Research

Capitalizing on Wake Forest's unique cross-disciplinary expertise in the nature of character, we conducted empirical research that addressed significant and timely issues in the study of character. This research created a unique and exciting blend of theoretical and empirical work, discipline-specific and interdisciplinary thinking, exploratory and confirmatory strategies, and correlational and experimental studies.

The Psychology Co-Directors, William Fleeson and Mike Furr, conducted experiments designed to investigate the following themes:

The Consistency of Character
The Internal Causal Structure of Character
The Relationship of Character to Normal Personality
The Role of Virtue in Self- and Other-Knowledge
The Role of Identity Emulation in Virtuous Behavior

Project Leader, Christian Miller, has two books on character with Oxford University Press entitled Moral Character: An Empirical Theory (2013) and Character and Moral Psychology (2014). He is currently working on a trade book on character.

Theology Director, Angela Knobel, worked on a series of articles on the topic of infused virtue.

Finally, we continued our research in progress group meetings of the Wake Forest University faculty, post-doctoral fellow, residential scholars, and graduate students involved in the project. Papers were distributed ahead of the meetings to be pre-read, and authors benefitted from detailed feedback on their work in progress.