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The Science of Character

March 20, 2014 Wendy Purnell

Anyone worth her salt spends at least a little time pondering virtue and self improvement. Tiffany Shlain spent a year intensely studying character development and shares her findings in her latest Let it Ripple film, The Science of Character. A growth mindset, she finds, allows us to focus on the character strengths which can build virtue.

Questions and conversations of virtue and ethics have been going on since the dawn of man and there are many different perspectives. Two of my other favorites are James P. Owen's Cowboy Ethics, rooted in seven core values that define America, and Deirdre McCloskey's Bourgeois Virtues, which she identifies as a system of ethics for the Age of Commerce.

Owen and McCloskey each outline seven virtues. This is unsurprising because, as McCloskey has pointed out, seven is "the number of the primary virtues according to the Western tradition from Plato through Adam Smith. Or according to the Confucian tradition since 479 BCE.... Or, when you come to think about it, according to pretty much any theory of what makes for a flourishing human life."

Shlain, however, has chosen to highlight just six virtues, and it's interesting to compare the lists to consider the overlaps and omissions.

Cowboy Ethics: Core Values

  • Courage
  • Optimism
  • Self-reliance
  • Authenticity
  • Honor
  • Duty
  • Heart

Bourgeois Virtues

  • Faith
  • Hope
  • Love
  • Justice
  • Courage
  • Temperance
  • Prudence

Virtues of Character

  • Wisdom
  • Courage
  • Humanity
  • Justice
  • Temperance
  • Transcendence

Owen's Cowboy Values sparks a great conversation about depoliticizing conversations about what it means to be American, offering a framework for finding unity and hope. McCloskey's book, The Bourgeois Virtues, is a thorough and enlightening exploration of virtue ethics. She outlines the historical origins of ethics, from the Christian and feminine virtues, to the pagan and masculine. It's a must read for anyone interested in this area of research.

For all our ponderings, though, it's nice to get practical. This is what's great about Shlain's project. By outlining the 24 possible strengths we have to focus on, she has basically come up with a roadmap to virtue. No matter your ideal grouping of ethics and core values, Shlain's constructive approach to strengthening character is useful.

Watch her eight-minute film: http://www.letitripple.org/character/

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