things that are perhaps out of their comfort zones: scale high obstacles, conduct land navigation at night, jump from airplanes (for a subset of volunteers), etc. The processes to instill discipline are Aristotelian in nature:

But as a philosopher who reflects on what is going on in this foundational level of military formation, it is rather obvious that Aristotle is the intellectual father of the enterprise. The core of the effort is the formation of habits through the application of pleasure and pain…The specific habits being formed are justified functionally: the resultant consistent and reliable patterns of behavior are believed to be essential for a well-disciplined and reliable officer corps.12

And it seems to work. Upon graduation from basic training or a military academy, the newly minted Soldiers/officers seem to manifest certain attitudes that were not at least salient before their training. They come to see rising with the sun and doing physical training as the natural order of things. They clean their weapons religiously, etc. But there is a challenge to this conception of attaining a virtuous character. If I do a virtuous act, am I not therefore virtuous? Once, for instance, I give money to a charity, should I be able to claim the virtue of charity? Aristotle uses a variety of analogies to respond. Take the case of playing a musical instrument.13 In order to become a good musician, you have to practice, and you must practice in the right way under the tutelage of a good teacher. You have to play music to play it well eventually. You might occasionally, early in your training, hit the right note or chord by accident. But we wouldn’t call you a good musician on that account. To be considered

12 Cook, Martin. “Ethics Education, Ethics Training, and Character Development,” in Ethics Education in the Military, ed. Robinson, Paul, Nigel De Lee, and Don Carrick, Ashgate Press (2008) 58. 13 It is important to note that this is an analogy, one that could lead to confusion. Character traits are dispositions, not skills like playing music. Habituation is meant to give you the disposition to consistently conduct yourself virtuously. Practice (as in practicing the harp, for instance) makes you more proficient at playing the harp. But “the point of habituation in character development is not that practice makes us more proficient at truth telling or the like.” I owe this insight to Roger Wertheimer, and I quote Roger here from an email received from him 11 August 2017.

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a good musician – a virtuoso – you would have to hit all the right notes at all the right times for all the right reasons. You became “musical” by doing musical things, i.e., through habituation. What you have developed is a skill, by forming certain habits related to playing music. Similarly, if you are truly charitable, you would be disposed to more than an isolated act of giving; you would have the disposition to give the right amount to worthy causes, within your means, for the right reasons at the right times. The same dynamic is said to occur with the virtues. We become temperate by performing temperate acts, just by performing just acts, and on and on.14 Through habituation, we develop steady and stable characters that keep us steadfast in the face of adversity and temptation.15

The Fundamental Attribution Error

The traditional Aristotelian account of virtue is not without its detractors, and character development programs based on that account must acknowledge some compelling challenges as to their viability. Certain experiments in moral psychology challenge the notion that character is a stable state that enables us to withstand the exigencies of life. It turns out that the actual situation in which we encounter challenges to our virtuous selves may play a significant role in how we respond.

When people look for causes of behavior, they tend to ignore the situation and blame (or credit) that which they do notice: the person… This bias, attributing causes of behavior to actors (i.e., to internal dispositional factors) rather than the situation (i.e., to external, environmental factors) is the fundamental attribution error. Additionally, when searching for the causes of immoral behavior…people become even more motivated as they need a stable concept of moral responsibility for evil acts; attributions of moral responsibility require that we posit the existence of a free moral agent uncoerced by purportedly ‘trivial’ environmental stimuli.16

However, environmental factors influence us in ways we might not appreciate. We might not be free moral agents in the way that matches our moral intuitions. Even insignificant features of any given situation can determine how we will in fact act in that situation. A brief summary of the research supporting this thesis follows:

14 Courage is a challenge to really habituate since Aristotle believes only soldiers in battle can truly manifest courage. Sailors in a storm, for example, might seem to act bravely, but they are not really in a situation that requires courage: they have no choice. They must perform their actions or sink – they can’t run, as it were. But soldiers in battle do have a choice; they can run, they can show cowardice in the face of the enemy. When they stand fast in war, they are, according to Aristotle, acting courageously. 15 It is not within the scope of this paper to provide a thorough account of Aristotle’s ethics. For a full account, see Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics, trans. Terence Irwin, 2nd Edition, Hackett Publishing Company. It is worth reading Irwin’s introduction. 16 Samuels, Stephen, M. and William D. Casebeer, “A social psychological view of morality: why knowledge of situational influences on behavior can improve character development practices,” in Journal of Moral Education, Vol. 34, No. 1, (March 2005), 74.

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According to Isen and Levin (1972), 87.5% of those participants who had just found a dime in the coin return slot of a public telephone helped a confederate (of the experimenter) who “accidentally” dropped a folder full of papers, while only 4 percent of those participants who had found no coin helped. According to Darely and Batson (1973), 63 percent of unhurried participants helped a coughing and groaning confederate who was sitting slumped in a door way, while only 10 percent of hurried participants helped. According to Milgram (1974), 65 percent of those participants who were prompted by an experimenter administered the maximum available (in fact fictitious) electric shock to a confederate, while only 2.5 percent of those participants who were allowed to choose the shock levels administered the maximum available shock.17

If character were a stable condition consisting of dispositions to do what is ethically required, then we would expect the participants to do the right thing regardless of the details of the situation requiring ethical action. Yet even the absence or presence of a dime in a slot significantly influenced the way participants responded. Some theorists18 think that the fundamental attribution error poses a serious threat to character development programs. Their thinking is that since circumstances can affect an agent so dramatically from one situation to the next, it is futile to spend time attempting to develop that which can be corrupted so capriciously. Moreover, “If the situation is a major cause of our actions then how can people be held responsible for their own ethical behavior?”19 The philosopher Gilbert Harman goes even further by denying the existence of anything like stable character traits:

This radical situationist position is interpreted by Harman as demonstrating that there is no such thing as a character trait; there simply are no stable internal regularities that contribute to behavior. He argues this has two entailments. First, it is more difficult (in his view, it would be well-nigh impossible!) to hold people responsible when things go awry … Secondly, moral education becomes impossible. He bluntly states…”If there is no such thing as character, then there is no such thing as character building.”20

Two prominent researchers, Samuels and Casebeer, derive a different conclusion from the fundamental attribution error experiments. They believe that by having knowledge of the ways

17 Cook, Martin, L. “Military Ethics and Character Development,” in Routledge Handbook of Military Ethics, ed. Lucas, George, Routledge Press (2015), 103. 18 The philosopher Gilbert Harmen is one notable example. 19 Samuels, Stephen, M. and William D. Casebeer, “A social psychological view of morality: why knowledge of situational influences on behavior can improve character development practices,” in Journal of Moral Education, Vol. 34, No. 1, (March 2005), 75. 20 Ibid, 75- 76.

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situations can influence our ethical deliberation and behavior, we can fortify ourselves in advance of encountering occasions that require ethical deliberation – forewarned is forearmed.

