Virtue, Personality, and Social Relations:

Self-Control as the Moral Muscle

Roy F. Baumeister
Julie Juola Exline
Case Western Reserve University

ABSTRACT Morality is a set of rules that enable people to live together in

harmony, and virtue involves internalizing those rules. Insofar as virtue depends
on overcoming selfish or antisocial impulses for the sake of what is best for the
group or collective, self-control can be said to be the master virtue. We analyze
vice, sin, and virtue from the perspective of self-control theory. Recent research
findings indicate that self-control involves expenditure of some limited resource
and suggest the analogy of a moral muscle as an appropriate way to conceptu-
alize virtue in personality. Guilt fosters virtuous self-control by elevating inter-
personal obligations over personal, selfish interests. Several features of modern
Western society make virtue and self-control especially difficult to achieve.

Virtues and other moral traits are widely regarded by the general public
as important aspects of personality, even though personality researchers
have not accorded them prominent attention in recent decades. In line
with this view, a recent philosophical account contends that virtues come
closer to defining who the person is than any other category of qualities
(Zagzebski, 1996, p. 135). When people list the traits they would desire
in a spouse, for example, moral traits such as honesty, trustworthiness,
and fidelity receive high rankings (e.g., Hoyt & Hudson, 1981; for

Address correspondence to R. Baumeister, Deptartment of Psychology, Case Western

Reserve University, 10900 Euclid Avenue, Cleveland, OH 44106-7123;
rfb2@po.cwru.edu. Preparation of this manuscript was facilitated by National Institutes
of Health grant MH 57039.

Journal of Personality 67:6, December 1999.

Copyright 1999 by Blackwell Publishers, 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148,
USA, and 108 Cowley Road, Oxford, OX4 1JF, UK.
1166 Baumeister & Exline

reviews, see Hatfield & Rapson, 1996; Hatfield & Sprecher, 1986).
Meanwhile, research on guilt-proneness and similar traits suggests that
the interest in moral traits is well founded, because such traits predict
relationship success (Leith & Baumeister, 1998; see also Baumeister,
Stillwell, & Heatherton, 1994, 1995; Tangney, 1995).
One of the fundamental motivations shaping human personality is the
need to belong, that is, the drive to form and maintain lasting social bonds
with at least a handful of other people. The existence of this motivation
has frequently been proposed on theoretical grounds as an inherent part
of human personality (e.g., Bowlby, 1969, 1973; de Rivera, 1984; Ep-
stein, 1992; Freud, 1930; Fromm, 1955, 1956; Guisinger & Blatt, 1994;
Hogan, 1983; Horney, 1945; Maslow, 1968; Ryan, 1991; Sullivan, 1953).
A recent literature review by Baumeister and Leary (1995) found strong
evidence in support of this hypothesis and proposed that it may deserve
even more centrality in personality theory than it has been given. Hence
it seems fair to say that much human activity is structured by the
formation and maintenance of lasting interpersonal connections. Person-
ality is in substantial part a set of strategies and adaptations designed to
accomplish this.
A central argument of the present article is that virtues, and moral traits
in general, constitute an important set of these adaptations designed to
facilitate relationships. We shall argue that morality is essentially a
cultural structure designed to enable people to live together in harmony,
and virtue represents the internalization of moral rules. Hence highly
moral people will be more desirable and successful than others as
members of small groups, partners in relationships, and the like. To put
this another way, virtue cannot be fully understood without recognizing
its interpersonal aspect.
The notion of virtue as beneficial to relationships presupposes that the
selfish interests of the individual are sometimes in conflict with the best
interests of the collective. In those cases, virtue involves putting the latter
ahead of the former. Stifling self-interest for the sake of the greater
collective good requires self-control. Thus, we shall argue that self-
control deserves consideration as the core psychological trait underlying
the majority of virtues.
Because this article is part of a special issue devoted to religion and
personality, the link between virtue and religion deserves comment. It is
hardly controversial to propose that moral systems (including virtues)
have generally had strong links to religion. Systems of guidelines for
Virtue and Self-Control 1167

moral, virtuous behavior have often been presented as integral parts of

religious teachings (e.g., the Buddhist Eightfold Path or the Judeo-Chris-
tian Ten Commandments). These links are not accidents. Indeed, reli-
gious thought has historically regarded self-oriented behavior (and
attitudes) as a major obstacle to spiritual progress. Thus, insofar as virtue
represents the use of self-control to overcome the impulses and appetites
of the self, it is important for spiritual progress. That is, both religion and
morality have a strong (and overlapping) interest in overcoming the selfs
natural, impulsive, grasping nature.
Indeed, MacIntyre (1981) has proposed that the crisis in moral phi-
losophy over the past two centuries derives from the secularization of
society and, by extension, the loss of the spiritual context for morality.
In his view, religion offered a system containing three conceptual ele-
ments: a concept of untutored human nature, a concept of human poten-
tial and perfectability, and a means of passing from the first to the second.
Morality and virtue constituted a major part of the third element: Virtue,
according to MacIntyre, played a critical role in the attainment of
religious salvation. Once people abandoned the religious context, how-
ever, morality simply became a set of rules for being good, without any
reason or incentive to follow those rules. Modern moral philosophers
have floundered around in a doomed struggle to explain why people
should obey moral rules.
To parallel MacIntyres observations about the philosophical deterio-
ration of morality, we shall offer several suggestions about social changes
that have weakened and undermined moral virtue in modern society. Our
focus is on the social (rather than the religious) function of morality,
although the two factors are likely to be compatible in many respects.
When viewed from a social perspective, moral rules constitute enabling
conditions for group life. If the terms and requirements of group life
changeas cultural modernization inevitably requiresthen moral
codes also may have to change. We shall propose that the special
conditions of modern social life present a peculiarly inhospitable envi-
ronment for morality and virtue.

