"Trump Didn't Kill the Bush Values"

Today's WSJ, 12/6/2018, column by Daniel Henninger, contains this sentence:

"Those Bush values are definable in words such as temperance, self-restraint, plain-speaking, honesty, duty, forbearance, humility, prudence, courage."

He also writes:

"Most of the Bush values can be found on any list of what are called—or used to be called—virtues."

I can locate all but one of these in the VIA Character Strengths. Temperance is the virtue category that includes Forgiveness, Humility, Prudence, and Self-Regulation. Self regulation seems to be the same as Self-Regulation. Plain-speaking and honesty both are part of the Character Strength of Authenticity. Humility, Prudence, and Courage are all named Character Strengths in the VIA Classification. So, that only leaves "duty" and "forbearance."  I'm inclined to see "forbearance" as much like "self-restraint", especially since it can be grouped in Mr. Henninger's sentence with humility and prudence, and thus be just a return to the virtue of Temperance. But, I know that the grouping of the strengths into virtue categories is not empirical. Thus, looking at the first quoted sentence above again, it seems to me that duty defines the difference in this list of values for a very public figure from other lists composed by those considering a broader set of roles for individuals. I need to think more about where, if at all, duty fits in the VIA classification. "Duty" does not even appear in the index to Character Strengths and Virtues.In the MAPP program, we had to write a paper on our candidate for the 25th Character Strength. (Chris Peterson's candidate was "Patience.") Maybe "duty" is another candidate?

Duty does find a better home in Haidt's Moral Foundations framework, where it would appear to be an interaction of the Loyalty and Heirarchy foundations. And, since Henninger was writing favorably about a conservative politician and his family, this makes sense because conservatives value these foundations almost equally with the Harm and Fairness foundations. Liberals prioritize Harm and Fairness and discount Loyalty, Heirarchy, and Sanctity. In fact, come to think of it, the Sanctity foundation may well play into "duty" also.

All in all, I think this suggests a hole in the VIA classification. (Which, I'm pretty sure Chris Peterson would have been ok with. He never claimed it was "finished." In fact, he's the one who assigned the "25th Strength" paper!) I've also seen this same indication of a whole when trying to align the VIA classification of Character Strengths with Schwartz' Theory of Universal Human Values. I can fit most of the values domains, but I don't find a good match to the values contained in the Power category (and, congruent with Schwartz' theory, the matches become better as you move away from Power in either direction around the circumplex.

Comments

[Dave Shearon]

Absolutely, Kathryn. Could well be that a combination of some of the 24 Character Strengths would match up to "Duty". But still interesting that it is not represented by a single VIA Character Strength whereas many of the others are represented by several. Of course, the two-dimensional framework may be limiting things here. Perhaps the Schwartz Values Circumplex and Haidt's framework are on different "planes" than the VIA Character Strengths.

[Kathryn]

Dave, A couple of questions to ask before deciding there is a hole. 1) Is it valued all around the world across time? There might be some big cultural differences here, some gaps where Duty is not valued on the level of other strengths. 2) Is it a composite rather than an elementary strength? Neil Mayerson's answer to many of our Positive Psychology News articles about 25th character strengths was that the strengths we proposed (and mine was Patience, Endurance) could be defined as combinations of other strengths. Or could Duty be subsumed under citizenship? With perhaps some Social Intelligence tossed in?