Careful study of the fundamental attribution error can actually increase our ability to lessen the influence that the environment has on our action, cause us to avoid environments where we know our behavior will become less desirable or unpredictable, and actively work to cultivate the kind of environments where virtuous behavior is both encouraged and made possible by appropriate stimuli regularity.21

What Samuels and Casebeer seem to be getting at is that to be or become virtuous we must be self-aware. We should understand our own ethical reasoning processes and avoid ethically precarious situations. Furthermore, since we cannot control our environment or know when or how we might be tested, the more we know about the effect of situation on our ethical deliberation, the more we will be prepared to recognize those facets of a situation that, without our own conscious cognition of their presence, could lead us to make unethical or less optimal decisions. Once people “… are able to see what environmental factors have the potential to influence, they may be better prepared to make a decision based on their true beliefs and feelings.”22 Samuels and Casebeer go on to say that Harman misread or misinterpreted the lessons the fundamental attribution error teach us. The lessons, rather than pointing to our instability, actually point out that we often merely underestimate the effect of environmental factors on our deliberations. Also, a large body of research exists that indicates that we do have relatively stable personality traits (character). This research:

…has revealed a large portion of personality can be summarized by five unique traits: extroversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, negative emotionality23, and openness. Referred to as The Big Five, research in this area has given overwhelming support for some level of personality consistency.24

So, we appear to have certain consistent character traits, but features of situations, even fairly trivial ones, influence us in profound ways. Realizing the latter frees us from “the illusion of personality as the sole cause of behavior.”25 The realization of the effect of situation on our behavior has important implications for military ethics. As we engage with our Soldiers and officers through the media of our character development programs, we can make them (Soldiers and officers) aware of the external influences on their behavior. The better they understand moral phenomenology, the better they can cope with the myriad ethical challenges they will face.

21 Ibid, 77. 22 Ibid. 23 Sometimes termed “neurosis.” 24 Ibid, 76. 25 Ibid, 77.

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And we must extend this awareness of the influence of external factors on ethical deliberations to institutional character/climate. When then GEN Erik Shinseki became Chief of Staff of the Army, he had a group of colonels at the U.S. Army War College study the system for readiness reporting “because he knew the culture of the Army had made it almost impossible for leaders at every level to report low levels of readiness.”26 Martin Cook discusses the impetus behind Shinseki’s initiative. Cook offers the hypothetical case of an Army captain who falsely reports his unit’s readiness as higher than it is; that is, the captain lied. But Cook contends that it would be inappropriate to categorically condemn the captain as a liar since he is acting within an organizational situation that forces him to act in the way he did and about which he has no control. Cook explains:

…if we seek to explain and prevent unethical behavior, we need to broaden our approaches to thinking about military ethics and leading military organizations. As social scientists put it, we need to think both about “bad apples” (that is, individuals’ ethical failures…) and “bad barrels” as well (that is, organizational and situational context in which individuals are placed and which incentivize or even virtually require misconduct.27

Cook here is simply stating something about what the Army calls command climate. Since leaders set the command climate, there is a real sense that some unethical behavior on the part of their subordinates might reflect on the character of the leaders in more direct ways than are commonly recognized. Leaders are, after all, responsible for everything their units do or fail to do.

Mixed Character Traits

Most people have moral character traits, but very few people have virtues (or vices). In fact, we do not even have a name for the moral traits we have (or lack)! Philosopher and ethicist Christian B. Miller provides an interesting and compelling account of what he terms mixed character traits (MCT). 28 Miller discusses a mixed character trait of helping and defines it as “a set of specific dispositions to form beliefs and desires that pertain to helping.”29 This MCT would align with what we would typically call “compassion.” But because this trait is so often not manifested by most people when they encounter situations where their help is clearly called for, it does not count as a virtue. This is not to say that there are no virtues, but rather that most people don’t possess

26 Cook, Martin, L. “Military Ethics and Character Development,” in Routledge Handbook of Military Ethics, ed. Lucas, George, Routledge Press (2015), 102. 27 Ibid. 28 Miller, Christian, B. Moral Character: An Empirical Theory, Oxford University Press (2013). Miller points out that

when he refers to ‘most’ people, the people he has in mind are from Western industrialized nations where the studies he cites were primarily conducted. 29 Ibid, 157. Miller goes on to generalize his framework such that it applies for other MCTs that resemble what we would describe, in ordinary language, as virtues.

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virtues; in the case under discussion, most people lack the virtue of compassion. Miller outlines certain conditions a trait must meet in order properly to be called a virtue (of helping). Among them are:

1. A person who is compassionate, when acting in character, will typically attempt to help when, at the very least, the need for help is obvious and the effort involved in helping is very minimal. 2. The virtue of compassion gives rise to compassionate motivation to help another person, and that motivation is altruistic motivation to help. Indeed, it is the fact that it is altruistic which grounds the moral praiseworthiness of this motivation.30

The MCT of helping does not fit concepts we capture with ordinary language since it is fundamentally and phenomenologically different from the virtue of compassion.

It is important to be clear about the sense in which this trait is “mixed.” The claim is not that this trait is a virtue in some situations or contexts, and a vice in others. Rather the claim is that this trait is not a virtue in any situations or contexts. Nor is it entirely morally good or bad … a Mixed Helping Trait is neither a virtue nor a vice, neither entirely good nor bad in every situation or context in which a person possesses it.31

The studies we have mentioned earlier in this paper and a host of other studies too numerous to list show just how inconsistently people manifest the helping MCT. Recall, for example, the study involving the presence or absence of a dime in a pay phone return slot. Only four percent of people who did not find a dime helped the person who dropped the papers, while 87.5 % of those who found the dime helped. In another study, two groups of people were put in different rooms and asked, among other things, to donate to and also volunteer for Habitat for Humanity. One group was willing to donate and showed interest in volunteering at a much higher rate than the other group. The difference between the groups is that one group (the more helping one) was in a room recently sprayed with citrus-scented Windex. Furthermore, the influence seemed to work on a subconscious level: “No participants during post-experiment questioning reported the scent of the room as having an influence on their willingness to helping. But clearly it did at least for some of them.” So, a mere presence or absence of a fragrance impacted the behavior of the two groups. Since we correctly consider a virtue to be stable and a determinant of behavior over a broad and deep array of circumstances, we would expect that a person possessed of the virtue of compassion would not be influenced subconsciously or consciously by something as trivial as a scent. The same observation holds for the truly virtuous (compassionate) person when it comes