Nature of Morality and Virtue

We shall not attempt to define morality and virtue beyond the standard
definitions as used in the dictionaries. According to Websters (Seventh)
Dictionary, morality is the set of rules, doctrines, and lessons pertaining
1168 Baumeister & Exline

to principles of rightness and wrongness in human behavior. Virtue

involves conforming to standards of right behavior, moral excellence, or
more generally exhibiting commendable qualities or traits. The last of
these is too broad to be useful here (e.g., one may even speak of a
particular virtue of a kitchen utensil). For our purposes, therefore, we
shall use the narrower of those definitions, referring specifically to moral
rightness or goodness.
Definitions aside, it is necessary to acknowledge that views have
differed sharply as to the essential nature of morality and goodness. Given
the long history of religious teachings about morality and virtue, many
people have held a simple understanding of the nature of these things,
which is that morality and virtue consist in obeying divine commands.
Postulating the existence of a particular divinity as the source of moral
authority is beyond the scope of social science, and so this simple
explanation is unsatisfactory for psychological theory (regardless of
whether one privately accepts religion or not). Many more recent ap-
proaches to morality, such as the widely cited works of Lawrence
Kohlberg, are based on the insights articulated by Kant (e.g., 1797), in
which moral principles are understood as innately furnished in the
structure of human mind and intelligence. Theories invoking innate
morality must, however, struggle to explain cross-cultural variations in
morality. Yet another set of approaches attempts to explain morality
simply as a device contrived by ruling elites to legitimize their own claims
to power. These ideas have their intellectual roots in the work of
Nietzsche (1887/1964; also 1886/1964). Nietzsche, who rebelled against
Kants approach, used rudimentary social science methods to demon-
strate that conceptions of moral goodness and virtue derive from words
referring to ruling classes (e.g., one might describe a virtuous action by
saying That was noble of you).
We shall treat morality as a set of cultural adaptations designed to allow
people to live together (see Hogan, 1973). In this view, the requirements
of group life and coexistence require that self-interest be restrained when
it would be detrimental to collective life, such as when people might want
to harm or kill their neighbors or to appropriate the personal property of
others. In an important sense, all societies must solve the same practical
problems in order to survive, and morals represent an important category
of these solutions.
In some cases, social problems permit only one viable solution,
whereas other problems can be solved in multiple ways. The former will
Virtue and Self-Control 1169

be reflected in cross-cultural universality of moral principles, such as the

apparently universal injunction against unlicensed killing of fellow citi-
zens. The latter cases will likely result in cross-cultural variation. As an
example, the problems of managing sexual behavior can be solved in a
variety of ways, and so different cultures have different sexual moralities.
In such cases, the culture requires merely that there be some broad
agreement to serve as the basis for mutual understanding and negotiation
among citizens, but having some agreement is more important than
precisely which agreement it is. Premarital sex, for example, can be
tolerated or condemned. Either approach has advantages and disadvan-
tages, but the society can cope as long as there is some broad agreement.
In contrast, it is much more difficult for a society to continue to function
if half the citizens approve and practice premarital sex while the others
forbid it and regard it as morally intolerable.
It must be acknowledged that the different views of morality are not
necessarily incompatible. For example, the view that morality is derived
from religious principles could easily merge with the Kantian view that
morality is built into the structure of the human mind, because a divine
being could have created the universe (and the mind) that way. By the
same token, the social functionalist view could be compatible with any
of the other views. We shall pursue the social functionalist approach, but
this does not entail a rejection of the other possibilities.
In the social functionalist view, the essence of sin lies in the interper-
sonal damage it causes, as opposed to being in its violation of innate or
divine rules per se. Many of the biblical Ten Commandments (Exodus
20:317), for example, can be viewed as prescriptions for social peace
and harmony. Although some of the commandments involve religious
loyalty and observances, over half of them regulate interpersonal behav-
ior so as to prohibit socially disruptive acts, such as murder, theft,
adultery, and dishonesty, or to require acts that promote social harmony
and stability, such as respectful treatment of parents and the avoidance
of covetous desire for the goods of others.
One might ask why moral rules are specifically needed in order to
foster harmony. After all, the group might simply agree to abide by
various rules and punish violators without elevating these agreements to
the status of moral injunctions. Enforcing compliance would, however,
be a difficult and costly problem under such a system. Freud (e.g., 1913,
1930) pointed out that policing and other external sanctions are not likely
to be adequate to the problem of producing socially desirable behavior
1170 Baumeister & Exline

in sufficient quantity and consistency to enable a society to function.

Hence, he said, nearly all societies rely on internal psychological mecha-
nisms that regulate behavior so as to punish bad actions with aversive
emotional states such as guilt and shame.
It is these internal restraining mechanisms that make virtue an aspect
of personality. Freuds term superego is no longer widely popular, but
most theorists do acknowledge that the typical human psyche contains
some mechanism that assesses whether various acts are good or bad and
tries to regulate behavior so as to guide it toward the good ones. Perhaps
it is not necessary to unite these in a single agency such as the superego.
Then again, it is empirically plausible and perhaps conceptually parsi-
monious that such a single entity exists. We shall argue that there is indeed
a single moral muscle and that it takes the form of self-control.
The question of how virtue operates in personality raises the broader
issue of what is the proper unit of analysis. As one reviewer of this article
asked, Is virtue a behavioral disposition, a motivational tendency, an
attitude, a skill, or an ability? To answer that, it is necessary to distin-
guish between the way virtue appears to the self as opposed to others.
From the communitys perspective, in social functionalist terms, virtue
consists of performing socially desirable actions. For the self, however,
the intentions rather than the actions and outcomes are crucial, and so
moral self-judgment may proceed quite differently than moral judgment
of others. Thus, in terms of the inner personality processes, virtue consists
of having the intention to carry out desirable actions as well as having
the wherewithal to do so. The wherewithal will be the primary focus here,
because it depends heavily on self-control.

Self-Control as the Master Virtue

The understanding of how the self exerts control over its own responses
has gradually risen to a prominent place in theories of self and personality
(e.g., Bandura, 1977, 1982; Baumeister, 1998; Carver & Scheier, 1981;
Higgins, 1996; Kanfer & Karoly, 1972; Mischel, 1974, 1996), although
in an important sense it is one of personality psychologys oldest ques-
tions. (Indeed, much of Freuds career can be regarded as an attempt to
understand how the self exerts control over its own responses.) We regard
that understanding as central to the problem of virtue as well, because
the self must stifle some of its impulses and perform socially desirable
Virtue and Self-Control 1171

behaviors instead. The purpose of this section is to analyze virtue in terms

of self-control.1 The core argument is that many socially problematic
behaviors involve self-control failures, whereas the majority of positive
virtues are based on high and effective self-control.

