CHAPTER 12

Character and Virtues in the Arts and Humanities

Willibald Ruch and Fabian Gander

Abstract

This chapter discusses the role of character in the arts and humanities. The authors introduce the most influential model of character, the Values in Action (VIA) classification of character strengths and virtues, review the relevance of the arts and humanities in the creation of this classification, and discuss earlier research and practice of character strengths in these disciplines. They review earlier studies and present new data on differences in character strengths between people working in an occupation related to the arts and the humanities (vs. other occupations), with a special focus on professional and amateur musicians. Finally, they examine whether the arts and humanities might also be associated with character strengths via role models. They conclude that in particular the character strength of appreciation of beauty and excellence might play a crucial role in the arts and humanities and discuss avenues for further research in this area.

Key Words: character strength, virtue, VIA classification, arts, humanities

Character Strengths and Virtues

Character represents the positive, adaptive part of personality.¹ The study of character has flourished since the introduction of the Values in Action (VIA) classification of character strengths and virtues by Peterson and Seligman (2004). One of the basic assumptions of this classification is that “character is plural” (Peterson & Seligman, 2004, p. 10) and that multiple dimensions are needed to describe good character. According to Peterson and Seligman (2004), this is best accommodated through a hierarchical conceptualization of character, comprising—from top to bottom—virtues, character strengths, and situational themes. On the top level, the classification suggests six core virtues (i.e., wisdom and knowledge, courage, humanity, justice, temperance, and transcendence) that have emerged from analyses of philosophical theories and religious traditions (Dahlsgaard, Peterson, & Seligman, 2005). At the mid-level are the character strengths, a set of twenty-four positively valued traits that represent distinct ways of displaying the virtues (see Table 12.1). Character strengths were selected by scanning through numerous sources for candidate traits and determining whether these candidates mostly fulfilled each of several criteria for character strengths (Peterson & Seligman, 2004; see also Ruch & Stahlmann, 2019). One of the most important criteria is “a strength contributes to various fulfillments that constitute the good life, for oneself and for others” (Peterson & Seligman, 2004, p. 17). A plethora of research has corroborated the robust positive relationships between character strengths and different aspects of well-being (e.g., Wagner, Gander, Proyer, & Ruch, 2020), and has underlined their relevance for success and flourishing in several life domains, including work (e.g., Harzer & Ruch, 2014; Heintz & Ruch, 2020), school (e.g., Wagner & Ruch, 2015), and friendship (Wagner, 2019). In other words, character strengths have theoretically and empirically been shown to go along with human striving for moral and intellectual excellence. At the bottom level of the classification, there are specific habits of displaying a particular character strength in a particular situation. While the situational themes represent very narrow, situation-dependent habits and the virtues very general, abstract concepts, the core of the classification are the character strengths—measurable interindividual differences that offer a compromise between abstraction and specificity and show considerable stability across time and situations (Gander, Hofmann, Proyer, & Ruch, 2020).

Table 12.1 The VIA Classification of Character Strengths and Virtues

© Copyright 2004–2018, VIA Institute on Character. All rights reserved. Used with permission. www.viacharacter.org

Character in the Arts and Humanities

The relationship of character and the arts and humanities is evident, and a natural one. While questions of morality, excellence, well-being, and the “good life” are relevant in almost every academic discipline, such questions are often explicitly topics of the arts and humanities (as opposed to other disciplines, such as STEM i.e., science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, for example). This is also well reflected in the development of the VIA classification: among the sources that were considered for potential candidates of strengths were instances of popular and high culture from music (e.g., popular song lyrics), visual and performing arts (e.g., graffiti), philosophy (from ancient Greek philosophers to contemporary philosophy of ethics), literature (e.g., from writings of Benjamin Franklin to Harry Potter novels), as well as several historical figures (e.g., Charlemagne). Further, character and virtue have been taught using poems (Moores et al., 2015), books (FitzSimons, 2015; Kilpatrick, Wolfe, & Wolfe, 1994), movies (Niemiec & Wedding, 2013), and songs (Peterson, 2006) that display and celebrate prototypical expressions of character strengths.

