In a card, you make ONE (1) philosophical move in reaction to the assigned reading. So, each card has a page range of 1-2. You read the article and then make ONE (1) move. What's a Move? Philosophers
How Habits Make Us Virtuous
Nancy E. Snow
Marquette University
Habits of the Folki
Let us adopt for the sake of argument a hypothesis that seems, anecdotally at least, well founded: that most people are not directly interested in developing virtue. By “directly interested,” I mean that most people are not explicitly concerned with deliberately acquiring virtues such as generosity, courage, patience, humility, and so on. The hypothesis admits of obvious exceptions. Some people choose vocations that require discipline in a virtue, and they receive that training as part of their vocational choice. Members of religious orders, for example, live by rules that guide their lives and purport to help them to become patient, humble, chaste, loving, and so on. Soldiers and police officers undergo training meant to overcome fear and inculcate courage. These people deliberately cultivate virtues in order to become good or better monks, soldiers, and police officers. Despite such exceptions, it is safe to assume that the ordinary “person in the street” is typically not deliberately or consciously engaged in becoming kind, generous, compassionate, and so on, whether for the sake of becoming better in a role, or in order to become virtuous for its own sake.ii
Yet many people do become virtuous, and work to cultivate virtue in their lives. They do this in ways similar to those in which monks, soldiers, and police officers inculcate virtue, though not as consciously. Often, people aspire to virtue-relevant goals. By “virtue-relevant goals,” I mean goals associated with roles or activities the successful performance of which requires virtue. Someone might aspire to be a good doctor, nurse, teacher, or parent, or to promote peace. Successful performance in these roles or attainment of these goals requires virtues. For example, compassion for patients balanced by professional concern and effectiveness is one hallmark of a good health care provider, and good parents display generosity and kindness, sprinkled with doses of loving firmness, in interacting with their children. Good teachers are conscientious about class preparation, care about their students, and are fair and even-handed in grading, calling on students in class, and so on. A panoply of virtues assist those promoting peace, such as nonviolence and gentleness in demeanor, tolerance of differences, and the virtues of negotiation, including the ability to see things from the other’s perspective and the flexibility and willingness to seek consensus or common ground.
Monks, soldiers, and police officers receive vocational or disciplinary training explicitly geared toward inculcating selected virtues. By contrast, those aspiring to be good parents, teachers, health care providers, effective peace promoters, or having other virtue-relevant goals typically do not receive explicit instruction in how to act virtuously. Someone aspiring to be a good parent, for example, might cast about for a good role model to imitate, or read books that convey appropriate attitudes to have and actions to perform. A young teacher might be thrown into his classroom with advice and instruction from senior teachers, but he, too, could have a role model whom he seeks to emulate. The point is that in imitating a role model or following advice and instruction, people do not consciously seek to cultivate virtue. They consciously seek to be like someone, or to follow guidance laid out for them. Yet, in aspiring to a goal, adopting a role by imitating another, or following received wisdom, they perform actions that, arguably, express virtue, and do so repeatedly. In this way – through the repeated performance of virtuous actions associated with roles or needed for the attainment of desired goals – they can develop virtuous dispositions, though much of this happens outside of conscious awareness.
Elsewhere I have explicated this process in detail, but it is worth revisiting and expanding features of this discussion (for a more detailed treatment, see Snow 2010, chapter two). The kind of virtue development sketched above, in which someone repeatedly and habitually performs virtue-expressive actions in the course of pursuing goals or fulfilling role expectations, though she is not consciously aware that her acts are virtuous nor deliberately seeks to perform them qua virtuous actions, can be explained using the resources of empirical psychology.
To begin this explanation, let us first note that dual process theory in cognitive and social psychology holds that the mind’s functioning can be explained in terms of two kinds of cognitive processing: conscious and automatic. Conscious processing is the familiar sort in which conscious or deliberate attention is brought to bear on a problem or activity. Controlled processes satisfy most or all of the following criteria: they are “. . . under the intentional control of the individual, and thus, present to awareness, flexible or subject to intervention, and effortful or constrained by the attentional resources available to the individual at the moment” (Snow 2010, 40; see also Bargh 1989, 3-4). If I notice that I am hungry, and deliberately decide to eat an apple instead of an ice cream snack, I am using a controlled cognitive process. Automatic or nonconscious processes, by contrast, operate outside of conscious awareness, and satisfy most or all of a different set of criteria: they are “. . . unintentional in the sense that they can occur even in the absence of explicit intentions or goals; involuntary; occurring outside of conscious awareness, autonomous or capable of running to completion without conscious intervention, not initiated by the conscious choice or will of the agent, and effortless in the sense that they will operate even when attentional resources are limited” (Snow 2010, see also Bargh 1989, 3, 5). Examples of actions resulting from automatic processing include frequently performed and routinized actions, such as typing and driving along familiar routes. Researchers now recognize that many actions are produced by a mix of conscious and automatic processing.