Vice and Sin

We have proposed that failures of self-control are central to most cases
of vice and sin, which are the opposite of virtue. To evaluate this, it is
necessary to consider a specific roster of sins. Probably the most influ-
ential such list in Western civilization is the Seven Deadly Sins, as
enumerated by Christian theologians in the Middle Ages (for reviews,
see Lyman, 1978; Schimmel, 1992; it must also be noted that modern
Christian thinking is more nuanced and contextualized in its views on
sin). We contend that each of these seven sins can be linked to self-control
failures.
Several of the Seven Deadly Sins are obviously related to poor self-
control. Gluttony, for example, refers to eating too much and perhaps
pursuing other pleasures to excess. Today, overeating has lost some of its
religious opprobrium but is still a major source of guilt and a common
vice bemoaned by many individuals, health and medical experts, and the
beauty industry. In any case, self-control is supposed to restrain eating to
proper levels, and so gluttony occurs when that self-control breaks down.
Likewise, sloth (i.e., laziness) is an obvious case of deficient self-control.
Indeed, most research that studies self-control in performance contexts
tends to use some form of sloth, such as procrastination, lack of effort,
or premature quitting. Sloth differs from most of the other sins in that the
role of self-control is to initiate activity rather than to restrain it, but the
pattern of overriding an easy, tempting response (in this case, of taking
it easy, doing nothing, and neglecting ones duties) is the same.
Greed, lust, and envy are three more of the Seven Deadly Sins, and all
of them refer to excessive desire or striving directed toward inappropriate
goals, specifically money, sexual gratification, and the possessions or

1. The terms self-control and self-regulation are sometimes used interchangeably (e.g.,
Baumeister & Heatherton, 1996), although some theorists use self-control to refer
specifically to control over impulses, whereas self-regulation refers more broadly to how
the self guides behavior toward goals and according to standards. Aspects of self-
regulation that would not involve self-control are not relevant to this article, and so we
may use the terms interchangeably.
1172 Baumeister & Exline

advantages of other people. For each of these three, one must distinguish
between two levels of sin, one that involves acting on these unworthy
motives, and another that involves merely having the psychological
desire (e.g., lusting in ones heart). The church condemned even the
desire, whereas more modern sensibilities tolerate that people have such
desires but insist that they not act on them except in socially approved,
acceptable ways. Self-control is most obvious in restraining the actions,
such as if a person refrains from greedy exploitation of others or from
indulgence in illicit sexual pleasures. The lofty spiritual aim of ridding
oneself of the very desires themselves also would require strong feats of
self-control. To stop oneself from desiring material wealth, sexual satis-
faction, or the good things that other people have would involve overrid-
ing normal, typical responses (hence self-control). Although it seems
unlikely that someone could succeed entirely at eliminating such moti-
vations from his or her own psyche, high self-control could reduce their
frequency and power.
In practice, people probably manage their unwelcome impulses and
feelings by more mundane means than eliminating the roots of desire.
Distracting oneself can be an effective means of escaping from angry
impulses, lustful feelings, or envious cravings. Baumeister, Heatherton,
and Tice (1994) noted that attention is the first and often most effective
line of defense in nearly every sphere of self-control, and so if attention
can be redeployed away from the forbidden or troublesome stimuli, the
problematic responses can be minimized or avoided.
Anger is another of the Seven Deadly Sins, and it too can be addressed
at either the behavioral level (acting angrily, especially as in aggressive
or violent behavior) or the experiential level (merely feeling angry).
Self-control is pertinent to both levels. Anger creates aggressive im-
pulses, but usually people refrain from acting on them, and so self-control
is a major, crucially important factor that prevents violent behavior (e.g.,
Baumeister, 1997; Gottfredson & Hirschi, 1990). Preventing oneself
from feeling angry is of course far more difficult than refraining from
violent behavior, but controlling ones anger is a common focus of efforts
at affect regulation, and people have long sought to stop themselves from
feeling angry (Stearns & Stearns, 1986; Tavris, 1988).
The last of the Seven Deadly Sins is pride. The role of self-control in
pride is less obvious than with the other sins, although we believe that it
is still genuine. Specifically, people generally desire to think well of
themselves, and it is necessary to override and restrain such desires if one
Virtue and Self-Control 1173

is to maintain an attitude of humility. Christianity, like other major

religions, has long regarded pride as a form of heresy and as a spiritual
impediment (e.g., Zweig, 1980), and so people must engage in self-
disciplined inner struggle to rid themselves of pride.
Pride is sometimes viewed less negatively than the other deadly sins,
both historically and at present (e.g., Capps, 1989, 1992; Lyman, 1978).
It has been acceptable for royalty and others to regard themselves as
better than others, and today people often regard high self-esteem as a
desirable, adaptive characteristic (e.g., California Task Force, 1989). The
sinfulness of pride may thus not be as apparent as the sinfulness of anger
and lust, for example. In religious teachings, pride was often sinful
because it raised the danger that a mere mortal might regard himself or
herself as comparable to God. The sin of hubris in pagan mythology,
whose gods were far closer to humans in many respects, was recognized
as a pervasive problem and one that the gods would punish as severely
as any rude social climber has ever been put down by those who regarded
themselves as his or her betters.
Still, the religious angle on pride does not satisfy the social function-
alist approach, and we propose that alongside any purely religious
interpretation it is useful to look for social problems that a given sin may
provoke. Pride puts the self above others and so is conducive to a broad
range of activities that can be harmful to the group. For example, prideful
people may be so self-focused that they are less prone to contribute to
the groups welfare or to be willing to make sacrifices for others. In
particular, group harmony may depend on maintaining a broad sense of
fairness and equity, but such calculations are distorted by pride, insofar
as proud people overestimate the value of their own contributions and
believe they deserve large rewards (e.g., Schlenker & Miller, 1977;
Schlenker, Miller, Leary, & McCown, 1979; Schlenker, Soraci, &
McCarthy, 1976; see Blaine & Crocker, 1993, for review). Consistent
with this, even in a society as geared toward high self-esteem and
self-promotion as the modern United States, people tend to eschew pride
and become modest or self-effacing when interacting with long-term
friends, as opposed to their more positive self-presentations to strangers
(Tice, Butler, Muraven, & Stillwell, 1995; see also Exline & Lobel,
1999).
Thus, the Seven Deadly Sins all seem to have a major component
involving failed self-control. The point of identifying these responses as
1174 Baumeister & Exline

sins was to persuade people to refrain from them, and self-control is

clearly central to the ongoing effort to do so.