30 Ibid, 190-94. 31 Ibid, 157.

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to finding (or not) a dime. The truly compassionate person would help in either case. The virtuous person’s behavior would be predictable in a way that the person having an MCT would not be. It is important to make a comment about the motivation behind an MCT, a helping MCT for instance. Smith could help Robinson, for example, for egoistic reasons so he will look good in the eyes of others. Or he might help another person in anticipation of a reward. That is, there are enhancers and inhibitors of the helping trait that would not affect the compassionate person. “For in hundreds of actual studies, it has been found that many control participants do not help even in highly conducive circumstances, although they might have helped if they were experiencing guilt, a positive mood, or some other enhancer.”32 The virtuous person is motivated to help simply because helping is the right thing to do; she acts from altruistic motives and would not be negatively influenced by inhibitors. Some might object that Miller’s account doesn’t seem to jive with our everyday experience. We often help other people and see other people helping people. So we might conclude that people are more stable and predictable than Miller’s theory posits. But we actually are seeing essentially random events in ourselves and others and are drawing unsupported conclusions based on particular biases and expectations. The empirical data, on the other hand, is derived from professionally designed and highly controlled experiments. They track individuals over time and across situations, and what they find overwhelmingly is that people demonstrate significant variability in helping, variability that would not be consistent with these people’s being virtuous. However, there does seem to be a degree of individual consistency if we know what is psychologically salient to people’s interpretations of the situations where helping would be expected. Miller points out that two people, say John and Jill, could respond quite differently to the same situation that a neutral observer (an experimenter) would recognize as a clear instance where helping would be appropriate. Say the situation had features A, B, C, and D. To John, features B and D are salient, which leads him to help. But for Jill, features A and C are salient, which leads to her not helping.33 Miller claims that most people have the Mixed Character Traits that lead to stable and cross-situationally consistent helping over time – if we account for both the situation and character traits, including what is psychologically salient for any given agent.34 We might not know what the salient features are, but if we did, we’d come to see the agent as acting consistently, though not virtuously – in most cases, for most people.

Status of Virtue in the Force

32 Ibid, 191. 33 Ibid, 170-173. 34 Ibid, 173.

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In an interesting and alarming monograph, COL Brian M. Michelson compiled some data from 4 primary sources:

The Army’s 2012 report entitled, “Generating Health and Discipline in the Force Ahead of the Strategic Reset,” (the Army Gold Book).

Technical Report 2012-1: The 2011 Center for Army Leadership Annual Survey of Army Leadership (CASAL): Main Findings.

Technical Report 2011-1: The 2010 Center for Army Leadership Annual Survey of Army Leadership (CASAL): Main Findings.

Technical Report 2011-3: Antecedents and consequences of toxic leadership in the U.S. Army: A two year review and recommended solutions (Toxic Leadership Report)35

Among his findings:

31 percent of the documented, non-UCMJ criminal acts in the Army are committed by leaders, specifically NCOs and commissioned officers

30 percent of subordinates do not believe that their superiors either create a positive environment or lead by example

Only 72 percent of respondents believed that the leaders they interacted with displayed good ethical behavior.

Not only is toxic leadership prevalent, but the majority of leaders considered it a problem, to include:

o 55 percent of field grade officers o 61 percent of company grade officers o 60 percent of warrant officers o 60 percent of senior NCOs o 66 percent of junior NCOs36

These statistics certainly have implications for any discussion of character development. The significant number of indicators of ethical failure might lend credence to Miller’s views about Mixed Character Traits. That is, one would expect far fewer ethical lapses if people truly were imbued with virtue. But on an MCT account, the numbers are not too surprising. We would expect such variability. Of course, one could conclude that those who had not failed show that they had developed virtue, but the high percentage of leaders who perceive that toxic leadership is a problem makes it unlikely to warrant such a conclusion: these toxic leaders may not have committed crimes, but they don’t seem to have developed virtue. On top of this, there doesn’t seem to be in place a robust system in the Army to have developed virtue in our leaders:

35 Michelson, Brian, M. “Character Development of U.S. Army Leaders: The Laissez-Faire Approach,” in Military Review, Fort Leavenworth, 93.5 (Sep/Oct 2013) 33. 36 Ibid, 34-35.

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… a recent study by the Army’s Center for the Army Professional Ethic indicates that the ‘policies and governing documents for Army leader development are disjointed and dated. Roles and responsibilities for leader development are not clearly defined and are sometimes conflicting … the Army still lacks an integrated Human Development effort … [and] … internal subject matter expertise in the behavioral, social, and other Human Development sciences.’37

So it could be that the Army’s character development programs face challenges they may not quite appreciate. First, it could be that the Army fundamentally misunderstands what makes up most of our characters – Mixed Character Traits versus virtues. Second, “the Army lacks a broadly understood and agreed upon causal theory for how it can assess and develop the personal character of its leaders.”38 Furthermore, whatever assessment/developmental theory the Army operates under might be problematic insofar as it lacks an adequate understanding of the true nature of character. Given the data, it might be plausible to infer that the Army’s character development programs simply do not work. The Aristotelian methodology of attempting to instill virtue through habituation might require re-assessment.39 Priest, Krause, and Beach conducted a four-year longitudinal study40 of athletes from the United States Military Academy’s (USMA) Class of 1993, which showed a decrease in ethical value choices over a four-year period. The findings might indicate, among other things, that perhaps USMA’s 47 month character development program had little positive effect and could not offset the ethical decline that seems to accompany participation in intercollegiate sports. However, we should be cautious not to generalize too broadly from sports ethics to ethics in general. A different study, however, might warrant such generalization. The Office of Economic and Manpower Analysis (OEMA) conducted a study concerning separation from service for misconduct among the various sources of commissioning.41 The study included year groups (YG) 1991-YG2003 and had a sample size of over 40,000 officers. Here is a summary of the results:

37 Ibid, 32-33. One could argue, however, that the Army is moving in the right direction by establishing the Human Dimension Task Force. Furthermore, CAPE has a draft white paper outlining The Army’s Framework for Character Development, 27 March 2017. 38 Ibid, 33. 39 I will address such concerns in greater detail in the next section of the paper. 40 Priest, Robert, F., Jerry V. Krause, and Johnston Beach. “Four-Year Changes in College Athletes’ Ethical Value Choices in Sports Situations,” in Research Quarterly for Exercise and Sport, June 1999, Vol. 70, No. 2, pp. 170-78. 41 Office of Economic and Manpower Analysis (OEMA) Honor Tiger Team Support, 6 November 2006, “Distribution of Commissions and Separations within the First Three Years of Service for Misconduct by Source of Commission, YG1991-YG2003.”

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a. USMA and ROTC Scholarship officers are statistically identical in terms of separations for misconduct.

b. The percentage of misconduct by source of commission is commensurate

with the percentage of the officer corps represented by the various sources.

1. USMA graduates: 22% of officer corps, 20 percent of misconduct cases. 2. ROTC Scholarship: 43% of corps, 41 percent of misconduct. 3. ROTC Non-Scholarship: 24%/25% 4. OCS Enlistment Option: 3%/5% 5. OCS In-Service: 8%/9%

One might reasonably expect that USMA officers, having been immersed 24/7 in an institution that emphasizes character development and has a highly developed character development program, would show significantly better conduct than their peers from other sources of commissioning. But the data suggests that USMA’s robust character development fared little or no better at producing leaders of character than did the character development programs of other sources of commissioning. “Faith in the efficacy of academy character education withers, I’m told, in JAGS after years of prosecuting and defending transgressions by officers – committed at much the same rate whatever the commissioning history.”42 It is worth mentioning that the other sources of commissioning provide nowhere near the immersive character development programs as does USMA – OCS, for example, only has 90 days to inculcate the appropriate values in its officers-in-training. USMA examples are used and generalized for the Army because USMA’s program is perhaps the most well developed and is the model upon which the other service academies, ROTC, and OCS base their character development programs. USMA is also referenced because, as noted philosopher Roger Wertheimer points out, it is among “the best we’ve got” in the Department of Defense.43

The Goal of Character Development

A soldier without ethics, values, and beliefs with which he can live in a moral sense will himself

be destroyed by the horrors of the battlefield. Without ethics the humanist quality so necessary to moral man will die. Only ethics can place the destruction of warfare in perspective and

42 Wertheimer, Roger. “The Morality of Military Ethics Education,” in Empowering Our Military Conscience: Transforming Just War Theory and Military Moral Education, ed. Roger Wertheimer, Ashgate Publishing (2010), 168. 43 Ibid, 160. Wertheimer also points to the other service academies as exemplars of character development

programs.

