This chapter provides a detailed assessment in philosophy of the Big Five approach, specifically on the question of whether it provides empirical support for the widespread possession of the moral and epistemic virtues. It briefly reviews some of the recent discussions in philosophy concerning the empirical adequacy of the virtues. The chapter also provides an overview of the Big Five approach in personality psychology. It focuses on three important reasons for why the Big Five taxonomy, however well supported it might be, does not offer any empirical support for the widespread possession of the traditional moral and epistemic virtues. Three important concerns are: Big Five traits are only summary labels; problems for the leading causal trait model of the Big Five; and Big Five and responsibility. The labeling approach can apply to the facets which use virtue concepts.

This is the introductory chapter of the book, which aims to launch a powerful and largely unexplored position in epistemology, naturalized virtue epistemology. Many of the chapters in the book examines empirical findings on the nature of cognitive dispositions and personality traits (Alfano, Battaly, Miller, Pritchard), and this is clearly one direction for naturalized virtue epistemology to take. The book also examines two significant worries for a would-be naturalized virtue epistemology. One problem a naturalistic turn might create for virtue epistemology is the persistent worry about normativity in naturalistic theories. A second worry is that the relevant results from the sciences will signal bad news for virtue epistemology. The book addresses a wide range of issues relevant to the project of developing a naturalized virtue epistemology. Virtue epistemology should be informed by an important development in personality psychology called the Big Five personality traits or Five- Factor Model of traits.

This chapter reviews the typical methods that are used to create and measure the physical states and subjective feelings that researchers refer to as affect or emotion, keeping in mind the scientific distinction between these two constructions. It reviews the variety of induction methods and measurement techniques that are used most frequently in social and personality psychology. The chapter outlines thirteen laboratory induction techniques such as films, images, faces, music, words, peripheral physiological manipulations, and virtual reality that are the most frequently and successfully used laboratory-based inductions. It presents a brief summary of each method, including a description, prototypical references, and advantages and disadvantages of each method. A psychologist's task is to discover facts about the mind (changes in affect or emotion) by measuring responses from a person (reaction times, perceptions, eye or muscle movements, bodily changes, or perhaps electrical, magnetic, blood flow, or chemical measures related to neurons firing).

This chapter describes everyday experience methods from both conceptual and practical vantage points. It begins with a conceptual rationale, discussing the paradigm's perspective on social behavior and its contribution to social psychological methods. Everyday experience studies have three general purposes: establishing the prevalence and/or qualities of phenomena, testing theoretically generated hypotheses and propositions, and serving as a discovery technique for generating new hypotheses. The chapter reviews several protocols relevant to research in social and personality psychology. It highlights representative studies employing everyday experience methods. The chapter also reviews the practical matters arising in everyday experience research and statistical techniques for capitalizing on the extensive data sets typically obtained. It considers the role of everyday experience studies in complementing other methods in programmatic research. Everyday experience methods, in conjunction with laboratory and global self-report strategies, offer a substantial alternative with which to enhance the validity of a research program.

This chapter provides a concise and up-to-date description of neuroimaging methods in the context of eight conceptual questions used by social neuroscientists, particularly functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and electroencephalography (EEG), for an audience of social and personality psychologists. It briefly discusses what kinds of questions can be answered using social neuroscience methods. The chapter describes how fMRI studies are designed and how their data are collected, analyzed, and reported. It focuses on EEG and event-related potential (ERP) studies. In neuroimaging, typically psychological processes are the independent variables and neural activity is the dependent variable. The anteriorization-abstraction hypothesis suggests some challenges for social neuroscience. The main challenge is that statistics that involve central tendency (e.g., means) are less powerful toward the abstract/anterior end of the gradient. Finally, the chapter also discusses the recent debates and controversies in social neuroscience and related fields.