The Beacon Project: Jump-starting a Field of the Morally Exceptional

This article was originally published in the Self, Motivation & Virtue Project’s e-Newsletter, July 2015.N

Mental representations of trait categoriesand their influences on person perception

Three studies explored mental representations of the organization of acts into traits, and how such mental representations influence person perception. Specifically, we investigated whether acts vary in their degree of trait-category membership (prototypicality), what determines an act\u27s prototypicality, and whether acts\u27 prototypicalities influence conclusions about observed acts. By drawing on research on prototypicality-based models of mental representations (Osherson, Smith, Wilkie, López, & Shafir, 1990), five hypotheses were proposed about the nature of mental representations of traits and how they influence person perception. In Study 1, subjects rated three aspects of several acts: how prototypical of the trait they are, how similar they are to other acts in the trait, and how extreme they are. Subjects showed substantial agreement on all three ratings. Additionally, an act\u27s similarity to other acts in the trait was predictive of how prototypical the act was, but the act\u27s extremity was a stronger predictor of its prototypicality. Study 2 investigated how the prototypicality of an actor\u27s observed acts influences person perception. Subjects were more willing to describe an actor\u27s acts with a trait when the acts were prototypical or similar to each other than when the acts were not prototypical or not similar to each other. Study 3 investigated the prototypicality of predicted acts. Results showed that predictions of acts were not influenced by the prototypicality of the predicted acts. Together, the three studies suggest that mental representations of traits are consensual and that they influence person perception

Life Tasks and Daily Life Experience

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/99010/1/j.1467-6494.1991.tb00255.x.pd

Life tasks, implicit motives, and self-regulation in daily life.

This thesis concerns self-regulation of life tasks in daily life and how implicit motives affect this self-regulation. The first two goals of this dissertation are (1) to describe two problems important to self-regulation in daily life: how much and how one works on a goal; and (2) show that the personal meanings individuals make of life tasks, as represented in appraisals, structure their daily life by affecting how they regulate how much and how they pursue those life tasks. This thesis also examines how broader, implicit motives, affect self-regulatory efforts. McClelland and his colleagues (e.g., Koestner, Weinberger, & McClelland, 1991) have suggested that motives assessed with the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) arise from a different system of motivation, one that operates without the deliberative awareness of self-regulatory motives. Goal (3) of this thesis is to propose that implicit motives influence self-regulation primarily by moderating the consequences of how one works on life tasks. Goal (4) of this thesis is to further elaborate the distinction between TAT-based motives and self-report-based motives by claiming that implicit motives are aroused by the intrinsic nature of qualities of behavior, not activity-contents. Thus, the predictions are made that individuals will be more satisfied with their life tasks, and work on them more often, if they are able to experience motive-relevant qualities while working on them. These hypotheses were tested with an experience-sampling methodology. Five times per day, participants described which tasks they were working on and which qualities they were experiencing. Before the study, participants appraised each of three life tasks. At the end of the study, participants indicated their satisfaction with those tasks. Results showed that life task appraisals predicted how much and how individuals worked on life tasks, and how satisfied they were with the tasks. Implicit motives showed no direct relationships to life task appraisals, how much nor how one worked on life tasks, nor satisfaction with life tasks. However, TAT-based motives did moderate relationships between how individuals worked on tasks and how much they worked on the tasks, and how satisfied they were with the tasks.Ph.D.PsychologyUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/103212/1/9308311.pdfDescription of 9308311.pdf : Restricted to UM users only

What Is Extraversion For? Integrating Trait and Motivational Perspectives and Identifying the Purpose of Extraversion

The purpose of this study was to determine whether the manifestation of extraversion (i.e., acting and being extraverted) in everyday behavior can be explained by intentional (functional) constructs, namely, goals. By using a model in which personality states serve as an outcome of specific, momentary goal pursuit, we were able to identify the function of extraversion states in everyday behavior. Using experience-sampling methodology, we asked participants to describe their state extraversion, goal pursuit, and state affect over 10 days. Results show that 18 selected goals predicted 74% of the variance in state extraversion; both within-person and between-person fluctuations in state extraversion were strongly associated with changes in momentary goal pursuit. We extended findings relating state extraversion and state positive affect, showing that the relationship between goals and positive affect was partially mediated by state extraversion

Whole trait theory: Does it work for virtue?

Nearly a century after the first blow landed for the situationist argument, Whole Trait Theory was offered as a new model of traits, one that benefited from the situationists’ points. Whole Trait Theory argued that there are robust, global traits that are highly predictive of how people act, yet that people are highly responsive to situations and frequently change the personalities they exhibit. Empirical evidence in favor of Whole Trait Theory has been accumulating over the past several years – at least in so far as it applies to normal personality traits (traits that are not obviously virtues or character traits). Given that the situationist argument found new life in its incarnation as a criticism of global virtues, it is natural to wonder whether Whole Trait Theory can also fend off situationism for the case of the virtues. In this talk we present Whole Trait Theory, which offers a detailed model of traits that, inter alia, provides an optimistic view on the existence of broad, robust traits. Whole Theory does not conceive of traits as essential, permanent, and unwavering. It considers self-concepts, scripts, schemas, narratives, goals, motives, and other similar constructs as drivers of traits. Moreover, given that personality change does in fact occur, it proposes that individuals may be able to have an influence on how they change. We further propose that Whole Trait Theory may represent an exciting new avenue for interdisciplinary collaboration for studying virtue, as well as a basis for a richly developed psychological theory that could defend its position in favor of virtue ethics.This conference was made possible by funding from the Templeton Religion Trust, the Spencer Foundation, and The University of OklahomaN

Are Traits Useful? Explaining Trait Manifestations as Tools in the Pursuit of Goals

Traits and motivation mainly have been treated separately for almost a century. The purpose of these studies is to test the proposal that traits and motivation are intricately linked. Specifically, that 1 explanation for traits, at least in terms of their descriptiveness of what people actually do, is the goals people pursue. Study 1 used experience-sampling methodology to show that almost half the variance in extraversion and conscientiousness manifestation was explained by goal pursuit differences. Both why people enacted more of extraversion and/or conscientiousness than others, and why people enacted extraversion and/or conscientiousness at any given moment were explained by the goals people were pursuing at those moments. Study 2 used experimental methodology to show that extraversion and conscientiousness enactment was in fact caused by the goal pursuit. Study 3 employed observer ratings to show that the goal-dependent enactments of traits were observer-verified actual behaviors. In all 3 studies, different goals affected different traits discriminatively. Thus, these findings provided strong evidence for 1 explanation of traits, that they are useful for accomplishing goals. These findings provided 1 answer to long-standing questions about the conceptual relations between traits and motivation. And these findings clarified the meaning and nature of extraversion and conscientiousness by revealing part of what these traits are for