Four Christian Virtues

By Everett L. Worthington Jr.

[This is the second article in a four-part series, “Virtue in Positive Psychology and Practical Theology,” delivered as the W. H. Griffith Thomas Lectureship, February 7-10, 2012, Dallas Theological Seminary, Dallas, Texas.

Everett L. Worthington Jr. is Professor of Psychology, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, Virginia.]

In the first article in this series I outlined both classical and psychological models of virtue. I identified pressures of internal and external factors that impinge on us as we seek to weigh the virtues within our hierarchy of virtues and choose the right one when faced with a strong or weak situation or a test of virtue. Christians rely on the leading of the Holy Spirit for those choices, but we still must make the choices during times of testing as well as times of peace.

I believe, like millions through the ages, that God revealed His divine nature and operations through Jesus and through Scripture, called special revelation. I also believe, like millions through the ages, that God revealed His divine nature and operations through humanity and through the study of nature (including the arts, literature, biological and psychological sciences, and untutored observations of life), called God’s general revelation. My approach to Christian psychology sees both special and general revelations as partners in dialogue.[1]

My theology is rooted in God’s creation, though our knowledge of the imago dei is warped and broken. Redemption and God’s indwelling Holy Spirit in believers are vital to improving that knowledge. Natural theology is a dialogue partner with Scripture and the Holy Spirit.

The present article examines some of the ways psychological researchers and particularly our team of Christian psychologists at the Virginia Commonwealth University have studied four of the virtues—justice, mercy, forgiveness, and humility. Rather than present detailed methods and findings, I want to show some of the ways psychological scientists study them. In the end I will conclude that the virtues are woven together and that humility is the thread that binds them.

1. Justice

Hardwired For Justice

Justice is interpersonal. People have an innate sense of justice, as we might expect because we bear the image of a just God. Neuro-economist, Ernst Fehr,[2] of Switzerland, has shown that justice is hardwired into people. He sets up an economic game in which people play six other players sequentially. The point of the game is to maximize one’s resources. Each person in the group of seven plays the person-A position three times and the person-B position three times. A and B each invest $20 to play. The banker (that is, the experimenter) adds $40 to the $40 that A and B invested. The banker then gives all $80 to A, who is given one of two options. In option 1, A could split the $80 with B and both would have more than they invested. Or in option 2, A could take all of the $80, but suffer a loss of trust and reputation in the group of seven and also, importantly, must receive some interpersonal “feedback” from B. Likewise B has two options: (1) to insult A, who has to listen to the barrage of insults without responding, or (2) to inflict economic consequences on A. To do option 2, B must pay $20, which forces A to pay the banker $20 in punitive damages. Retaliation is costly for B (who ends the round at minus $40 but has the satisfaction of punishing A (who initially invested $20 and ends up with $60, a gain of $40).

These game players are in fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) units during the game. If B decides to insult the advantage-taker, rage shows up in his or her brain’s limbic system and the fog of anger in the cortex. However, if B decides to hurt the advantage-taker economically, B’s pleasure pathway lights up. We are hardwired for justice—even if it is the vigilante justice we call revenge.

Justice Is Social—Restorative, Not Just Retributive

Justice is social. But it does not have to be punitive. Rebecca Kiefer[3] and I conducted a restorative justice experiment in which we had two eighteen-year-old male students portray either an offender or a victim of burglary and theft. According to the scenario the offender had been convicted of the crime, but the judge had remanded the young man to family mediation. If the parties could agree, the judge would follow their recommendation. If they could not agree, then the judge would impose a punitive sentence. Two women aged twenty-three or older portrayed the mothers of the young men. A trained restorative justice facilitator conducted the family mediation meeting. Before the family meeting we secretly told half of the offenders (randomly selected) that they could not apologize nor offer to make restitution, and we told the other half that they must do so. Lest you think this role playing was not very lifelike, two of the offenders actually cried as they expressed remorse—even though they were merely role playing. This was a powerful situation. After the family meeting we measured the attitudes of the crime victim toward the offender. The sense of injustice was lessened and mercy and forgiveness were increased when the offender apologized and offered to make restitution.

We Perceive An Internal Sense Of Justice

Justice is social and societal, but people internally perceive a sense of justice. People keep a mental accounting of wrongs, which we call the “injustice gap”—the gap between the way a victim would like to see a transgression resolved and the way the victim currently perceives the situation. As a person apologizes, that is perceived as personally costly. It brings a sense of some justice back into the situation, narrowing the injustice gap. As a person offers restitution, more justice is brought back into the situation and the injustice gap is narrowed further.