Tay, Pawelski, and Keith (2018) introduced a conceptual model proposing that engagement in the arts and humanities may “strengthen normative aspects of human flourishing, such as character, values, civic engagement, and morality” (p. 220). They suggest four main mechanisms for these effects of the arts and humanities on character: By immersion (i.e., by eliciting positive emotional states or flow states during engagement with arts and humanities), embeddedness (i.e., by vicarious experiences or the experience of mastery or encouragement that might support the development of skills or habits), socialization (i.e., by accumulating several roles and identities within a culture that also strengthen social networks), or reflectiveness (i.e., by reflecting upon one’s habits or views, these might be developed, altered, or discarded). The idea that character can be cultivated through engagement in the humanities is an old one. Tay, Pawelski, and Keith (2018) summarized this as follows: The “humanities have long been relied on for education and socialization of the young and for maintaining cohesion among citizens by emphasizing standards of conduct and values shared within a society” (p. 220). Accordingly, the literature is rich with ideas and examples of how character could or should be taught and fostered in schools (e.g., Lavy, 2019; Linkins, Niemiec, Gillham, & Mayerson, 2015; Waters, 2011; White & Murray, 2015). While many of these studies reported positive effects on well-being-related outcomes (e.g., Brunwasser, Gillham, & Kim, 2009), studies of effects on character have been comparatively rare or critically discussed (Was, Woltz, & Drew, 2006). In a recent systematic review, Vaziri, Tay, Keith, and Pawelski (2018) assessed the literature on effects of engaging in history, literature, and philosophy on virtues and other well-being outcomes: the authors identified several studies that examined the effects of such interventions on concepts associated with the virtues of wisdom (42 studies; mostly addressing engagement or interest), humanity (32 studies; mostly addressing empathy or theory of mind), and justice (2 studies; addressing willingness to engage in social justice or civic behaviors), but no studies examining effects on concepts related to courage, temperance, or transcendence. While the largest part of these studies reported positive effects, the existing research on effects of the arts and humanities on character is limited in two main regards. First, most studies did not address longer-term changes that go beyond pre–post comparisons. This is problematic since one can assume that fostering character strengths might unfold over longer periods of time. Second, although these studies examined concepts that are associated with character strengths and virtues, they did not assess character strengths as personality traits, as suggested in the VIA framework. Therefore, although these findings are encouraging, they are of limited relevance for the question whether character strengths can be fostered through engagement with arts and humanities. While the research for settling this question has yet to be done, we can gather information about what strengths might be particularly relevant in the arts and humanities from cross-sectional studies. Although this of course does not allow for drawing any inferences about the directions of effects, or even causal relationships, it might still be helpful for inspiring and guiding future studies. Thus, in the following sections, we review previous research and present new data that might help for scrutinizing the relationships between character strengths and the arts and humanities. In particular, we are focusing on two specific aspects: first, we are discussing the role of character strengths in occupations related to the art and humanities, with a special focus on the discipline of music, and second, we are studying the relationships of character strengths with role models in the arts and humanities.

Character Strengths in Arts and Humanities Occupations

Tay and colleagues (2018) suggested that describing the arts and humanities by the occupations that comprise them offers one possible way for demarcating the field. Also, some occupations, as they go along with specific roles and identities, might foster human flourishing (coined as “socialization” by Tay et al., 2018). Thus, one intuitive approach for assessing the relevance of character strengths in the arts and humanities is comparing the level of character strengths between people who are in occupations related to the arts and humanities with those of people in other occupations. For this purpose, we analyzed data from a representative sample of the Swiss workforce (n = 1,721; Maggiori, Rossier, Krings, Johnston, & Massoudi, 2016) who provided information on their occupation (coded according to the International Standard Classification of Occupations) and completed a measure on their character strengths (Character Strengths Rating Form, a twenty-four-item self-report instrument for the assessment of the twenty-four character strengths of the VIA classification; Ruch, Martínez-Martí, Proyer, & Harzer, 2014).² When comparing occupations from the arts and humanities with other occupations in their character strengths (see Table 12.2), results suggested higher scores in occupations related to the arts and humanities in the strengths of creativity, curiosity, judgment, love of learning, kindness, humility, appreciation of beauty, and gratitude. For the other strengths, no differences between the two groups were observed. While these results offer important insights, they are based on a comparatively small number of occupations in the arts and humanities (n = 21).

Table 12.2 Relationships of Character Strengths with Having an Occupation or Role Model from the Arts and Humanities, and Playing a Musical Instrument

Note. ABE = Appreciation of beauty and excellence.