Virtue
No roster of virtues is comparable to the Seven Deadly Sins in terms of
prestige or consensual acceptance. This may be because, as already
noted, popular usage of the term virtue may simply refer to commend-
able qualities without implying a moral aspect. Etymologically the word
is derived from a Latin term for strength, which clearly does not have
a moral meaning. However, our focus is specifically on moral virtues.
Perhaps the most influential list of virtues in Western history has been
that of medieval theologian Thomas Aquinas. He separated his roster of
virtues into the Cardinal ones relevant to character and morality that
we emphasize, Theological virtues emphasizing Christian faith, and
Intellectual virtues such as wisdom. The Cardinal virtues consisted of
prudence, justice, temperance, and fortitude, in Rickabys translation
(1896). His usage of these terms does not correspond precisely to modern
uses, so it is necessary to consider each in terms of Aquinass meaning
and then to consider whether self-control is relevant.
The first one, prudence, was explained by Aquinas as goodness in the
consideration of reason. Prudence does seem to have retained this
meaning today, insofar as it means acting cautiously and with due
consideration of long-term implications and risks (for a review, see
Haslam & Baron, 1994). The practice of guiding ones choices by
long-range considerations is central to self-control and has been used as
a definition of it (Rachlin, 1995), and this emphasis is likewise empha-
sized in research on delay of gratification. Delay of gratification studies
set up situations in which the prudent choice is to take the delayed but
larger reward instead of the immediate but smaller one. Prudence is
obviously a matter of self-control.
Second on Aquinass list is justice, which for him meant doing what
one ought to do. It involved good action in the sense of doing what was
morally right. Insofar as morally good behavior requires overriding
selfish interests and impulses in order to comply with standards of proper
behavior, this virtue is again clearly a matter of self-control.
The third Thomistic Cardinal virtue is temperance, which refers to
restraint of passion and prohibition of excess. As we noted with the Seven
Deadly Sins, people have many urges and impulses that are unacceptable,
Virtue and Self-Control 1175

and even if some degree of feeling or acting in those ways is permitted,

it becomes sinful to do too much. (For example, eating is necessary for
survival, but too much eating constitutes the sin of gluttony.) Restraining
ones passions and impulses clearly requires self-control and is indeed
probably the most common colloquial sense of the term self-control.
The last virtue on Aquinass Cardinal list is fortitude, which is
understood as being firm and resolute in the face of passion, suffering,
misfortune, and the like. Self-control is again implicit in this firmness,
insofar as this virtue is what enables the person to hold to a course of
action or commitment in the face of adversity.
Although we have emphasized the moral virtues, we do note that
self-control can be central to other virtues as well. Courage, for example,
has long been considered a prominent and important virtue, although
undeniably its importance has diminished considerably in modern life.
Throughout most of history, courage reflected the acceptance of physical
risks to ones own safety in order to serve the goals of the community,
particularly when a man would risk his life in battle for the sake of his
social group and homeland. Fear of violent harm and death is a natural
response to dangerous situations, and so courage requires conquering this
fear and overriding the impulse to save oneself through flight or hiding.
Men were not praised for courage when they were unaware of risks;
rather, courage meant perceiving the danger and yet still acting in the
dangerous but unselfish fashion. Conquering fear required affect regula-
tion, and performing well in battle (as opposed to running away) required
behavioral regulation. Thus, again, self-control was involved at two
levels.

Implications
As the above analysis demonstrates, both virtue and vice involve self-
control. More precisely, virtues seem based on the positive exercise of
self-control, whereas sin and vice often revolve around failures of self-
control. Insofar as it is fair to regard vice and sin as the opposite of virtue,
the centrality of self-control to both is an impressively consistent theme.
We submit that it is fair to consider self-control the master virtue.
The broader context is that living effectively in society requires many
individuals to restrain their impulses and desires. The motivations and
even the rational interests of the individual are sometimes in irreducible
conflict with the interests of society. Hence the choice is between acting
1176 Baumeister & Exline

for oneself in some antisocial manneror overriding ones own motiva-

tions and doing what is best for the group (or broader society). The latter
is the course of virtue, but by definition overriding ones impulses
requires self-control.

Virtuous Self-Control as Personality Process:

The Moral Muscle
In this section, we use personality concepts and theories to explain the
process of virtuous behavior. Specifically, we explain the operation of
self-control, which is what enables people to overcome their own self-
oriented wishes and impulses in order to do what is best according to the
interests and standards of the culture.
Self-regulation can be analyzed into three main ingredients: standards,
monitoring, and operations that alter the self. Failures or problems with
any of these ingredients can result in the breakdown of self-control (e.g.,
Baumeister & Heatherton, 1996; Baumeister, Heatherton, & Tice, 1994).
In the feedback-loop model of self-regulation contributed by Carver and
Scheier (1981, 1982; see Powers, 1973), the test phases involve com-
paring the selfs current status against relevant standards (hence moni-
toring), and the operate phase encompasses activities that alter the self
so as to reduce discrepancies.
Virtue thus depends on three factors. The first is having clear standards.
Much of Western literature has revolved around portraying people facing
moral dilemmas, because such dilemmas reflect the difficulty of doing
what is right when moral standards are lacking or, more commonly, in
conflict. Shakespeares theatrical protagonist Hamlet, for example, found
himself torn between standards that condemn vindictive violence and
other standards that insist on avenging a fathers murder. The pull of
conflicting moral obligations is often experienced as difficult or even
painful, and people facing such dilemmas find it hard to know which
course of action is the good and right one. Fortunately, moral standards
do not come into conflict most of the time, so people are able to know
what is right to do in most situations.
Second, virtue depends on monitoring, which is a matter of keeping
track of ones own behavior and comparing it to the relevant standards.
Self-regulation is thus closely allied with self-awareness (Carver &
Scheier, 1981). Circumstances that cause people to stop monitoring their
behavior are likely to reduce virtuous behavior. Thus, people lose self-
Virtue and Self-Control 1177

