Verified by 
Leadership
Project Arete
Understanding character and leadership at West Point
Posted December 29, 2016
For over a decade, I have been using the Values-in-Action Inventory of Strengths (VIA-IS) to assess character strengths among West Point cadets and to predict their performance in several domains. The VIA-IS was developed by Peterson and Seligman (2004)[i] and provides a metric for the 24 character strengths they posit as universal in the human species. These 24 strengths are categorized into six “moral virtues.” These six moral virtues, with their associated character strengths, are wisdom and knowledge (creativity, curiosity, judgment, love of learning, perspective), courage (bravery, persistence, integrity, vitality), humanity (capacity to love, kindness, social intelligence), temperance (forgiveness, modesty, prudence, self-regulation), justice (citizenship, fairness, leadership), and transcendence (appreciation of beauty, gratitude, hope/optimism, humor, and spirituality). I have found a consistent constellation of character strengths including bravery, honesty, self-regulation, optimism, leadership, and teamwork to predict a variety of outcomes including academic performance, ratings of military leadership, and physical fitness. In an institution where character development is a core element of its mission, these findings are informative. But are they useful?
My research has employed the classic nomothetic approach long used in psychology. I administer the VIA-IS (and other character measures) to incoming cadets, then use their scores on each measure to predict subsequent outcomes over their 47 months of education and training at West Point. I know the means and standard deviations of each of the 24 character strengths, and I know that certain strengths are consistently related to outcomes important to the institution, but this tells me very little about how strengths play out for individuals. The focus on individual development, known as the ideographic approach, is lacking in my research. And my “spider sense” tells me that there is no set pattern of character strengths that necessarily predict success for all cadets.
Moreover, existing character metrics – including the VIA-IS – are not sensitive to growth. My 35+ years of experience as a military psychologist, and as an officer in the U.S. Air Force, suggests to me that the common outcome of military training and job experience is a growth in at least some aspects of character. But assessing character at entry to West Point and again four years later shows no growth of character strengths. True, West Point cadets are a very select population, and to some extent a ceiling effect may be operating. But years of teaching, advising, and talking with cadets suggest otherwise. They do seem to grow in character. So how must I change my research strategy to investigate this growth?
Two years ago I had the good fortune to meet noted developmental psychologist Rich Lerner, of Tufts University. Dr. Lerner and a small team of graduate students and post-doctoral psychologists had made overtures to the West Point leadership to conduct a large scale and systematic study of character among cadets. I immediately realized that the research methods they proposed might allow us to answer some of the questions that my traditional, nomothetic approach, did not.
After several months of discussion, Dr. Lerner, his team, and several faculty members in the Department of Behavioral Sciences and Leadership at West Point crafted a research proposal to systematically study character assessment and development at West Point. This proposal was funded by the Templeton Religion Trust for a 5-year period, allowing a longitudinal study that includes both nomothetic and ideographic methodologies.
My West Point colleague, Colonel (Dr.) Diane Ryan named our effort Project Arete. Arete is a noun that describes the Greek concept of overall excellence, the aggregate of positive qualities such as bravery and virtue, broadly defined. The project addresses two “big” questions: (1) How can we best imbue out nation’s young people, and future leaders, with attributes of character enabling them to lead others and our nation effectively and with honor, and (2) Can the West Point approach to character/virtue development and leadership generalize to other service academies, other institutions of higher education, and other programs of professional education?
The longitudinal design allows the researchers to track individual cadets and their performance over their entire time at West Point, providing the opportunity to uncover unique and individualized trajectories to success. Methods include a wide array of character assessments, interviews with cadets, faculty, and alumni, focus groups, and linkages to existing measures of cadet performance. Due to the Army’s systematic record keeping, it may be possible to track the cadets after they graduate, well into their Army careers. Both quantitative and qualitative assessments should, at the end of the project, yield empirically based recommendations to improve and evolve the character development strategies of West Point.
The questions we raise in Project Arete are important far beyond West Point. Earlier this week, Dr. Lerner and I took part in a “character summit” attended by senior leaders in the philanthropic and corporate communities. Yes, it is important that our future military officers be of the highest character as they lead soldiers in the defense of the nation. But it is equally important that leaders in the corporate world also exemplify high character. There are far too many well publicized instances where corporate leaders have failed in this regard, leading to the exploitation of customers and their own workers. The leaders we spoke with are eager to transfer the knowledge ultimately learned from Project Arete and to adapt and implement it within their organizations.
In describing our work to others, I sometimes refer to it as the “Manhattan Project” of character assessment and development. What elevates Project Arete to this level is our recognition that conducting good science and publishing findings in professional journals is not enough. Like the Manhattan Project in the 1940s, the science has to be followed up with application. It is not enough to assess and describe character. We need to know how to develop it, and how organizations can cultivate cultures of positive character that make them both more productive and more ethical.
Project Arete is only in its sixth month, but initial data have been collected and preliminary analyses begun. It is premature to say much about the results, but we are already finding that character plays out in complicated ways in predicting various outcomes among West Point cadets. We are beginning to publish findings in refereed journals. I will write more in this blog on our findings as they emerge.
Note: The views expressed herein are those of the author and do not reflect the position of the United States Military Academy, the Department of the Army, or the Department of Defense.
[i] Peterson, C., and Seligman, M. E. P. (2004), Character Strengths and Virtues: A Handbook and Classification (New York: Oxford University Press).