^a n = 1,721; 0 = no occupation within humanities (98.2%); 1 = occupation within humanities (1.2%).

^b n = 4,838; 0 = not playing a music instrument (52%); 1 = playing a music instrument (48%).

^c n = 160; 0 = no role model from the arts and humanities (39.9%); 1 = role model from the arts and humanities (60.1%).

* p < .05,

** p < .01,

*** p < .001 (two-tailed tests).

Further information is available from previous studies on a specific occupation within arts and humanities, namely musicians: Güsewell and Ruch (2015) compared the character strengths profiles of professional musicians (n = 108), with matched samples of amateur musicians (n = 108), and non-musicians (n = 108) who completed the standard form of the character strengths instrument (VIA-IS; Ruch et al., 2010). Professional musicians reported higher scores in self-regulation and appreciation of beauty and excellence than non-musicians, but lower scores in teamwork, fairness, and leadership than the other groups. Eggimann and Schneider (2008) collected data from orchestra musicians (n = 85) who completed the standard form of the character strengths instrument (VIA-IS; Ruch et al., 2010). When comparing the scores of the orchestra musicians with those of a general population sample (n = 1,674; Ruch et al., 2010), results suggest that the orchestra musicians scored higher in appreciation of beauty (r[1,728] = .26, p < .001), and lower in forgiveness (r[1,728] = .14, p = .047), while no differences in other strengths were found. The lowered scores in some strengths in both studies raise the question whether these indicate potential negative effects of arts and humanities on character, or are merely context effects (e.g., the conditions under which musicians perform) or confounding factors (e.g., lifestyle, education, or socialization). Right now it is difficult to imagine the mechanisms by which arts and humanities systematically and directly hinder the building of certain strengths or reduce them.

For examining whether potential differences in character strengths also can be traced in non-professional musicians, we additionally analyzed a large data set of children and adolescents (aged 10–17, n = 4,838) who completed a character strengths self-assessment instrument for children and adolescents (Values in Action Inventory of Strengths for Youth; Ruch, Weber, Park, & Peterson, 2014) and indicated whether they are playing a musical instrument (= 1) or not (= 0). Results showed that playing a music instrument went along with higher scores in all character strengths, with the exception of love, with the highest effect sizes for appreciation of beauty and excellence, love of learning, creativity, curiosity, and fairness (see Table 12.2). Of course, one has to assume that children who are playing an instrument also differ in many other aspects from those who do not (e.g., social status), and the effects cannot be solely attributed to engaging in music. No study yet exists that compares character at the beginning and end of musical training and examines whether differences deviate from a regular developmental trend.

Character Strengths in Role Models

Another approach to studying the role of character strengths in the arts in humanities is by examining role models. The arts and humanities might also influence the general public through particularly prominent representatives. Similar to the idea of Tay et al. (2018) that embeddedness—processes that underlie the development of habits—might be activated through the arts and humanities, we assume that role models might guide behavior and shape the character of individuals, in line with social cognitive theory (e.g., Bandura, 1986).

For examining whether having a role model from the arts and humanities is related to character strengths, we asked a sample of participants (n = 160) who completed the VIA-IS (Ruch et al., 2010) to name their role models. Interestingly, the majority of the publicly known role models were from the arts and humanities (60.1 percent).³ When comparing the character strengths of participants who named a role model from the arts and humanities with those who named role models from other disciplines (e.g., sports, science, politics), we found role models from the arts and humanities to correspond with higher scores in the strengths of appreciation of beauty and excellence, and spirituality (see Table 12.2).

