About Good Quest

Neither by nature, then nor contrary to nature do the virtues arise in  us; rather we are adapted by nature to receive them, and are made perfect by habit.
   - Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics

Some such combination [of generative ways] must assure the vitality of an order of care to those wide areas of adult involvements, which according to a Hindu expression guarantee the "maintenance of the world." All this, in short, leads to participation in areas of involvement in which one can learn to take care of what one truly cares for.
   - E. Erikson, Vital Engagements in Old Age

In a very real sense, we are attempting to study how these two great ideas go together. Welcome to Project Good Quest.  Our research, both conceptual and empirical in nature, is devoted to the interdisciplinary study of the “nature, conditions, and constituents”  of moral flourishing (Flanagan, 2007, p. 107).  Most of the concepts we are writing about, and empirical studies we are conducting in our lab, are ultimately about morality,     specifically what is referred to as moral motivation (described below).  In general, our research applies the methods and models of the “positive psychology of morality” (Haidt, 2003-b) and contemporary generativity theory (McAdams & de St. Aubin, 1998) to the study of character development and intentional change (Lapsley & Power, 2005).  Our approach also has direct implications for the study of spiritual transformation (Paloutzian & Park, 2005), but is not necessarily tied to it.  In this synopsis we describe our general approach, and tell you where you can read more about what we are doing (PDFs).  We then outline our present research projects.  Most of the time these projects involve our undergraduate Psychology majors who are conducting empirical research on topics related to these ideas.

Our central assumption is that intentional moral change in adulthood is not so much a matter of the knowing the right or good thing to do (the issue of moral meaning); rather it is a matter of motive and capacity (the issue of moral motivation).  Moral motivation is a sub-field in contemporary moral psychology that studies what motivates (‘energizes’) persons to moral goodness.  Following from the Social Intuitionist Model of moral motivation described below we are exploring what resources of personality (virtues) characterize persons who exhibit a mature capacity for generative care, defined by Erik Erikson (1964, 2000) as the capacity to “take care of” the strengths-development of “cared for” others.  Our working assumption is that not every person has had the opportunity to develop a functionally robust motive and capacity for prosociality. Thus, we assume that one of the central moral problems of our time is not so much that persons won’t care, but that they can’t care (at least, are sometimes diminished in their capacity to do so).  Thus, the central objective is to understand: Who Cares? - how and why some persons care, while others are less motivated and (perhaps) less capable of doing so.