Automaticity researcher John Bargh has identified three different kinds of automatic processing, one of which is most relevant here: goal-dependent automaticity (see Snow 2010, 43-45). Goal-dependent automaticity can be explained as follows. Representations of goals are held in memory. Chronically held goals are kept in memory over the long term, and are more or less readily activatable by environmental stimuli. More readily activatable goals are more easily accessible to the conscious mind than other goals and are frequently consciously salient to the individual. A parent who places great importance on the goal of caring for her child, for example, will often have this goal at the forefront of her consciousness. Even when she is not consciously thinking about the goal, it will be chronically accessible and easily brought to conscious awareness. When she encounters situational features that activate or trigger the representation of a goal, other things being equal, she will respond by acting in ways that promote goal attainment. The triggering of the representation, as well as the response, occurs outside of conscious awareness. Sitting in a park and watching her child play on the swings, she does not have to think about what to do when he falls off. She simply rises and goes to help, without entertaining explicit thoughts such as, “Johnny has fallen off the swing, and is now lying on the ground crying. Should I go over there?”
According to Bargh and his colleagues, “. . . the frequent and consistent pairing of situational features with goal-directed behaviors develops chronic situation-to-representation links” (Snow 2010, 43; see also Chartrand and Bargh 1996, 465; Bargh and Gollwitzer 1994, 72; Bargh, et al. 2001, 1015). Both situational features and goal representations are held in memory; the latter become activated upon the appearance of the former, resulting in familiar or routinized behaviors. Automaticity researchers stress that the routinized behaviors resulting from nonconscious goal activation are not mere stimulus-response reflexes, but are intelligent and flexible reactions to situational features. A trove of empirical evidence bears this out, indicating that higher level social behaviors can result from goal-dependent automaticity (see Snow 2010, 43-45). Examples include Cialdini’s waiter (Snow 2010, 43; Ross and Nisbett 1991, 164). The highest-earning waiter in a restaurant was studied over time. The only consistent thing he did was to seek the goal of maximizing his tips. This goal pursuit explained a variety of behaviors with different customers across different situation-types. Another interesting study by Fishbach, Friedman, and Kruglanski (2003) found that a situational trigger (a piece of chocolate cake) could elicit the representation of a personal goal (losing weight) that counteracted temptation in the circumstances (see Snow 2010, 44). Their study distinguishes automatic goal activation from situational control, suggesting that the former promotes personal control in accordance with an agent’s values. Finally, we should note that researchers have documented that representations of a variety of value-relevant goals (for example, the disposition to cooperate) are nonconsciously activatable across a number of situation-types. This suggests that representations of virtue-relevant goals, too, can be activated by situational features across types of situations, resulting in virtue-expressive actions that cross situation-types. The repeated performance of such actions results in habits of virtuous behavior, which build up virtuous dispositions over time.
Though most of this discussion has centered on representations of goals and goal activation, I mentioned earlier that virtue can develop through imitating role models and following practical advice. The latter two forms of activity can be described in terms of goals. For example, Sam might imitate his favorite professor in order to achieve his goal of becoming a good teacher; and Sara might follow the practical advice in the nursing handbook in order to attain her goal of becoming a good nurse. Such descriptions suggest that these other two forms of virtue acquisition can be explained by goal-dependent automaticity. However, it is not clear to me that explanations of what is involved in goal pursuit exhaust the nuances either of imitating a role model or of following practical advice, nor is it clear that the explanation of virtuous habits in terms of goal-dependent automaticity thus far offered gets to the bottom of the complexities involved in virtuous habit formation. I do not propose to explain the fine distinctions involved in these paths to virtue cultivation here, but, rather, to suggest that the concept of a schema can help in thinking about them. xxx
Developmental psychologists Lapsley and Hill (2008) offer a social-cognitive approach to moral personality that stresses the centrality of moral schemas.iii Schemas are “general knowledge structures that organise information, expectations and experience” (Lapsley and Hill 2008, 322). Moral personality is unified and explained by the chronic accessibility of a person’s moral schemas. These general knowledge structures afford epistemic receptivity for processing certain kinds of information. A person might, for example, see the world as an overall just place in which people generally get what they deserve. If so, this “just-world” schema might dispose her to view victims of crime negatively, as being somehow at fault. In addition to general schemas, people can have schemas about themselves. Someone might have an internalized self-schema as being helpful. In common parlance, we would say that she sees herself as a helpful person. If so, she could be more disposed to help others in need than someone who does not possess this self-schema. The repeated processing of certain kinds of information reinforces the strength and salience of a person’s schemas. Lapsley and Hill (2008) propose that the cognitive processes that mediate moral action are influenced by schemas. These internalized knowledge structures are stable parts of personality that operate outside of conscious awareness to direct moral attention in appropriate ways and facilitate moral action.