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prohibit men from using violence beyond reason. Without ethics the horror of human combat becomes even greater.44

Richard A. Gabriel What is the goal of our character development programs? Of course, we are trying to develop leaders and Soldiers who act ethically and do so from firm, stable dispositions to do the right thing in the right way for the right reasons. But what defines what the right thing is? ADRP 1, The Army Profession, states:

The Army Ethic is the heart of the Army and the inspiration for our shared professional identity—Who We Are – Why and How We Serve. It motivates our conduct as Army professionals, Soldiers, and Army Civilians, who are bound together in common moral purpose to support and defend the Constitution and the American people.45

The Army Ethic provides the foundation for our leader development programs and policies. But the Army Ethic is not a systematic, codified list of character traits or virtues. Rather, the Army Ethic, the basis of our professional values, derives from the enlightenment ideals expressed in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. “American professionalism is an Enlightenment ethos. The American military is subject to the basic Enlightenment moral imperatives governing the fundamental laws of the nation it serves.”46 The Ethic includes national and international laws (the Laws of Armed Conflict [LOAC] for instance), Just War Tradition, and the norms and values of American society at large. It also includes some purportedly martial-specific values as articulated in, for example, the Army Values, the Soldier’s Creed and Warrior Ethos, and the Army Civilian Corps Creed.47 Our character development programs are trying to produce leaders, Soldiers, and Department of the Army Civilians (DAC) who are citizens possessed of virtues appropriate for a modern liberal industrialized society. If this is the case, and given Michelson’s research, then perhaps we need a different intellectual orientation to guide our character development programs. As was pointed out earlier, character development programs in the Army generally follow a loosely-Aristotelian template, attempting through habituation to develop people of virtuous character. Cook states:

The assumptions underlying much of the military ethics education… rest largely on broadly Aristotelian assumptions about the nature of ethics and the relationship

44 Gabriel, Richard, A. To Serve with Honor: A Treatise on Military Ethics and the Way of the Soldier, Greenwood Press (1982) 227. 45 Department of the Army, ARDP1, The Army Profession, (June 2015), 2-1. 46 Wertheimer, Roger. “The Morality of Military Ethics Education,” in Empowering our Military Conscience: Transforming Just War Theory and Military Moral Education, ed. Roger Wertheimer, Ashgate Press (2010) 159. 47 Department of the Army, ARDP1, The Army Profession, (June 2015), 2-3.

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between formed habits, “virtues,” and behavior. Certainly, this is how military personnel generally speak of ethical matters.48

Cook goes on to say that that the military only superficially reflects Aristotle’s conception of ethics and virtue. What’s missing is the emphasis on practical wisdom – the intellectual understanding of why the goods (virtues) being sought are good. Without adequate time for reflection, aspirants will never attain virtuous characters. Merely repeating ethical actions will not make a person ethical.

One might argue that this reflective component is unnecessary, and perhaps even unhelpful, since we are preparing officers to be persons of action more than reflection. On the other hand, the relative absence of attention to this aspect of character can result in cadets’ experiencing their military training as an elaborate but apparently arbitrary set of rules.49 Military education that attempted to round out the picture of Aristotelian assumptions would insure that, over and above habituation through routine action, military personnel would, in addition, be afforded opportunities for deeper intellectual understanding of the moral significance of the military life.50

The foregoing might reflect a deep-seeded conflict within the Army’s character development construct and point the way to the intellectual direction we should be heading. On one hand we talk about being or becoming virtuous, but on the other hand, when we render judgment on a leaders’ actions, we talk of their being right or wrong. At the United States Military Academy (USMA) at West Point, for example, the character development programs are roughly Aristotelian, but the Honor Code, the ultimate touchstone of character appraisal, is decidedly deontic. Deontic ethics are “based on the notion of a duty, or what is right, or rights, as opposed to ethical systems based on the idea of achieving some good state of affairs … or the qualities of character needed to live well (see virtue ethics).”51 The Code does not list a set of virtues to aspire to; rather, it represents a strict set of prohibitions the violation of which can lead to dismissal from USMA. The code tells you what to do (or not do), not what to be: it is not a measure of virtue.

48 Cook, Martin, L. “Military Ethics and Character Development,” in Routledge Handbook of Military Ethics, ed. Lucas, George, Routledge Press (2015), 101. 49 Cook, Martin. “Ethics Education, Ethics Training, and Character Development,” in Ethics Education in the Military, ed. Paul Robinson, Nigel De Lee, and Don Carrick, Ashgate Publishing Company (2008) 58-59. 50 Ibid. A more detailed discussion of this point follows below. 51 Blackburn, Simon. Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy, Oxford University Press (1996), 100. There is some confusion in the literature about deontological systems. Kant is said to be the progenitor and to have constructed a rules-based architectonic. However, Kant’s fundamental practical philosophy is based on a principle, the categorical imperative, which he described as the supreme principle of morality. The categorical imperative has several different articulations that tell you what to do based on respect for humanity and conformity to universal law. A fuller exegesis on Kant is not within the scope of this paper.

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The suggestion is that there is a tension that needs to be resolved to gain consistency and coherence in our character development programs. Our moral touchstone is the Army Ethic, which is based on enlightenment ideals. But our character development programs are roughly Aristotelian, aimed at instilling virtue, the nature of which is at least contestable. We are attempting to use a theory from antiquity to inculcate a respect for values arising from the enlightenment era. The enlightenment notion of individual rights that we embrace, for example, would be foreign to Aristotle, for whom the interests of the state were paramount, whereas the purpose of the state in enlightenment thought is to provide the maximum amount of liberty to people consistent with the same amount of liberty for everyone else. It could be that our means are not supportive of our ends. This is not to say there is no room for the virtues or habituation in our programs; indeed, most ethical theories will invoke virtues and talk about good habits in some way or another. But the place they occupy in our programs may require re-examination. The motive to act virtuously is heteronymous; that is, it is external to us. In general, the motivational causal chain for virtue is of the sort: “If I want X, then I should do Y.” If I want to be happy, I should be virtuous. This might seem innocuous enough; after all, we reason this way often. If I want to be a doctor, I should go to medical school. But, from a Kantian52 perspective, although there is nothing inherently immoral in such reasoning, it nonetheless lacks moral worth and would not elicit moral praise. What we seek is autonomous moral motivation. To juxtapose the notions of heteronomous versus autonomous motivation, consider the idea of internalization of values. We want our Soldiers, leaders, and DACs to internalize the Army Values, for example. In effect, we want people to be motivated internally, we want them to take the ethical course of action simply because it is the right thing to do, because they value the goodness inherent in a particular act.