Conclusions and Outlook

While the reviewed studies and presented data showed some differences in their findings, there was one common theme: the particular relevance of the strength of appreciation of beauty in the arts and humanities. Thus, this strength seems to be the most natural starting point for further research in this area. For musicians, this relationship has already been studied in depth (Güsewell & Ruch, 2014, 2015). Güsewell and Ruch (2014) also reported that the degree of involvement in musical practice positively relates to the degree of responsiveness to the good and beautiful, which would also be in line with the hypothesis of Tay et al. (2018) that the variety and depth of the engagement with the arts and humanities should lead to greater increases in outcomes, such as character strengths. Intervention studies have also shown that instructing people to engage in (natural, artistic, and moral) beauty leads to increases in the appreciation of beauty (Martínez-Martí, Avia, & Hernández-Lloreda, 2018), well-being (Proyer, Gander, Wellenzohn, & Ruch, 2016), and hope (Diessner, Rust, Solom, Frost, & Parsons, 2006). Given the obvious relationships between the arts and humanities and the engagement in (moral and non-moral) beauty, this might be one important pathway by which these disciplines can contribute to character development. For example, displays of moral beauty have been related to emotional experiences of elevation (Keltner & Haidt, 2003), which in turn was found to motivate prosocial and affiliative behavior (Algoe & Haidt, 2009). Thus, one might assume that continued engagement in moral beauty might also foster character strengths related to prosociality and affiliation, such as kindness, or gratitude. Finally, it has been argued that the experience of elevation and related states, such as awe, can occur due to the perceived vastness of a stimulus (Keltner & Haidt, 2003). One might argue that the experience of vastness might foster humility. Indeed, we found minor differences in all these strengths (i.e., kindness, gratitude, and humility) when comparing occupations from the arts and humanities with other occupations. Therefore, examining effects on these strengths might be a second line of concern in future studies.

Additionally, we also found differences in several strengths assigned to the virtue of wisdom and knowledge, in particular creativity, curiosity, and love of learning. This is well in line with the findings of the literature review of Vaziri et al. (2018), who found numerous studies reporting increases in similar concepts following an intervention based on history, literature, and philosophy (further disciplines were not covered in this study). While these effects might also be confounded with engagement in education in general, examining effects on these strengths offers a third line of inquiry for future studies.

Of course, the findings presented here can only provide general ideas of how the arts and humanities might affect character strengths. While we found some evidence on positive relationships with several character strengths, we can only speculate about their direction and assume that they go both ways; while mostly those people with high scores in specific strengths (such as appreciation of beauty and excellence, creativity, curiosity, or love of learning, for example) more frequently tend to engage in occupations or activities related to the arts and humanities, one might also assume that continued engagement in this area shapes character strengths; longitudinal and experimental studies are required for learning more about these relationships, and possible working mechanisms.

Last but not least, future studies might want to look into differences between the arts versus the humanities in their effects on character strengths. While the effects might be comparable overall, we expect that there will be differences as well. We expect the effects of the humanities to be broader (i.e., involving more strengths and covering more virtue domains) than the effect of the arts.

Finally, one might also argue that there could be instances in which the arts and humanities can be an obstacle for character development. Although we found no negative effects in the presented data, earlier studies found lower scores for musicians in specific character strengths (i.e., teamwork, fairness, leadership, and forgiveness; Eggimann & Schneider, 2008; Güsewell & Ruch, 2015). While we assume that these effects can rather be attributed to the specific occupation of professional musician (e.g., being in a highly competitive environment), nonetheless potential negative effects should also be considered by future studies.

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1This publication benefited from the support of the Swiss National Centre of Competence in Research “LIVES—Overcoming vulnerability: Life course perspectives” and a research grant awarded to WR financed by the Swiss National Science Foundation (grant numbers: 51NF40- 185901 and 172723). The authors are grateful to the Swiss National Science Foundation for its financial assistance. The authors report no conflicts of interest.

2Two independent raters coded the occupations with regard to whether they are occupations within the arts and humanities (= 1) or not (= 0). There was a substantial agreement between the raters (Cohen’s κ = .75), and only those cases were considered in which both raters agreed. The occupations coded as “arts and humanities” covered art teachers, philosophers, historians, political scientists, pastors and pastoral helpers, authors, journalists, linguists, musicians, singers, composers, directors and film producers, photographers, and interior designers.

3We only analyzed those people who indicated a publicly known real or fictional role model (as opposed to friends, family members, or similar). Two independent raters coded the role models with regard to whether they can be considered representatives of the arts and humanities (= 1) or not (= 0). There was a substantial agreement between the raters (Cohen’s κ = .73), and only those cases were considered in which both raters agreed. Mentioned role models of the arts and humanities covered a variety of disciplines including literature (e.g., J. K. Rowling, Hannah Arendt, Astrid Lindgren, Simone de Beauvoir), religion (e.g., Dalai Lama, Jesus Christ, Buddha), music (e.g., Bob Dylan, Bob Marley, Freddie Mercury), cinema (e.g., Audrey Hepburn, Emma Watson), or art (e.g., Frida Kahlo, Sebastião Salgado).