awareness and cease monitoring their acts when they are deindividuated,
and that state has been associated with theft and dishonesty (e.g., Diener,
Fraser, Beaman, & Kalem, 1976). By the same token, alcohol reduces
self-awareness (Hull, 1981), and alcohol is well known to be implicated
in a broad range of nonvirtuous behavior ranging from interpersonal
violence to sexual misdeeds (Baumeister, 1997; Baumeister, Heatherton,
& Tice, 1994).
Third, virtue depends on the selfs capacity to alter its own behavior
so as to conform to standards. Violent impulses must be restrained,
promises must be kept even despite disinclinations, temptations must be
resisted, and so forth. Even if the self has clear standards of virtue and
understands how they apply to its current situation, behavior may fall
short of virtue if the self is unable to make itself behave according to
them.
Accumulating evidence suggests that self-regulatory operations can
best be understood as conforming to a strength or muscle model. That is,
there is one resource (one muscle) that the self uses for all its regulatory
and other volitional operations. Moreover, it is vulnerable to depletion
(or fatigue) in the short run, so that behavior may fall short of virtuous
standards when people have already expended their inner resources.
Evidence for the strength model has been provided in a series of studies
showing that one act of self-control (e.g., resisting temptation) is typically
followed by decrements in self-control even in unrelated spheres (e.g.,
lower physical stamina). Muraven, Tice, and Baumeister (1998) showed
depletion or fatigue of self-control carrying over between thought con-
trol, affect regulation, and task performance regulation. Baumeister,
Bratslavsky, Muraven, and Tice (1998) showed similar effects that ex-
tended to acts of responsible choice, impulse control, and active (as
opposed to passive) responding. These latter findings suggest that the self
uses the same limited resource for all its acts of volition, including both
self-control and active choice, and hence the term ego depletion was
chosen to describe the state of weakness and vulnerability that apparently
ensues when the self has already engaged in some acts of deliberate
choice, active responding, or effortful self-regulation. In other words, in
all acts of volition the self uses some resource that operates like an energy
or strength, and after such an act the selfs stock of this resource is
depleted.
The fact that exerting self-control or volition in one sphere causes
subsequent decrements in other spheres suggests that there is indeed a
1178 Baumeister & Exline

single resource that is used for all acts of self-control and volition. The
previous section of this article contended that self-control is centrally
involved in most if not all virtue. The unity of self-control, as well as its
tendency to show fatigue after exertion, is the basis for labeling self-
control as a moral muscle.
In daily life, the unity of self-control may have important implications
beyond ego depletion. If all spheres of self-control are interrelated, then
there should be a tendency for self-control to break down in multiple
respects at the same time. Immoral behavior in one sphere should
correlate with immoral behavior in other spheres. Laboratory studies of
generalized disinhibition are only beginning to be done, but an important
criminological work by Gottfredson and Hirschi (1990) contended that
criminality shows precisely this pattern. In their account, criminals have
lifestyles that show poor self-control in multiple spheres. They document,
for example, that most criminals are arrested repeatedly but for different
crimes, contrary to the view of criminality as a specialized career choice
(as movies like to portray it). Moreover, criminals tend to show patterns
that reflect poor self-control even in legal activities. For example, crimi-
nals are more likely than others to smoke cigarettes, drink alcohol, be
involved in unplanned pregnancies, and have erratic attendance records
at school or work. The pattern of pervasively poor self-control is further
testimony to the theory that all different acts and spheres of self-control
depend on a single process or resource.
The muscle analogy extends beyond the fact of fatigue and depletion.
Muscles should in principle grow stronger with exercise. Many wise
thinkers through the ages have advised people to try to exercise virtuous
self-control on a regular basis, and this advice makes most sense in the
context of a muscle analogy (see, for example, William James,
1890/1950). Direct evidence is difficult to come by, however. A single
longitudinal study by Muraven, Baumeister, and Tice (in press) showed
that people who performed a series of self-control exercises over several
weeks were subsequently more resistant to ego depletion, consistent with
the view that the capacity for self-control can be strengthened. Although
replication and further work are needed, these findings do increase
confidence in the muscle model.
To the extent that self-control is implicit in virtue, virtue depends on
managing a limited resource. Moreover, the self uses that same resource
in all acts of self-control and volition. When circumstances require people
to expend these resources, less will remain to ensure virtuous behavior,
Virtue and Self-Control 1179

and so undesirable behaviors become more likely. When people are under
stress, for example, they may have to devote all these limited resources
(i.e., their inner strength) to coping with it, and as a result they may be
less able to resist temptations or restrain impulses than at other times. Put
another way, coping with stress puts a heavy load on the moral muscle
(even when the stress itself does not explicitly involve moral choices),
and consequently virtue is likely to deteriorate.
One crucial feature of this analysis of virtue and resources is that it
focuses on instances in which virtue depends on a conscious exertion of
strength or willpower. These are typically called controlled processes, as
opposed to automatic ones (e.g., Bargh, 1982, 1994). To the extent that
virtue can be accomplished by automatic processes, there is less need to
expend these resources, and the vulnerability to nonvirtuous behavior is
less. Hence virtue can be maximized by automatizing it as much as
possible. In plainer terms, if people can cultivate habits and routines that
maintain virtuous behavior, they are more likely to remain virtuous than
if virtue depends on conscious choice. Unfortunately, if it were that easy,
the reign of virtue would presumably be in full bloom by now. Still, it is
possible to use some habits and automatic patterns so as to reduce the
degree to which virtue depends on the strength of will employed by the
conscious self.
Traditional moral discourse has often emphasized concepts such as
strength of character (e.g., Margolis, 1984; Wishy, 1968). Translated into
personality theory, the implication of this view is that people have stable
differences in their capacity for exerting self-control so as to achieve
virtuous actions. That the capacity for self-control is a property of the
person is consistent with the evidence we cited about increasing strength
through exercise. We turn now to a brief consideration of personality
traits relevant to virtue.

Individual Differences
One traditional focus of personality theory concerns individual differ-
ences. Research on the inner processes that accomplish virtuous behavior
is still rather new, particularly with respect to ego depletion, and so clear
measures of individual differences are not yet widely available. We do,
however, wish to provide a theoretical basis for conceptualizing such
differences.
1180 Baumeister & Exline

Existing research clearly demonstrates that such differences exist. For

example, a longitudinal study by Block, Block, and Keyes (1988) sug-
gested that adolescent drug use was a behavioral expression of ego
undercontrola personality construct closely related to self-control
failure (see Block & Block, 1980, for a review). Mischel, Shoda, and
Peake (1988) investigated delay of gratification among children at age 4
and reassessed these individuals over a decade later to ascertain behavior
patterns. Children who exhibited better capacity for delaying gratifica-
tion at this early age were doing betterboth academically and so-
ciallyover a decade later (see also Shoda, Mischel, & Peake, 1990).
This continuity in behavior from early childhood into young adulthood
suggests that self-control is a stable aspect of personality. (It must be
acknowledged that the home environment that instilled strong self-con-
trol by age 4 is likely to have continued its influence through many
subsequent years. These findings thus do not prove that some feature of
personality is already set in stone at that early age.)
The self-control analysis of virtue implies that three distinct sets of
personality traits will predict virtuous behavior. Each should have an
independent main effect, although the combined effects should produce
an extra boost. One is the capacity for self-awareness and monitoring.
The second is the relative strength of the persons moral muscle, that is,
the size of the limited resource available to carry out the override
operations. The third factor is whether people use the moral muscle for
the sake of making themselves behave in a virtuous fashion. After all,
strong self-discipline might help one person to become a saint but might
enable another to be a highly accomplished torturer or killer.
Thus, measurement of virtue as an aspect of personality will eventually
have to be multidimensional, even though we have argued that self-
control strength is unidimensional and that self-control is the master
virtue. One dimension will involve the self-reported desire to act accord-
ing to standards of virtue. A second dimension is the size of the available
psychological resources used by the self for self-control and volitionin
plainer terms, the strength of the persons moral muscle. The third is the
tendency to monitor oneself and compare ones actions to standards.
The first dimension (endorsement of moral standards) will clearly be
the easiest to measure. It is to some extent an attitude measure (e.g., Is it
acceptable to lie in order to protect someones feelings? May a man force
a woman to have sex if they have been dating for over a year?), although
naturally it must be corrected for social desirability biases, insofar as
Virtue and Self-Control 1181

