This chapter begins with a brief review of the history of virtue science. It went out of favor in psychology for most of the twentieth century, but after renewed interest in philosophy in the latter part of that century, virtue research has burgeoned in psychology in the twenty-first century. The interest in virtue research is partly due to the positive psychology movement, which focuses on human strengths and well-being. Despite its valuable contribution, three elements of positive psychology have continued to plague virtue research as it is atheoretical, conceptualized as a diagnostic scheme, and ambivalent about values and morality. Nevertheless, virtue science is off to a good beginning, boasting scores of empirical studies. Most virtue scientists have left the ill-conceived notion of “diagnosing” virtues behind. These studies remain siloed and noncumulative due to the absence of clear theory in virtue science and a tendency to neglect conceptualizing virtues. Virtue research also remains limited by its ambivalence toward values and morality. To remedy this fragmentation, this chapter proposes the STRIVE-4 Model, with its clear conceptualization of virtues and the dozens of hypotheses that follow from it. This model provides a way to build a unified and cumulative virtue science.

The book concludes with a discussion of the ways that virtue science can influence the discipline of psychology. First, it reiterates that virtue science is off to a good start. The success of virtue science calls the fact–value dichotomy into question because scientifically studying virtues is deeply imbued with value commitments. Virtue science is more interdisciplinary than psychology, and the value of working across disciplinary lines in virtue science recommends greater interdisciplinarity among psychologists. This interdisciplinarity in virtue science has helped to clarify the many philosophical contentions that tend to be ignored by psychologists or just built in as contentious assumptions. The STRIVE-4 Model clarifies how much improved conceptualization can enhance a research area, suggesting that psychology, as a discipline, can benefit from more systematic theory. Virtue science also calls for improved research, especially person-centered research and transcending self-report measures. Finally, virtue science calls for the recognition of the centrality of the aspiration to live well as human beings. Greater attention to this core aim can help psychologists to be much clearer and more direct about their objectives.

The central concern in this chapter is on the place of values and morality in virtue science. Since the advent of psychology, a strict fact–value dichotomy has predominated, with almost all investigators adopting a disengaged observer stance. This dichotomy has been repeatedly critiqued by communitarians, hermeneuticists, philosophers, and psychologists. Few, if any, systematic defenses of the fact–value dichotomy exist. This chapter combines many of the strands of fact–value critique in a neo-Aristotelian position that emphasizes that science is, itself, value-imbued because it aims at a set of goods (e.g., knowledge, human welfare). The chapter concludes by suggesting how values and morality can be included in virtue science and psychology in a frank and illuminating manner. In support of this position, it enumerates four advantages of value inclusion, paramount among them that values can then be explicitly discussed and evaluated. Values can be fruitfully incorporated into virtue and psychological sciences by making the values explicit and including discussions and critiques of those views in open intellectual discourse (e.g., peer review).