Here I can only suggest that representations of goals, of role models and what they would or would not do in certain circumstances, and of how to enact practical advice are contextualized by a person’s schemas. That is, schemas supply the tacit background knowledge within which representations of goals, models, advice, and how to act in the world make sense. Without some prior idea of what injury to a child and helping behavior amount to, the parent of our previous example would not know that her goal of being a good parent is advanced when she sees Johnny in need and goes to him. In other words, she would not know how to advance her goals, or how to model good parenting, or how to follow practical advice in the situations in which she finds herself. The point might seem obvious or even trivial, but it is neither. Schemas provide us with information for knowing how to act in the world. Lacking the background knowledge that schemas provide, we could not act effectively in the world, and could not form the habits that develop virtue.
Schemas are essential parts of what I call the ‘personality scaffolding’ of virtue – the personality and knowledge structures that support virtuous action, habituation, and dispositions. A comprehensive empirical psychology of virtue – not attempted here – would explain how schemas support the goal representations, role modeling, and understandings of practical advice that enable people to develop virtue. For now, let us note that schemas, like goal-dependent automaticity, operate outside of conscious awareness. Consequently, they contribute to the development of virtuous habits and dispositions sotto voce. The habits of the folk that allow them to acquire and sustain virtue are aided and abetted by schemas and their elements.
The foregoing model of virtue acquisition explains how ordinary “folk” – people not directly or explicitly concerned with becoming virtuous, can, nonetheless, develop virtuous dispositions. In this model, people are not directly motivated to become virtuous, but instead, are directly motivated to become something, such as a good parent or a good teacher, for which virtue is required. They develop virtue indirectly, through the pursuit of other goals, the emulation of role models, or the enactment of practical advice. The habitual behavior through which virtue is developed stresses nonconscious processing and draws upon knowledge structures, such as schemas, that provide the background knowledge that is essential for effective virtuous behavior.
One might wonder how close the virtue of the folk as described here is to Aristotelian virtue. I submit that the virtue of the folk is not far removed from Aristotle. Though I’ve stressed the importance of nonconscious processing for virtue acquisition in this paradigm, it’s worth noting that both appropriate motivation and roles for the explicit use of practical rationality are not excluded. Just as one who develops courage because he wants to excel in battle would seem to be appropriately motivated on the Aristotelian account, so, too, one who develops patience because she wants to be a good parent also seems to pass muster. Moreover, uses for practical reason are not excluded, for we often need consciously deliberate about how best to be fair or generous in situations arising in daily life. On the folk account, both conscious and nonconscious processes coordinate in the development of virtue. I wish here to stress the salience of nonconscious processing, as well as the point that often, ordinary people are not motivated to acquire the virtue for its own sake, but develop it as they pursue other goals.
i Section one expands upon ideas developed in Snow (2010), chapter two, “Habitual Virtuous Actions and Automaticity.” Section two draws on Snow, “Intelligent Virtue: Outsmarting Situationism,” comments given on Julia Annas’ book, Intelligent Virtue, at the “Author Meets Critics” session, Pacific Division Meeting of the American Philosophical Association, April 6, 2012, and to a lesser extent, Snow, “Situationism and Character: New Directions,” in van Hooft and Saunders, The Handbook of Virtue Ethics (Durham, United Kingdom: Acumen Publishers: 2014), pp. 430-439.
ii Yet even here we should admit exceptions. Someone might recognize that she has a blindspot – a tendency to be gruff, for example, and work to become kinder.
iii The account of schemas given here draws on Snow, 2014.