some people who do not care about virtue may know that they should
pay lip service to it. Still, simple self-reports provide good measures of
attitudes. The third dimension, self-awareness and self-monitoring, has
already been found to be responsive to self-report measures (see espe-
cially Fenigstein, Scheier, & Buss, 1975; the self-monitoring scale by
Snyder, 1974, may or may not be relevant to regulatory monitoring).
However, the second factor (strength of the moral muscle) requires
assessment of a psychological resource that may not be accessible to
conscious introspection, and so it is unclear how valuable self-report
measures can be. Indeed, once social desirability biases are corrected,
there may be little or nothing useful or valid in self-reports about ego
strength, implying the need for behavioral measures.

Guilt as Facilitator of Virtue

We turn now to consider guilt. Guilt is central to the psychology of virtue
because it often forms the proximal motivation to behave in socially
desirable (thus virtuous) ways.
Guilt of course is prominent in religion too. The shift in Christian
thought around the 12th century toward more individual judgment and
salvation entailed an increased conception of individual guilt accumulat-
ing as a consequence of sin (see Aries, 1981; Baumeister, 1987). Like-
wise, the concept of Original Sin entailed that each person was held to
be born guilty. Such views suggest an individualistic focus of guilt.
Recently, religiously minded psychologists have sought to put more
distance between religion and that form of guilt. Building on the work of
Narramore (1984), Bassett et al. (1990) have rejected the term guilt
except in a destructive sense which they attribute to (unnamed) psycholo-
gists, suggesting that Christians experience something they call godly
sorrow instead of guilt.2 In essence, they distinguish between good guilt
and bad guilt, and good guilt is Christian whereas bad guilt is psycho-
logical. This is, however, an unusual and conceptually problematic way
of thinking about guilt, and we shall not use it here. In particular, its claim
that guilt is destructive runs contrary to a large mass of research findings
reviewed by Baumeister, Stillwell, and Heatherton (1994; see also
Tangney & Fischer, 1995).

2. We thank a reviewer of this article for calling this work to our attention.
1182 Baumeister & Exline

For present purposes, the crucial fact is that guilt connects self-control
to virtuous behavior. It is readily apparent that guilt is a moral emotion.
Tangney (1991, 1992) had included guilt in the category of moral
affect, which is a good way to combine the understandings of guilt as
an emotional state and a component of virtue and morality. Psychopaths
(now called people afflicted by antisocial personality disorder) are
people who perform a disproportionately high number of destructive,
exploitative, and otherwise immoral behaviors (e.g., Hare, 1993), and
what sets them apart from others is apparently the lack of guilt: They are
without conscience, to use the phrase that Hare (1993) chose as the
title for his book.
Guilt also relates directly to self-control. Indeed, self-control fail-
ures represent a major category of guilt episodes. Baumeister, Still-
well, and Heatherton (1995) assembled a collection of first-person
accounts of feeling guilty, and all of them could be categorized as
either interpersonal transgressions or action control/self-regulation
failures. The latter included feeling guilty in episodes of overeating,
neglecting to study, failing to exercise, and other misbehaviors. (Ob-
viously, the two categories overlapped substantially, for many of the
interpersonal transgressions also involved breakdowns in self-control.)
They concluded that in order to explain guilt it is necessary to postulate
two main functions: one of supporting self-control and another of
regulating interpersonal relationships.
In contrast to earlier views of guilt as a destructive intrapsychic state,
recent work has focused on the interpersonal and adaptive facets of guilt.
In this view, forwarded in a literature review by Baumeister, Stillwell,
and Heatherton (1994), guilt originates in concerns about maintaining
close relationships (see also the need to belong; Baumeister & Leary,
1995). Guilt feelings originate in empathic distress connected with the
suffering of others (Hoffman, 1982), especially others with whom one
holds a close relationship. Guilt can also stem from fear or anxiety over
the possible loss of relational bonds that could arise if ones transgres-
sions prompt social rejection. The prosocial and relationship-enhancing
effects of guilt are well established (see Baumeister, Stillwell, & Heather-
ton, 1994, for review). Guilt over interpersonal transgressions motivates
people to confess and apologize. It makes them learn lessons and change
their behavior so as to avoid committing similar transgressions in the
future. It leads them to try to make restitutions and amends to people they
have wronged. Inducing guilt is also a means by which people who lack
Virtue and Self-Control 1183

formal power can still get their way, even influencing more powerful
others to do what they wish. Guilt may even be responsible for some of
the relationship-enhancing benefits of empathy, insofar as guilt improves
peoples capacity to appreciate the perspective of a relationship partner
with whom they have a conflict (Leith & Baumeister, 1998).
The all-purpose nature of guilt is also relevant. That is, guilt does not
appear to be limited to one particular behavior but rather can ensue from
a broad variety of transgressions. Our proposal that self-control underlies
the majority of virtues and vices is consistent with the observed common
role of guilt in the broad variety of virtue and vice.
In this article, we have analyzed morality as a means of fostering group
harmony and allowing people to live together, and we have presented
virtue as the internalization of traits that cause behaviors that benefit the
group. The interpersonal analysis of guilt dovetails well with this inter-
personal account of morality and virtue. Guilt motivates and directs
people to act in ways that are beneficial to their social groups and
relationshipsin other words, guilt drives people to act in virtuous ways.

