The Interplay of Situations, Social Roles, and Virtue Expression

Abstract

We discuss human traits and their contextualization in situations and social roles. Our focus is ultimately to explore the contextualization of virtue traits, but most of the research on contextualizing traits has, up to now, been centered on personality traits. Therefore, much of our examination is on how personality traits relate to contextual factors, but we extrapolate those findings to virtues and discuss theory and research related to the contextualization of virtue traits. In the exploration of trait contextualization, we clarify that current understandings of traits do not take them to be simplistic behavioral tendencies that manifest despite contextual influences. Instead, the contemporary understanding of traits is that they are influenced by both situational factors and social role expectations. This means that personality and virtue traits will be appropriate in some contexts but not others, and that when they are expressed, that expression can be expected to be modified by the context. We begin with a brief introduction to the concept of virtues, following the STRIVE-4 Model of virtues. We then explore direct situational influence on action, the ways individuals influence situations, and three types of person-situation interactions. We then present practical wisdom as a generally neglected feature of person-situation interactions. We argue that practical wisdom's role in person-situation interactions goes beyond what shows up in personality research by clarifying that some individuals see more opportunities for virtue trait expression in situations than others. Moreover, this practical wisdom underwrites high-quality decision-making. Our discussion of the social role contextualization of virtues follows that is based on Identity Theory, which explains that social roles are repetitive patterns of action that are included in social structures and result in role identity formation in the individual. We then clarify this theoretical discussion with examples of common role and virtue enactments from the parenting, teaching, and healing roles. We conclude by discussing how a virtue perspective adds important elements (agency, aspiration, and practical wisdom) to the contextualization of traits.