According to Kant there are two ways in which we may be motivated to conform to a law. Sometimes, we conform to a law because of some interest we have that is served by such conformity – for instance, when the law is supported by a sanction. If disobedience to the law will lead to our being fined, socially ostracized, thrown into prison, or dispatched to hell; or if obedience means we will be loved, saved, rewarded, or well-pleasing to God, we may well be motivated to obey it for those reasons. At other times, however, we obey a law because we endorse the law itself, considered as a law: we think that this is indeed how people in general ought to act, and so we act that way ourselves. Kant calls the first sort of motivation heteronomous, because we are bound to the law by something outside ourselves – God, the state, or nature – that attaches the sanction to the law. The second kind of motivation is autonomous, because we bind

52 Immanuel Kant was one of the greatest enlightenment philosophers and the greatest philosopher in the last three hundred years.

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ourselves to the law. The principle that we give universal law through our maxims suggests that the moral motivation is autonomous.53

A maxim is something like a robust intent. So our intent, when we act morally (when our actions have moral worth) is to act in such a manner because we value morality itself; we know we ought to do the act, period. A heteronomous intent/maxim would be of the form: if we want X, then we ought to do Y. If the motivation, X, were not present, then we would not do Y. Our motive is external to ourselves; it is contingent. But we do not believe the demands of morality are contingent in this way. There is a necessity to moral requirements that is not consistent with “if, then” reasoning. Without getting into the notion of legislating universal laws to ourselves, we can still understand autonomous moral motivation by considering, again, the idea of internalization. It seems clear that the goal of our character development programs is to get people to recognize the “oughtness” of an action, to act for no other reason than because morality demands it. This might be the best way to understand internalization of values. We make these values our own; we refrain from lying not because we fear punishment but because we see the moral value of truth telling in itself. These concepts help focus Army character development programs properly. We can leverage habituation and inculcation of virtues, but they are subordinate and complementary to the notion of autonomous moral action. If this account is plausible, we would do well to spend more energy in encouraging an intellectual growth in our Soldiers and leaders such that they know why the values we espouse are morally required.54 We don’t exclusively espouse values and virtues because they lead to military efficiency; we espouse them also because morality commands it. Note that in just war theory, jus in bello (justice in war) permits us to act within the constraints of proportionality and military necessity. But these constraints amount to military efficiency or expedience. A lot of unjust carnage has been justified by expedience/efficiency. But had leaders and Soldiers been motivated by the moral law as such, considerations that would, say, target noncombatants, would be ruled out in advance. Collateral damage is probably ineluctable in armed conflict, particularly counter insurgencies, but it could be radically reduced if leaders and soldiers were character-wise developed under a conception of right action that was not dependent on non-moral motivations.

53 Korsgaard, Christine, M. “Introduction,” in Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, Immanuel Kant, ed. Mary Gregor, Cambridge Press (1997) xxiv. 54 This statement is admittedly quixotic. Initial military training should probably focus on instilling the right habits, as should pre-commissioning programs at the outset. But as the ALDS describes, character development is a career-long process. The more responsibility and seniority a person gains, the more the person should: 1) be required to reflect on the ethical requirements of military service, and 2) be seasoned and mature enough to engage in such reflection.

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This conception of ethics could do much to mitigate the influence of Mixed Character Traits. If we have an intellectual appreciation of the existence of MCTs, and an understanding of what characterizes moral worth, we can, through reason alone select the right course of action. As rational beings we would be exercising the noblest part of ourselves. But we are precluded from doing so consistently if we haven’t been given an understanding of the true nature of morality. This does not mean that to know the good is to do the good; that is not the point at all. Rather, a conscience informed by the vicissitudes bearing on our moral decision making will be better equipped to respond ethically to a diverse array of circumstances that challenge its fortitude. There is another way in which virtue ethics don’t seem to be adequate to our purposes. Virtue ethics tell us how to be; they do not tell us what to do. And, how we are to be is situation dependent, measured on a sliding scale between the vice of deficiency and the vice of excess. Consider the virtue of courage. Its deficiency would be cowardice and its excess would be rashness.55 What action is called for – the virtue -- falls somewhere along a scale between the vices. This account actually sounds compelling, for certainly, different situations call for different actions. But in practice, this conception of morality can seem wanting. Suppose a lieutenant radios his company commander, tells him that he is in danger of being overrun, and asks what to do. If the commander radioed back and told the lieutenant, “be brave,” most of us would regard the commander’s response as unhelpful. At this point, we want to know what to do. Bravery will doubtless be required in whatever course of action taken, but what is needed is the outline of an action to take, not a state of character to maintain. The notion that our character development programs might be improved if we adopted a different intellectual progenitor is actually tangentially supported by virtue ethics itself. What our habit-forming programs often lack is sufficient time and emphasis on the reasons the good is the good, as we have pointed out. Aristotle maintains essentially the same concern. To be truly virtuous, we must have practical wisdom, i.e. phronesis, a good translation of which is prudence. Without prudence, we would not be able to discern where the virtue lies between the vices. Recall that Aristotle contends that we need the proper guidance to acquire virtue. For example, to become excellent with a musical instrument, you must practice, but you must practice under the supervision of a good teacher. In the same vein, if we are in doubt about what virtue commends in any situation, the best recourse is to ask the phronemon, the prudent and wise man. Hence, on this understanding, we rely on someone’s having a firm intellectual grasp of the point of the virtues and morality. Without that person’s guidance, we are somewhat rudderless. Clearly, the foregoing is not to suggest that Aristotle had in mind the same conception of morality as Kant. It does suggest, however, the importance of pure reason in understanding and

55 At one point, Aristotle says that the man who fears nothing has no name: “He would be some sort of madman, or incapable of feeling distress, if he feared nothing, neither earthquake nor waves …” EN, 1115b, 25-29.

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committing to the dictates of morality. And none of what I have so far intimated calls for radical changes in our better character development programs. Rather, it suggests that some meta-analysis of the main themes of our programs might help us bear the fruit we are trying to cultivate. Note the role sheer reason plays in all the foregoing. Samuels and Casebeer point out that an intellectual grasp of the fundamental attribution error can actually help our moral deliberations. Martin Cook explains that our Aristotelian-based programs would be markedly improved by emphasizing the need for a deeper intellectual understanding of the virtues we seek to promote. Aristotle himself says we need practical wisdom to be virtuous. And Kant’s entire moral philosophy is based on pure reason’s ability to understand the supreme principle of morality. Through our autonomous reasoning we can divine what is morally required of us in any given situation. We are not advocating that the Army adopt some hybrid combination of Kantian Ethics and Aristotelian Virtue Ethics. Such a union would result in incoherence. Rather, we are suggesting that our enlightenment ideals be emphasized and that a Kantian understanding of morality might be the best intellectual lens through which to view and analyze our character development programs.