Virtue in Modern Society

Before closing, we would like to briefly address some of the special
problems of virtue and morality in modern Western society. There may
indeed be universally valid principles of personality psychology, but with
regard to virtue and morality it seems necessary to acknowledge facts of
cultural variation. Indeed, certain recent social and historical develop-
ments may have put virtue and morality in positions that differ markedly
from those they have held throughout most of world history.
Three major trends in particular must be noted, because they all
weaken the social underpinnings of morality and virtue. Additional
factors such as the glorification of immoral behavior in the mass media
could be noted, but most likely these are mediating factors rather than
independent causes. (One could, however, argue that the institution of
advertising is inherently inimical to self-control, because stimulating the
desire for goods is in fundamental opposition to the goal of restraining
the selfs needs.) These three root causes change the moral basis of the
relationship of the individual to society, and so they affect how we can
understand the role of virtue in personality psychology.
The first is the reduced stability of social relationships. To be sure, it
is necessary to avoid romanticizing or idealizing the past. Still, it is
1184 Baumeister & Exline

undeniable that the social, economic, and geographical mobility of the

modern North American citizen is far in excess of what has traditionally
been available to the average citizen of other eras and cultures. For
example, historical accounts of collective life such as that of the average
European peasant during the Middle Ages or early modern period (e.g.,
Shorter, 1975) describe a social world in which one spent ones entire
life among the same few dozen people. In contrast, many people in
modern service occupations encounter that many different individuals
each day. The peasants small social world derived particularly from the
fact of spending ones entire life in the same villageand the fact that
ones neighbors and relatives were likely to remain there too. Modern
geographical and social mobility has utterly changed the composition of
such social networks. The most relevant result of this mobility is that
social relationships tend to be transient. Over a 5-year period, a person
may very well end friendships and begin new ones, acquire a new job
with a new set of colleagues, divorce and remarry, and move away from
family and lose touch with some relatives. If you are rude or even
dishonest when dealing with a checkout clerk in a store, you never need
to interact with that person again, in sharp contrast to life in the small
villages and closed networks that characterized much of human history.
Only the parent-child bond remains impervious to dissolution, and even
that one is subject to weakening and separation.
We have presented morality as a force designed to promote group
harmony. When groups are temporary and unstable, moral codes are less
stringent and more difficult to enforce. In a medieval farming village, a
single dishonest or immoral act would be known to many and would
remain a defining fact of the persons social identity for the rest of his or
her life, particularly because the person and his social network were both
likely to remain in that village for life. In the modern United States,
however, a person who develops an immoral reputation can move to a
new place and start over. Even if the person remains there, most of the
friends and neighbors who knew of the incident may leave. Because
stable, long-term relationships seem to serve as the main sources of guilt,
virtue, and self-control, the reduction of such relationships in modern
society has generally weakened those factors.
The second development is economic. That is, economic changes in
modernization have weakened the traditional basis for morality and
rendered it less powerful than it previously was. As we have proposed,
the historical and social basis for morality is that it restrains self-
Virtue and Self-Control 1185

interested behaviors in order to promote the interests of the broader social

group. Modern society has evolved a basis of economic relations that do
not easily lend themselves to simple analysis in terms of individual
interests vs. societal interest. In fact, the individual pursuit of self-interest
is often congruent with the pursuit of the greater social good. We can
hardly claim that this new congruence is our original insight. Over two
centuries ago, Adam Smiths concept of the invisible hand expressed
that under free-market capitalism, each person (man, back when Smith
was writing) could advance the benefit of all by his own quest for personal
profit. A town might need a baker, or a blacksmith, or a teacher, and so an
individual would be likely to take on that role. The man would benefit
himself by this action, because it would secure him a profitable livelihood.
The town would benefit, because it gained the goods and services he
provided. At least in principle, capitalism can make everyone happy.
In practice, of course, there are many problems and grievances, but it does
still appear to be true that capitalism is a better format for modern economic
relations than any other system that has been tried, as the worldwide rejection
of communism and central planning in 1989 indicated.3
To some extent, the revision of theories about virtue that modern
economic relations entailed has been recognized and institutionalized.
For example, early Christian thought condemned greed as a sin and held
that people should never act out of a desire to make money. Modern
economic relations presuppose that people are basically profit-maximiz-
ing, however, and this tendency is seen as acceptable. Only when a desire
for money leads to illicit or exploitative behavior do people object to it
as greed. By the same token, the church historically condemned as sinful
(usury) the practice of lending money and charging interest, partly based
on the theoretical position that interest amounted to charging money for
time, whereas time belonged to God. This view endured for centuries and
contributed to the rise of a powerful Jewish presence in banking and
money lending, because people needed to borrow money and Jews were
exempt from the Christian proscription. In the 20th century, however,
usury is not condemned as a sin, and in fact many bankers regard
themselves as proper Christians.

3. China constitutes the one major exception to this rule. Yet China is hardly an
advertisement for successful Communism, appearing instead to remain handicapped by
its allegiance to this system. Its per capita economy still ranks China among the poorest
countries in the world. In fact, the news magazine The Economist estimated in 1996 that
China has an economy the size of Germanys despite having an additional billion people.
1186 Baumeister & Exline

Again, our point is not merely that socioeconomic changes have led
the church to abandon certain conceptions of sin, so that undesirable acts
that were once forbidden can now be tolerated. More fundamentally, we
propose that the modern economy enables people to perform acts that are
positively good and socially desirable even while those people are
pursuing their own financial self-interest. The simple notions of virtue
and morality as promoting what is best for the group over what is best
for the individual must now operate in a culture where there is consider-
able and growing overlap between those two categories.
The eroding distinction between societys best interest and individual
self-interest brings us to the third and possibly most problematic trend in
the modern world. In the 20th century, Western culture has put an
increasingly positive moral value on the self. This new moral glorification
of selfhood has made it difficult for morality to retain its traditional
function of restraining the self.
Social philosophers such as Habermas (1973) have contended that
positive value in society (legitimation) depends in part on having impor-
tant sources of value, that is, entities that can provide positive value to
other entities without having to receive their value from an outside source.
Baumeister (1991) used the term value base to describe these sources of
value, which have included Gods will and tradition. Habermas (1973)
proposed that as a society goes through the process of modernization,
some of its value bases are destroyed (e.g., traditional ways of doing
things are discredited), and so modern societies sometimes struggle with
chronic shortages of value, which he termed legitimation crises.
Modern society has responded to this value deficit by elevating certain
other principles to the status of autonomous value bases, according to
Baumeister (1991). The work ethic was a first attempt of this nature:
Instead of arguing that people should work because it was Gods will or
a moral duty or a necessary way to support a family, the work ethic
proposed that work was good in and of itself. This did not prove entirely
convincing, and the work ethic deteriorated into a basis for self-righteous
criticism of others rather than a genuine way of life (Rodgers, 1978).
Another attempt to erect a new supreme, independent value base was the
Victorian apotheosis of home, family, and romantic love.
For present purposes, however, the most important response to the
value gap has been the elevation of selfhood into a value base
(Baumeister, 1991). During the 20th century, people began to regard it
as not merely tolerable but even positively good and even morally
Virtue and Self-Control 1187

