Out of Character?

Out of Character? Inner Dispositions and Outward Behavioural Patterns

In everyday usage, people tend to attribute general character traits to each other, based on what they believe to be distinctive behavioural patterns, and they explain behaviour in terms of these traits. But much recent philosophical work on character, following empirical studies of the subject, denies the existence of robust character traits. These studies show, John Doris argues, that minor situational influences cause major moral failures: Small changes in the situational input, like adding the noise of a lawnmower or telling subjects that they are in a hurry, cause the overwhelming majority of test subjects to fail to help a person in severe distress, whereas relaxed experimental set-ups tend to yield more altruistic test subjects. Thus, behaviour seems to stem from the situational context rather than from the subjects’ character.

Given these findings, philosophers (e.g., Doris, Gilbert Harman) have argued that we should shift our focus from character development to situation management, trying "to avoid ... ethically dangerous circumstances" and "seek . . . situations conducive to ethically desirable conduct.

The ‘situationist’ challenges have spawned extensive philosophical debate. Some authors have criticized the empirical experiments themselves, others have criticized the implications drawn from the experiments, yet others have criticized the critics. Thus, this debate is still very much open.

Although Kantianism is explicitly a target of the situationist critique, there has not yet been an explicit examination of the prospects for a present-day broadly Kantian response. This involves careful examination of the relevant empirical studies, of course, examining the theoretical assumptions regarding morality and character, as well as reflection on the very notion of character and an investigation of how explicit knowledge of empirical factors influencing behaviour can be integrated into the agent’s self-understanding. This, in turn, will have implications for moral theory, as it also raises the question of whether one ought, as a matter of moral demand, attend to reflexive knowledge of one’s own or others’ moral psychology.