Emerging Adulthood and the Future Operating Environment

The future operating environment (OE) will be volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA). The Army Operating Concept,

… for the first time, focuses on all three levels of war; tactical, operational, and strategic. The environment the Army will operate in is unknown. The enemy is unknown, the location is unknown, and the coalitions involved are unknown. The problem we are focusing on is how to “Win in a Complex World.56

The Army needs to develop leaders of character who are “grounded in Army values, agile, resilient, culturally astute, and able to design, plan, and execute while at peace and war.”57 It is important to understand the nature of the future OE as we implement, assess, and revise our leader development programs. It is equally important to understand the nature of the young men and women we are bringing into the force. This generation of people entering the Army are unique in history. Prominent psychologist Jeffery J. Arnett has coined the term “emerging adults” to describe them. Emerging adults are products of the modern, industrialized or post-industrialized countries. Arnett writes: 56 TRADOC Pamphlet 525-3-1, The U.S. Army Operating Concept: Win in a Complex World, 2020-2040 (31 October 2014) iii.

57 Department of the Army, Army Leader Development Strategy (2013), 27.

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The rise in the ages of entering marriage and parenthood, the lengthening of higher education, and prolonged job instability during the twenties reflect the development of a new period of life for young people in the United States and other industrialized societies, lasting from the late teens through the mid- to late twenties.58

Emerging adults view adulthood differently than did previous generations. Although they (emerging adults) see long-term employment, marriage, and children as something they eventually might want, during emerging adulthood they view these commitments as something to avoid. They view adulthood as “a closing of the doors – the end of independence, the end of spontaneity, the end of a sense of wide-open possibilities.”59 This is not a generational phenomenon; rather, it seems here to stay – our society “grants them a long moratorium … without expecting them to take on adult responsibilities…”60 In a bygone era, criteria for having reached adulthood centered on certain events such as marriage, parenthood, and long-term employment, but especially marriage. For emerging adults, the top criteria are: accepting responsibility for oneself, making independent decisions, and becoming financially independent.61 That is, emerging adults who are married and have children do not necessarily see themselves as fully adult. “Becoming an adult today means becoming self-sufficient, learning to stand alone as an independent person.”62

Tammy has begun to feel like an adult recently because “I finally realized that I’m responsible for everything I do and say and believe, and no one else is, just me… so I’m an adult.” Ray said becoming an adult means “taking care of your own responsibilities and not having to lean on people for everything. If you can take care of your every need without relying on other people, then I really believe you should be pretty much an adult.”63

The importance to emerging adults of being independent extends to all aspects of their lives, including their religious beliefs. They put particular emphasis on deciding for themselves questions about their world view. Their religious beliefs are highly independent and often result in a “Congregation of One.”64 Overall, their religious beliefs are highly diverse, falling fairly evenly into four categories:65

58 Arnett, Jeffery, J. Emerging Adulthood: The Winding Road From the Late Teens Through the Twenties, Oxford University Press (2004) 3-4. 59 Ibid, 6. 60 Ibid, 7. 61 Ibid, 15. 62 Ibid, 209. 63 Ibid. 64 Ibid, 167. 65 Ibid. A glaring shortcoming of this study is that it does not include data for pre-emerging-adulthood generations. It would be helpful, especially for adopting character development programs that would resonate with emerging adults, if we could compare these numbers to other generations.

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1. Agnostic/atheist: 22%. These emerging adults either reject the existence of a God or are unsure. Some are even hostile to religious beliefs, contending that such beliefs are responsible for much of the worldwide social dysfunction.

2. Deist: 28%. Deists believe in the existence of a God in some general sense, but it is

not the God of the Judeo-Christian tradition. These emerging adults proclaim to be spiritual in a vague way but often do not believe in organized religion, that is, they deny the importance or necessity of organized religion.

3. Liberal believer: 27%. Like deists, liberal believers are skeptical of organized religion

but nonetheless describe themselves as being members of specific religious traditions. They don’t typically participate in religious ceremonies and often don’t agree with every aspect of their particular religion’s doctrine.

4. Conservative believer: 23%. Conservative believers believe in the tenets of their

respective religions and participate in the traditional practices of those religions. They have a sense that God is actively involved with their lives. They believe that their religion is the one true religion.

Another feature of emerging adults is that their religious beliefs bear little, if any, resemblance to the religious practices of their parents, to the religion in which they were raised. This feature of emerging adults highlights their individualism.

In statistical analysis, there was no relationship between exposure to religious training in childhood and any aspect of their religious beliefs as emerging adults – not to their current classification as agnostic/atheist, deist, liberal believer, or conservative believer; not to their current attendance at religious services; … not to their belief that God or a higher power guides their lives or to the certainty of their religious beliefs in emerging adulthood.66

There are several explanations for this phenomenon. As emerging adults grow and experience new thoughts and ideas, they begin to reevaluate their beliefs. Attending college is especially motivating for such reevaluation. But “probably even more important is the responsibility emerging adults feel to decide for themselves what they believe about religious questions.”67 They feel some sort of obligation to come to their own conclusions about religion; it is part of their quest for independence.68

66 Ibid, 174. 67 Ibid, 177. 68 This phenomenon might provide another data point to suggest that habituation does not necessarily produce the intended dispositions. Many of these emerging adults were consistently brought to church by their parents throughout their childhood and adolescence – religion was a large part of their lives during their formative years. Nonetheless, the emerging adults’ religious views don’t align at all with what they had been habituated to for most of their young lives.

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We need more research to determine what the impact of the phenomenon of emerging adults has for leader/character development programs. It could be that their individualism might make them resistant to having their values dictated to them and their choices radically reduced in the Army. They might be particularly immune or even hostile to any form of indoctrination. Character development programs would have to have a deliberate strategy to address this possibility. On the other hand, their joining the Army is a choice – a very independent one. An emerging adult could view being in the Army as a form of self-sufficiency. He has moved out of his parents’ house and is earning his own income. So joining the Army could be a meta-choice to which the loss of some individual freedom is subordinate. That is, adopting the Army values could be viewed as reaffirming the choice to join in the first place. All of what we have said is, of course, very speculative. But if there is such an age group such as emerging adult – and the research establishing it is fairly compelling – then the Army should expend some resources in understanding it. For it would have implications beyond character development, and would extend to operational considerations. One issue having to do with operational considerations, for example, would have to do with cultural understanding. Since emerging adulthood is an industrial/post-industrial phenomenon, our young soldiers (our emerging adults) will have less in common than we think with some coalition partners. If the coalition partner’s culture bestows adulthood at marriage, for example, the culture gap between our Soldiers and the partner nation would be wider than that associated simply with technology and other cultural differences. The gap would partially consist of significant self-identity differences. For instance, if I am training a coalition partner soldier who sees himself as fully adult, then I would want to treat him in the way he would expect to be treated. I wouldn’t treat him as if he were a new private in basic training. Pre-deployment training would have to address the possibility of such fundamental differences.

Senior Leaders and Character Lapses

Furthermore, when instances of serious ethical failure occur, especially when those failing have many years and even decades of honorable service behind them, one must suspect there must

be more to the explanation of such failure than simple “bad character”. Martin L. Cook69

The extent of misconduct at the most senior levels of the Army is not known, but it has become significant enough that the Army “appointed a three-star general to lead a review of its general-

69 Cook, Martin, L. “Military Ethics and Character Development,” in Routledge Handbook of Military Ethics, ed. George Lucas, Routledge Press (2015), 101.

