Articles
What lies behind us and what lies before us are small matters compared to what lies within us.
Angela Duckworth is the Founder and CEO of Character Lab, a nonprofit whose mission is to advance the science and practice of character development. She is also the Christopher H. Browne Distinguished Professor of Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, faculty co-director of the Penn-Wharton Behavior Change For Good Initiative, and faculty co-director of Wharton People Analytics.
- “What Does ‘Character’ Even Mean?” Character.org.
- “Should You Tell Everyone They’re Honest?” Nautilus Magazine.
- “The Cinnabon Made Me Do It: Surprising Influences on Moral Behavior.” Merion West
- “The Foundations of Morality.” Fathom Magazine.
- “Empathy.” Fathom Magazine. Published as well in The Partially Examined Life Blog.
- “Are You As Good As You Think?” The Institute of Art and Ideas.
- “Why the Church Needs to Refocus on the Concept of Character.” Relevant Magazine.
- “How Can We Become Better Humans?” Greater Good Magazine.
- “True Generosity Involves More Than Just Giving.” Aeon.
- Reprinted in Quartz as “Are You Generous? The Three Requirements of True Generosity.”
- Reprinted in The Week as “The True Meaning of Generosity.”
- “Science-Tested Tips to Be a Better Person.” The Wall Street Journal.
- “How to Stay Honest This Tax Season.” The Conversation.
- Reprinted in Newsweek as “How Not to Cheat on your Taxes – A Handy Guide.” Reprinted in the Los Angeles Times as “How to Stay Honest This Tax Season.” Reprinted in the Chicago Tribune, Salon, The News & Observer, Penn Live, Fort Bend Herald, ORBITER Magazine, Fox 12 Oregon, CBS 46 Atlanta, Fox Carolina, and Yahoo News.
- “The Heights and Depths of our Characters.” Virtue Insight Blog.
- “How Little We Know About Character.” The Philosopher’s Magazine 80 (2018): 58-64.
- “4 Ways to Become a Better Person in 2018.” The Dallas Morning News.
- “Some of the Mysteries of Good Character.” Oxford University Press Blog.
- “What Does ‘Character’ Even Mean? Defining What We All Say We Care About.” Michael Hyatt Magazine.
- “From Monogamy to Politics, the Concept of Honesty is More Complex than You Think.” Prospect Magazine.
A free world isn’t a perfect world, but it’s better than any alternative.
from the New York Times
from the New York Times
How can we cultivate thankfulness in everyday life, reap its rewards, and make it part of our children’s character and our own? We asked that question of Thomas Lickona, Ph.D., a developmental psychologist and author of Raising Good Children and How to Raise Kind Kids: And Get Respect, Gratitude, and a Happier Family in the Bargain. Below, he offers 10 tips on how to raise thankful kids, drawn from his decades of working with parents and teachers.
Most early-childhood classrooms in the United States,” writes Paul Tough in his new book How Children Succeed, “are designed to develop in children a set of pre-academic skills, mostly related to deciphering text and manipulating numbers.” Nevertheless, research conducted in the last few years suggests that stuffing this kind of information into a child’s head is not the most important task in those early years. “What matters, instead, is whether we are able to help her develop a very different set of qualities, a list that includes persistence, self-control, curiosity, conscientiousness, grit, and self-confidence.” How Children Succeed describes the new discoveries and reports on the ways innovative educators are developing techniques to help children develop these traits. The interview lasts about 30 minutes.
Gratitude is an ethic that experts now see as equally secular and religious – not to mention a healthy recipe for Thanksgiving all year round.
Kentaro Toyama looks at fostering virtue through education, mentoring, and community.
Learning handwriting may be good for the brain. It may even inspire surprisingly memorable advertising. But does it also prevent crime? That's what the conservative physician and cultural critic Theodore Dalrymple (Anthony Daniels) maintains when deploring the state of Indiana's decision to abolish mandatory cursive instruction in the Wall Street Journal.
Two psychologists argue that everyone's mind contains a liar, a cheat, and a sinner. But there is always a saint, too.
The obituaries for James Q. Wilson, the eminent social scientist, generally emphasized his “broken windows” theory on how to reduce crime. That’s natural. This strategy, which contributed to the recent reduction in crime rates, was his most tangible legacy. But broken windows was only a small piece of what Wilson contributed, and he did not consider it the center of his work. The best way to understand the core Wilson is by borrowing the title of one of his essays: “The Rediscovery of Character.”
Anyone who has ever devoured a triple-chocolate brownie after an intense workout knows how tempting it can be to indulge after behaving virtuously. A new study suggests, however, that we often apply this thought process to inappropriate scenarios, giving ourselves license to act in unhealthy or antisocial ways.
If you've already ditched your New Year's resolution, you are not alone: These days, self-control isn't exactly America's strong suit. Our economy is hobbled because too many of us bought homes we couldn't afford. Obesity is rampant—fueling demand for devices like the "Liftseat 600," a motorized toilet that will raise a 600-pound person to a standing position. Even when failure carries a hefty price, self-restraint is hard: Had Brett Favre only counted to 10 before hitting "send," he might have avoided a $50,000 fine from the NFL—and kept some last shred of dignity.
Every wave of public scandal seems to bring in its wake calls for more ethics classes at our top schools. As a former philosophy professor who has taught “Moral Philosophy 101” to undergraduates, I’m actually rather dismissive about the whole idea. I don’t mean to imply that ethics shouldn’t be a significant part of any professional curriculum (e.g. law, business, medicine, journalism). I just doubt that it can have any genuine transformative effect on people’s behavior.
IT’S easy to look at big names like Warren E. Buffett, and big companies like Ernst and Young, and be judgmental. Of course they overlooked ethical lapses. Why wouldn’t they? That’s business. Regulators, prosecutors and journalists tend to focus on corruption caused by willful actions or ignorance. But in our research, and in the work of other scholars who study the psychology of behavioral ethics, we have found that much unethical conduct that goes on, whether in social life or work life, happens because people are unconsciously fooling themselves. They overlook transgressions — bending a rule to help a colleague, overlooking information that might damage the reputation of a client — because it is in their interest to do so.
"Character is destiny," remarked the Greek philosopher Heraclitus in the 6th Century B.C. This observation applies as much to nations as it does to individuals. And our current economic woes are, in large part, the repercussions of a national crisis of character.
Randy Wedin is a chemist, blogger, science writer and single father of four sons, living in Minneapolis. (He has also been a guest here on Motherlode before.) As Father’s Day approaches, he has adapted an essay he wrote a while back, for Boston University’s Center for the Advancement of Ethics and Character, about how to show, not tell, when teaching children about character.
Using technology to enhance our brains sounds terrifying, but using tools to make ourselves smarter may be part of humans' nature.