Charlotte Witvliet and her colleagues studied apology and restitution in three separate experiments.[4] Their results supported the notion that apologies and restitution after a burglary will reduce the injustice gap. Wimpy apologies reduced the injustice gap much less than did effusive apologies. People’s physiological arousal paralleled their self-reports. Jo-Ann Tsang and her colleagues found similar patterns by measuring a real offense and an actual apology and offer of restitution.[5]

What We Learn From Our Studies Of Justice—And What We Might Learn

Our experiments show that people make an internal accounting of the degree of injustice and adjust the size of the injustice gap after reparative strategies such as apology and restitution. They not only act on their internal perception, but also their brain activity and physiology respond correspondingly. This is what we might expect in people who bear God’s image. Psychology allows us to support through observation what we are told in Scripture, but it does more. We have experimental ways of asking questions that have not been addressed explicitly in Scripture alone. We might find what kinds of apologies are good ones and what kinds are not. Who does and does not respond positively to punishment or restorative justice? We can, in short, ask a huge number of how, how-much, or how-often questions that we could only speculate about before.

2. Mercy

We began to study mercy in 2009, after I did a quick review of published psychological studies on mercy and came up with zero. Aubrey Gartner studied mercy in her dissertation and subsequent research.[6]

Definition

We defined “mercy” as an act by someone who has the power and authority to administer or recommend less punishment than a wrongdoer deserves. People who might have the power or authority to act mercifully include judges, jury members, parole boards, parents (of disobedient children), employers or supervisors who uncover mistakes or moral wrongdoing, and in fact any person who is wronged by another. Mercy is a counterpoint to justice. Both are social, not internal. It is a second melody that does not replace justice but is sung alongside it. Sometimes mercy recedes into the background and at other times it is heard as the dominant tune. Just as people perceive injustice gaps and have justice motives internally, people also experience internal thoughts, emotions, and motives that focus their attention on acting mercifully.

Studying Mercy

We developed a questionnaire to measure mercy self-beliefs, which we called the Mercy Meter. To study the behavior of mercy, we drew on a variation of Milgram’s obedience experiments.[7] Like him, we intentionally deceived our participants.

We recruited women student participants at our university who wanted to make amends for some wrong for which they could not forgive themselves. We told them that we were collaborating with two universities (linked in video connection through Skype) to study how women might deal with self-condemnation through public amends-making. First, each wrote a description of some terrible wrong about which she felt self-condemnation. We said that one of the three women would be chosen at random “by the computer” to read her account to the other two women viewing it via Skype and to suffer self-inflicted pain and public humiliation as a means of making amends for her wrongdoing. The amends-maker would hold a heavy book in her outstretched hand for some length of time set by a woman playing “judge.” (“In pilot testing,” we said, “most couldn’t hold it more than two minutes.”) The computer would randomly determine which woman would be the judge, who would assign the length of public suffering. The computer would also assign the third woman to be a parole officer, who would watch the suffering and could stop it earlier than the assigned judge if she wanted. This third woman was the only true participant. The amends-maker and the judge were actors-in-professional-training at the university’s drama department who were filmed ahead of time and thus were the same for the entire study. They were not linked live by Skype.

After the computer revealed its bogus “random” assignments, the amends-maker read her account of self-condemnation. She described talking a friend into going to a party of strangers and then abandoning her to find her own way home. The judge was prompted to assign between one and three minutes of amends-making pain and humiliation (even though two minutes was said to be the most that almost all pilot participants could endure). The judge went for the maximum length. The university participant, as parole officer, was thus (by our definition) in the position to give mercy, which, as stated earlier, we defined as “an act by someone who has the power and authority to do so, to administer or recommend less punishment than a wrongdoer deserves.”

The video of the amends-maker showed three minutes of holding the book. She gave evidence of suffering. She began with grunts, complained that the book was heavier than she had expected, said her arm was hurting and strained, and she visibly suffered as she made increasingly distressed comments. After two and a half minutes, looking directly into the camera, she pleaded with the parole officer (i.e., actual participant), saying, “You have the power to end this. Please stop it.”

The time the participant allowed the suffering was our measure of mercy. We experimentally manipulated the degree of group similarity of the amends-maker to the university participant by an accent of Southern (y’all) or Canadian (eh?) speech. We found that indeed mercy (i.e., the time the participant allowed the amends-maker to suffer) was related to in-group similarity, correlated weakly with empathy, and was predicted moderately by Mercy Meter scores. In our study of mercy we created a strong situation, though not as strong as Milgram’s.[8] We found that the situational cue of group similarity predicted mercy more strongly than internal processes (i.e., empathy or mercy self-beliefs).

3. Forgiveness

What Are Some Things We Know About Forgiveness?

