By William Saletan, The New York Times An excerpt: In “The Righteous Mind,” Haidt seeks to enrich liberalism, and political discourse generally, with a deeper awareness of human nature. Like other psychologists who have ventured into political coaching, such as George Lakoff and Drew Westen, Haidt argues...

By Peter Lawler, The Big Think An excerpt: So we've basically completed our two-year series of conferences, publications, and such at Berry College funded by a grant from the Science of Virtues project at the University of Chicago. My concluding presentation—following directions—is about saying what...

By Luci Scott, AZ Central News Imagine you're riding in a car with a friend who is speeding and the car hits a pedestrian. You're the only witness, and the friend's lawyer asks you to testify that your friend was not at fault. Do you help your friend or tell the truth? This is one of many...

By Amy Dockser Marcus, Wall Street Journal online Some scientists find inspiration in the lab. Others trek into the field. Laurie Santos likes the local coffee house. The 36-year-old runs Yale University's Comparative Cognition Laboratory, which examines the origins of the human mind by studying...

By Ashley Welch, Scientific American Anyone who has ever devoured a triple-chocolate brownie after an intense workout knows how tempting it can be to indulge after behaving virtuously. A new study suggests, however, that we often apply this thought process to inappropriate scenarios, giving ourselves...

By Colin Allen, New York Times A robot walks into a bar and says, “I’ll have a screwdriver.” A bad joke, indeed. But even less funny if the robot says “Give me what’s in your cash register.” The fictional theme of robots turning against humans is older than the word itself, which first appeared in the...

Virtues News: The Poynter Center for the Study of Ethics and American Institutions presents Virtuous Empathy: Scientific and Humanistic Investigations. Indiana University has received a grant from the University of Chicago (sponsored by the John Templeton Foundation) to study "Virtuous Empathy:...

By Cordelia Fine, the Wall Street Journal 'If there were an Olympics of desiring," the philosopher William B. Irvine once observed, "we would all make the team." Desire animates us: What, quite literally, would we do without it? Yet all too often—for about four hours a day, according...

By Linda Grant, Wall Street Journal An excerpt: Life and Fate , by Vassily Grossman (1959) An old Russian woman, seeing a captured German soldier, raises a brick to throw at him, but at the last moment she instead hands him a piece of bread. The woman has no idea why she does this and in the years to...

Video from The Science Network Patricia Churchland is one of the most interesting public intellectuals of our time. Since the publication in 1986 of her seminal book “Neurophilosophy”, which began to explain the neural underpinnings of an enormous tradition of philosophy, Churchland has been a major...

Book Description: Hardcover release date 22 April 2013. It is virtuous to be wise and wise to be virtuous. The Language of Human Character is a reference book, textbook and workbook in one. It contains "The Human Character Dictionary," a definitive record of the language of human character...

Book Description: Hardcover release date 12 December 2012. It is virtuous to be wise and wise to be virtuous. To Be Virtuous, Second Edition is a reference book, textbook and workbook in one. It contains "The Human Virtues Dictionary," a definitive record of 4,900 definitions representing the...

Book Description: Hardcover release date: 20 December 2012. It is virtuous to be wise and wise to be virtuous. The Language of Human Virtue is a reference book, textbook and workbook in one. It contains "The Building Virtue Dictionary," a definitive record of the language of human virtue with...

By Ron Tamborini, Allison Eden, Nicholas David Bowman, Matthew Grizzard, and Kenneth A. Lachlan Abstract: Two studies examined how disposition theory-based morality subcultures predict the acceptance and appeal of violence. Study 1 used groups formed by median splits of individual difference variables...

By Roya Ayman and Karen Korabik "For decades, understanding of leadership has been largely based on the results of studies carried out on White men in the United States. We review major theories and models of leadership as they pertain to either gender or culture. We focus on 3 approaches to leadership...

By Rhonda Shaw This article mobilizes accounts of the phenomenology of ethical expertise to discuss the actions and experiences of people who have participated in body gifting practices. The body gifting practices specifically addressed in the study are drawn from empirical research on shared breastfeeding...

By Debasmita Patra, E. Haribabu and Katherine A. McComas Many developing countries have allocated significant amounts of funding for nanoscience and nanotechnology research, yet compared to developed countries, there has been little study, discussion, or debate over social and ethical issues. Using in...

By Gabriel Ignatow. This article argues that a modified version of Bourdieu's habitus concept can generate insights into moral culture and the ways people use culture to make changes in their lives. If revised in light of recent findings from cognitive neuroscience, the habitus allows for the analysis...

"What is a good life? What does it mean to be a good person? Richard White answers these questions by considering aspects of moral goodness through the virtues: courage, temperance, justice, compassion, and wisdom. White explores how moral virtues affect and support social movements such as pacifism...

Abstract: In a world of continued and expanding empire, does sociocultural anthropology in itself offer grounds for moral and social criticism? One line in anthropological thought leads to cultural relativism and an awareness that a cloud of alternative possibilites surrounds any moral code. However...

By James S. Fishkin, Stanford University What are the virtues of democratic citizenship when voters are bombarded by WMD—by which I mean “weapons of mass distraction”—stinging sound bites and campaign ads from the persuasion industry funded by a campaign finance system that seems to be broken? Our political...

By Daniel Hruschka, Science of Virtues scholar Today with a population of more than half a million, the Iban of Borneo are heirs to 15 generations of intrepid pioneers who spread their way of life throughout the island’s northwest coasts and rivers. Traditionally, the Iban farmed rice and hunted, living...

By: Kathryn Coe, Ph.D., Science of Virtues scholar, Department of Public Health, School of Medicine, Indiana University Purdue University, Indianapolis Craig T. Palmer, Department of Anthropology, University of Missouri-Columbia Introduction In our study of forgiveness, one aspect that has seemed to...