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officer corps.”70 It is always disconcerting when a leader is guilty of misconduct, but it is particularly unsettling in cases of senior leader misconduct. There are many reasons we take a particularly dim view of general officer misconduct. For instance, we expect that, since they have been immersed for decades in an organization that prides itself on honorable conduct, their characters would be solid and firm. We also feel that they should certainly know better than to engage in dishonorable behavior. And we are alarmed because these senior men and women have so much responsibility and power that their actions have far-reaching impacts. We have posited some explanations for these character lapses. We’ve discussed the fundamental attribution error and the possible inefficacy of Aristotelian methodologies for instilling virtue. We have analyzed the very notion of virtue, noting that rather than being virtuous, it is possible that most of us are merely possessors of mixed character traits. In fact, the alarming number of incidents involving senior officers lends support to the theory of mixed character traits and challenges our prevailing opinions about virtue. On this account, senior leader ethical failure is as mundane as the ethical failure of junior officers and Soldiers. But there is another account of leader ethical failures that contends that senior leaders are “particularly susceptible to ethical failure.”71 As noted above, when leaders fail ethically, it is not typically because they didn’t know what to do. We don’t ask about how they should have acted (since that’s fairly obvious [usually]); rather, the question concerns why they acted as they did.

The standard argument in moral theory and applied ethics relies on this view of human nature [that is, we are motivated by self-interest], suggesting that ethical failures are essentially volitional, not cognitive. We behave immorally simply because we are moved to do something other than what morality requires, not because we lack access to morality’s requirements.72

Volitional accounts of leader ethical behavior are based on the view of human nature that we are rational egoists. We act only and always in our (perceptions of) best interests. Morality holds sway only insofar as we believe it is in our best interests to behave morally. If we thought that immoral behavior would best serve our interests, we’d behave immorally. For example, we might commit a crime if we thought we could get away with it; since we know that most criminals get caught, we obey the law. On this account leaders are more susceptible to ethical failure because:

70 Washington Post, 22 June 2017, “Army busts another general for improper relationship with woman,” accessed at: https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/army-busts-another-general-for-improper-relationship-with-woman/2017/06/22/3cbccf42-5755-11e7-ba90-f5875b7d1876_story.html?utm_term=.b7154b8656c6. 71 Price, Terry, L. “Explaining Ethical Failures of Leadership,” in Ethics, the Heart of Leadership, ed. Ciulla,

Joanne, B., Praeger Publishers (2004), 138 (my emphasis).

72 Ibid, 130.

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…the by-products of success can seriously strain a leader’s motivational ties to morality. First, successful leadership can make for complacency and loss of strategic focus. Second, it is common place for a leader’s success to be accompanied by privileged access to information, people, or objects. Third, successful leaders frequently have unrestrained control of organizational resources. Fourth, a leader’s success can inflate his or her belief in his or her own ability to control outcomes.73

In combination, these factors are particularly destructive of a leader’s moral will. Those who embrace a volitional account of leader ethical failure offer egoistic techniques for keeping leaders in line. The volitionists would have leaders take measures that keep their egoistic tendencies in line with common morality. They advise leaders to “read the papers for constant reminders that the chances of being caught have never been greater,”74 or surround themselves with various checks and balances, such as subordinates empowered to “whisper in their ears” when the leader is at risk of going astray. The renowned leadership studies professor Terry L. Price argues that the volitional account of immoral behavior might suffice to account for ethical lapses in ordinary (that is, not leaders) people but does not adequately explain the ethical failures of leaders. While acknowledging that sometimes leaders fail because they put self-interest ahead of morality, Price contends that the volitional account does not adequately address the moral psychology of leaders. “More than most agents, leaders have reason to believe that they are not bound by the requirements of morality.”75 What we need is a cognitive account of leader ethical failure. At first blush, it may appear that we’ve already ruled out the suitability of a cognitive account since it seems to be the case that, in those cases where the leader is behaving immorally, he knows he is in the wrong. But there are two aspects of morality that the cognitive account considers: the content of morality, and the scope of morality. Mistakes about content have to do with beliefs about the moral status of actions: “For instance, a leader might mistakenly believe that lying is a morally permissible means of getting follower compliance…”76 In contrast:

Mistakes of scope are indexed to beliefs about the moral status of individuals, specifically, to beliefs about their place within the moral community and the extent to which these individuals are subject to the rights and responsibilities that membership implies. Scope mistakes are thus errors about the application of morality’s strictures.77

We can make several sorts of mistakes of scope. Price uses the example of the CEO of Walmart. Who is within the scope of his ethical considerations? Certainly the stockholders, employees, and even future customers are and should be. However, many small businesses in a community

73 Ibid, 132. 74 Ibid, 133. 75 Ibid 132. 76 Ibid, 135. 77 Ibid.

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usually go out of business with the arrival of a Walmart. Does the CEO have a moral responsibility to them? Another example of a scope mistake considers who is entitled to moral respect; it concerns questions of who have moral rights. For example, throughout much of our history, slavery was legal: the slaves resided outside the realm of those who had rights. They received no moral protections. Another scope mistake “can also take the form of cognitive errors about which individuals are bound by its [morality’s] requirements.” Price uses the Biblical example of David and Bathsheba to explore this idea.78 David seduces and impregnates Uriah’s wife, Bathsheba, and ultimately sends Uriah to the front battle lines to die. When David hears of Uriah’s death, he takes Bathsheba as his wife. Since David was trying to cover up this “crime,” it does not seem to be the case that David was mistaken about the content of morality. He knew that, generally, his sorts of actions were wrong. But he was mistaken about the scope, that is, he didn’t believe the common moral restraints applied to him. If someone else had done what David did, presumably David would have had him punished;79 nonetheless, David feels no compunction in performing the immoral acts since, from his perspective, morality did not apply to him.80

The Moral Psychology of Exception Making Leaders sometimes make exceptions for themselves about requirements that still apply to the rest of us. That is, although we, the hoi poloi, are bound by a certain requirement, in certain circumstances the leader is not. Significantly, we, the followers, are likely to grant the leader the exception as well. Leadership brings with it responsibilities, commitments, and requirements that the rest of us do not have. Take, for example, the expectations of promptness.81 If the brigade commander, for instance, calls a meeting, his subordinates better be at the meeting site at least five minutes before the scheduled start time. However, if the brigade commander is late, we don’t call him at fault; presumably, say, his boss, the division commander, had him on the phone, or something to that effect. The leader had something more important to do. It is not as if we excuse him; rather, it is the case that the requirement of promptness did not apply to him in the same way it applied to us: the leader was justified in being late. The notion of justification is essential for our understanding of the disapprobation we heap on leaders when they fail ethically. Although, that is, we often justify (grant an exception to) a leader’s failure to meet some requirement, we don’t always do so. In some cases, the leader grants himself an exception that is not justified; he is bound just like the rest of us by the requirements in the circumstance in question.