obligatory to perform acts that would benefit the self. Such acts include
the pursuit of self-actualization and self-knowledge. Personal growth and
even looking out for number one became widely asserted as positive
values.
The power of this new value base has radically transformed the moral
landscape of the twentieth century. For example, scholars such as Zube
(1972) have documented how the mass media shifted their prescriptive
balance between self and marriage: At midcentury, womens magazines
preached that self-sacrifice for the sake of marriage was the best course,
but during the 1960s this hierarchy was reversed and articles began to
assert a right and even a duty to get oneself out of a marriage if it thwarted
the selfs quest for growth or fulfillment. In parallel, the rise of the moral
value of the self affected attitudes toward work and religion (Baumeister,
1991). For example, many preachers now accept the hegemony of self-
hood, using church premises for self-help meetings and presenting
sermons on how to boost self-esteem. The collapse of the work ethic
could have created a cultural antipathy toward work, but the modern
careerist mentality treats work as a means of glorifying and fulfilling the
self (hence the astonishing proliferation of awards in seemingly all
professions and even occupations), and many people work harder than
their ancestors simply because of the drive to elevate the self.
The limited space available for this article renders us unable to provide
a full recapitulation of the evidence for and implications of the new moral
status of selfhood (see Baumeister, 1991). We do, however, wish to
highlight how fundamentally the rise of self as value base has changed
the role of morality and hence the nature of virtue. Throughout most of
history and most of the world, morality has existed as a major counter-
force to self, and virtue has represented the internal overcoming of
self-interested behavioral tendencies. Now, however, these seemingly
eternal opponents appear to have joined forces. This change is arguably
the most radical moral realignment in Western history, at least from a
psychological standpoint.
The moral shift favoring the self should not be overstated. There is still
certainly a moral sense that condemns the pursuit of self-interest at the
expense of others. Yet this sense must coexist uneasily with an awareness
of self as a locus of rights and entitlements. Moral calculations often need
to show that the person positively intended to harm others, and selfish
action is no longer condemned out of hand.
1188 Baumeister & Exline

Given these historical shifts toward unstable relationships, capitalism,

and the elevation of self, the concept of virtue clearly has an awkward
status in the modern world. Founded as it is on self-denial, it cannot
easily adapt to a society in which self-seeking is mostly acceptable and
even in many cases positively endorsed. The primacy of self in modern
society raises a disturbing question: Has the notion of virtue become an
anachronism?

CONCLUSION
In this article, we have offered a framework for understanding virtue as
an aspect of personality. We began with the assumption of the fundamen-
tally social nature of human existence, including the powerful motivation
of a human need to belong and the universality of group life in human
evolution (and current life). Personality can be understood as in part an
adaptation to the requirements of living among others (e.g., Hogan, 1983;
Sullivan, 1953). If the need to belong were the only human motivation,
then morality and virtue might not be difficult to achieve. Unfortunately,
however, the potential for conflict between individuals is inherent in
group life.
Morality can therefore be understood as a set of solutions to the
practical requirements of group life. When the selfish inclinations of the
individual conflict with the groups needs for stable, harmonious social
relations, morality prescribes how far the individual should yield. Virtue
is an internalization of these moral traits. Hence virtuous people should
make the best citizens and relationship partners, because they will not let
their own wishes cause actions that are detrimental to other people or to
the group or community.
Recent evidence for the interpersonal nature of guilt supports the view
that moral traits must be understood in the context of social relations.
Likewise, if morality depends on social relations, then changes in the
nature of social relations can have strong effects on virtue. We suggested
that three aspects of modern Western social life have created a social
environment that is especially inhospitable to virtue. First, the rising
instability of social relationships has weakened the social forces that
penalize immoral behavior. Second, new economic patterns depend on
the pursuit of self-interest to achieve benefits to the collective. Third, the
rising moral ideology of selfhood has recategorized many self-interested
Virtue and Self-Control 1189

actions as morally good, a change that undermines the age-old opposition

between self and morality.
In understanding virtue, therefore, the central challenge for personality
theory is to understand how people manage to override their own selfish
inclinations and do what is socially desirable instead. We proposed that
the most relevant work in psychology is the study of self-control and
self-regulation. Self-regulation is the process by which the self alters its
own responses. When we considered a series of vices and virtues culled
from religious writings, we concluded that self-control was implicit in
all of them. Vice signifies failure of self-control, whereas virtue involves
the consistent, disciplined exercise of self-control. Self-control can fairly
be regarded as the master virtue.
As for how self-control operates, recent work suggests that it is similar
to a muscle (indeed, resembling the traditional concept of willpower;
see Mischel, 1996). People may vary in the strength of this moral muscle,
and these individual differences will contribute to differences in virtue.
A personality theory of virtue also should recognize that the moral muscle
is used for other acts of volition, such as responsible choice and active
initiative, alongside self-control. Virtuous behavior may therefore dete-
riorate when people expend their strength in responsible decision-
making. Exercising power and responsibility, making important
decisions, dealing with stress, and similar demands may deplete the
resource and lead to moral deterioration.
Undoubtedly there are other factors that contribute to differences in
virtuous behavior. For example, morality depends on using ones self-
regulatory strength in the service of conforming to moral standards. Thus,
people who do not endorse moral standards may behave in immoral ways
regardless of their degree of willpower. Likewise, monitoring is neces-
sary for successful self-regulation. When people cease monitoring them-
selves (such as when intoxicated with alcohol), virtue may fail.
Psychology has aspired to being value-free in its pursuit of the scien-
tific ideal, and it is possible that this reluctance to make value judgments
has hampered the study of virtue. We suggest that the approach advocated
in this article can solve this problem. By recognizing self-control as the
master virtue, personality research can study both processes and differ-
ences in moral traits in ways that are amenable to currently available
research methods. As has been recognized by ancient philosophers,
medieval theologians, and modern therapists, virtue involves overcoming
ones own undesirable dispositions in order to act in ways that will benefit
1190 Baumeister & Exline

others. The processes by which people alter their own behavior so as to

behave in socially desirable ways can be studied objectively, and indeed
the study of these processes holds a promising key to major features of
human personality.

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