Virtue Research: Collation and Distillation

Over the past three decades, research on gratitude, generosity, and related virtues has increased exponentially. Much of this growth can be traced to investments that the John Templeton Foundation has made in these lines of research, which seeded some seminal studies in the 1990s and early 2000s, then helped to catalyze the explosive growth in these areas in more recent years. But what are the broader implications of all of this research? What dominant trends and themes have emerged from these various lines of scientific inquiry? And what lessons can the public learn from the now-hundreds of studies published in peer-reviewed academic journals over the past few decades—what is their significance not only to the scientific community but to the countless parents, educators, business leaders, policy makers, and others who can apply the key insights from this research to their work and lives? This project aims to address those questions. It will support a Fellow—likely a scholar who has already earned a doctorate—to undertake a broad survey of the research on several character virtues that are central to the John Templeton Foundation’s mission, including generosity and gratitude. Over the course of one year, this project will focus on three separate topics. On each topic, the Fellow will produce a report written in a style accessible to a generalist audience, benefitting from scientific and editorial guidance provided by staff at UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center. What's more, specific insights from this research will be channeled into shorter, more journalistic articles by the Fellow, suitable for publication in popular outlets, including the GGSC’s online magazine, Greater Good.