78 New Oxford Annotated Bible, 2 Samuel. 79 Indeed, David reacts to Nathan’s parable of an unjust man, saying that the man must be punished. New Oxford Annotated Bible, 2 Samuel 12:1-7. 80 Some might not agree with Price’s exegesis, but it does serve to provide conceptual clarity to the point he is trying to make. 81 The example of promptness comes from Price, 139.

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But the dynamic of justification requires more fleshing out. Leaders are justified in doing a great many things that the rest of us are not. “This is just to say that a leader’s position often supports the assumption that its occupant is removed from the scope of requirements that apply in full force to the rest of us.”82 When a leader exempts himself from a requirement that applies to the rest of us, it is not always just the case that the exception was merely permissible; it is quite often the case that the exception was required given the commitments the leader has. Leaders are expected to achieve collective goals; they are expected to be effective, and this effectiveness has normative implications. A leader’s followers rightly expect the leader to act in their (the follower’s) interests. And leaders expect of themselves that they will serve the interests of their in-group. It is this commitment to group goals that explains why a purely egoistic account of a leader’s moral psychology is inadequate. He clearly acts, in many circumstances, for unselfish reasons. And the leader often grants exceptions to himself from certain requirements because he thinks it is justified in order to advance the interests of his followers. Conversely, followers grant the leader exceptions from certain requirements if those exceptions further in-group interests.

In the end, the exceptions we make for leaders may be an integral part of the relationship between leaders and followers. E. P. Hollander’s seminal work on social exchange holds that an emergent leader “achieves status … by fulfilling common expectancies and demonstrating task competencies” and that “(a)s he continues to amass these credits he may eventually reach a threshold which permits deviation and innovation, insofar as this is perceived by others to be in the group’s interests.” Given the perceived permissibility of these exceptions, it should come as little surprise to us that leaders sometimes make exceptions for themselves when it comes to moral requirements… Although the leader recognizes the general force of moral requirements as they are applied to others, he or she may fail to see that these requirements apply to him or her as well.83

The ethical challenges that a leader faces are often different in kind, not just degree, from the challenges the rest of us face. He is under enormous pressure to meet collective goals, and it is important to realize that some of the pressure he feels is pressure he puts on himself. If he successfully advances the group’s interests, he and the group progressively grant him more flexibility in terms of which requirements bind him and which don’t. In turn, in his efforts to serve the group, he can lose perspective in at least three ways.84 First, he can pursue the interests of his group beyond the point where such pursuit is morally justified; this would be a cognitive error such that he does not acknowledge the legitimate moral claims of the out-

82 Price, Terry, L. “Explaining Ethical Failures of Leadership,” in Ethics, the Heart of Leadership, ed. Ciulla, Joanne, B., Praeger Publishers (2004), 139. 83 Ibid, 143-44 84 This list presumably does not exhaust the ways in which he can lose his moral perspective, but the list as it is facilitates advancement of this conversation.

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group. Second, he may justify his immoral behavior on the grounds that it is for the good of the group; he might accept that what he is doing is morally problematic, but he mistakenly assesses that the ends justify the means. Third, in a sort of slippery slope, the more exceptions he grants himself in the group’s interests, the more he comes to see himself as simply outside (above?) the normative requirements that apply to all of us and that admit of no exceptions; common morality constrains commoners, not him. For a leader to avoid the ethical pitfalls he often encounters, he will need to realize that an out-group can have legitimate moral claims on him. The demands of leadership require him constantly to make discretionary judgments, and when confronted with a situation where advancing in-group interests (or self-interest) requires violating the requirements of morality, he must choose conformity with the moral law over in-group interests. The case of senior leaders poses a particular challenge for character development programs. These senior leaders are the people who are supposed to be setting the moral example for the rest of us – the buck starts and stops with them. These leaders are the stewards of the profession, they are the ones who are charged with ensuring the development of other leaders.

Conclusion

Leaders, Soldiers, and Department of the Army Civilians of good character are the sine qua non to successful implementation of the Mission Command Philosophy for the U.S. Army. The Army has character development programs in place, but there is some evidence that suggests these programs are not as effective as they could be. Character development is a very complex notion/process. Indeed, since character development aims at the human psyche, the essence of who we are, it is one of the most complex undertakings we face. Advances in moral and social psychology aid our efforts to develop leaders of character; on the other hand, they increase the complexity of our endeavors. Often times, the more we learn about how we develop morally, the more our accepted intuitions about the human condition are challenged. The Army must constantly and continually assess its character development programs in the light of emerging theories and evidence concerning our cognitive processes in order to optimize the human dimension. More than anything, and perhaps now more than ever, for mission command to succeed, and for the human dimension to reach its potential, we need people of character to guide us in our character development efforts.

Recommendations

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With the foregoing in mind, the Mission Command Center of Excellence (MCCOE) Capability Development Integration Directorate (CDID) makes the following recommendations concerning the human dimension considerations for character development.

1. Review extant research in moral psychology concerning the nature of virtue to determine the viability of basing character development programs on efforts to inculcate Soldiers and officers with virtue. Several compelling studies challenge our intuitions about virtue and stable character traits that it behooves the Army to examine the most current scholarship with regard to character.

2. Research the challenge posed by the fundamental attribution error in order to

understand the extent to which our behavior is determined by external factors rather than internal features of character. If we can forearm our Soldiers and leaders with the knowledge of the impact external factors have on behavior, we have the potential to markedly improve their decision making.

3. Examine the concept of mixed character traits to determine if most of us are even

capable of developing true virtue. Related to Recommendation 1, this recommendation focuses us on empirical studies that point to a better phenomenological understanding of our cognitive processes.

4. Examine statistics of misconduct in the force as a form of assessment of the efficacy of

our character development programs and make adjustments to the programs as required. Consistent data over time indicate that even our more robust character development programs have limited success in producing leaders of good character. In light of such evidence, perhaps some course corrections are in order.

5. Re-evaluate the intellectual focus of our character development programs. Currently,

the Army follows an Aristotelian model when a Kantian model might be more appropriate since the Army Ethic is the framework for our character development programs. The Army Ethic is based on enlightenment ideals, and an enlightenment philosopher (Kant) might provide the best lens through which to view and analyze our programs.

6. Examine the phenomenon of emerging adulthood to see its implications for character

development programs. This examination might bear on accessions and operational concerns as well. If emerging adults are as unique as some scholarship suggests, their motivations and decision making might warrant different approaches to reaching, influencing, and leading them.

7. Recognize that senior leaders might be particularly susceptible to ethical lapses and

design programs to address this susceptibility. The Army should invest time and energy into developing character development programs specifically aimed at senior leaders. Since we assume senior leaders have undergone character development programs and

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processes throughout their careers, we could term the new programs as character enhancement or re-assessment initiatives.

8. Consider leveraging the PhD philosophers from West Point’s Department of English and

Philosophy when developing products concerned with character/ethical development. Trained ethicists with a grounding in all the many ethical theories that inform our understanding of morality can only help in understanding and articulating the complex, nuanced ideas that comprise our moral world.

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