I have actually already discussed forgiveness throughout. The following summarizes some of the things I mentioned in our studies of justice and of mercy or have written about elsewhere.[9] First, the size of the injustice gap is directly related to how forgiving people feel toward someone who offended them. Big injustice gaps are hard to forgive; small gaps are easy. Second, big injustice gaps are related to more emotional unforgiveness. Third, unforgiveness is a jumble of unforgiving emotions—resentment, bitterness, hostility, hatred, anger, and fear. Fourth, there are two types of forgiveness—decisional and emotional forgiveness. God requires of us decisional forgiveness (Matt. 6:12, 14-15). Decisional forgiveness is deciding to act differently toward an offender, treating the person as a valued person and forswearing vengeance. People can forgive without being emotionally at peace with a wrongdoer. That suggests that there is a second type of forgiveness—emotional forgiveness, which involves replacing negative emotions with positive other-oriented emotions, like empathy, sympathy, compassion, and love for the wrongdoer. Fifth, forgiveness is internal. This is not the same as telling someone we forgive him or her. We could say, “I forgive you,” and then stab the person in the back. We could also internally forgive a person, but never say so—perhaps because we found it useful to manipulate by guilt. Forgiving should not be confused with saying so. Sixth, forgiveness, which is internal, differs from reconciliation. Reconciliation—which is the restoration of trust in a relationship where trust has been damaged—is interpersonal. It depends on two people, not one. God certainly desires for us to reconcile when offenses occur, but because we can desire reconciliation but the other person does not, God does not require it. We are, so much as it is up to us, to live at peace with everyone (Rom. 12:18; Heb. 12:14). But it is not always up to us.

Studies Of Forgiveness

In 1984 theologian Lewis Smedes published Forgive and Forget: Healing the Hurts We Don’t Deserve.[10] He suggested that forgiveness could be motivated by freedom from the torment of unforgiveness—resentment, bitterness, hatred, anger, and fear. That is, he appealed for people to forgive because it was good self-therapy.

That appeal has been soundly taken to task by theologians like Greg Jones, in Embodying Forgiveness.[11] Jones decried Smedes’s focus on self-interest and suggested instead the traditional Christian motivation of forgiving: because God forgave humans in Christ and because forgiveness is part of the life of the body of Christ.

Motives For Forgiving Others

Smedes’s claim struck a harmonic chord with secular psychotherapists. Many psychotherapists had seen unforgiveness simply eat up the emotional energy of so many of their clients. Here was a little book appealing reasonably to people to forgive for their own “therapeutic” benefit. Psychotherapists began to publish articles in professional journals advocating the benefits of and extolling the efficacy of promoting forgiveness with their suffering clients. Researchers began to tread the same path. In 1998 McCullough, Exline, and Baumeister found fifty-eight studies of forgiveness.[12] A mere seven years later Scherer, Cooke, and Worthington found over nine hundred.[13] Many studies have found that forgiveness indeed produces in the forgiver better physical health,[14] mental health,[15] relationships,[16] and spirituality.[17] However, as in the Smedes-Jones discussion, why one seeks to forgive does matter. Self-interest produces an immediate but small amount of forgiveness.[18] The amount does not change if a person keeps working to forgive. However, forgiving for altruistic motives (i.e., to bless the offender or from gratitude because one has himself or herself received forgiveness) produces effects strongly related to time and effort trying to forgive. For any intervention longer than two hours, altruistic motives lead to higher benefits than self-interested forgiveness.

This might be a lesson we could draw for appealing to people for their salvation based on self-interested motives. If we do not deepen our love for God and our love for our neighbor as much as or more than we love ourselves, we are likely to have an undeveloped rudimentary faith. It might be genuine faith, but it is limited.

4. Humility

Defining And Measuring Humility Scientifically

Self-centeredness is a natural condition of the fallen person. Though appeals to self-interest can move us in positive ways, we need more than self-interest to function optimally for the Lord. We need humility.

In the scientific study of humility, like all scientific studies, clear definitions are necessary. William Temple, archbishop of Canterbury, said, “Humility does not mean thinking less of yourself than of other people, nor does it mean having a low opinion of your own gifts. It means freedom from thinking of yourself at all.”

Measuring humility is problematic. Imagine a humility scale with questions like this: How humble are you? 0= None to 10 = The most humble person in existence. There is an obvious problem. A person who says, “I’m 9,” might be arrogant or truthfully humble.[19] Psychological scientists have developed self-report measures of humility in which the items are hidden among general measures of personality so they do not stick out. They have measured reaction times to arrogant and humble exemplars. They have had people compare themselves to others. In 2007, I suggested that we use other people’s reports to measure humility.[20] Since then, under the leadership of Don Davis, now at Georgia State University, he, Joshua Hook at the University of North Texas, and I have studied this relational humility scientifically as a personality judgment within a relationship.[21]

Relational Humility

We define “relational humility” as a relationship-specific judgment that a person (a) is other-oriented rather than self-focused, marked by the ability to regulate self-oriented emotions such as pride in one’s accomplishments and inhibit socially off-putting expressions of those emotions, (b) has an accurate view of oneself and one’s abilities, and (c) has a modest style of self-presentation.[22] Accordingly relational humility is measured by asking someone who is in an actual relationship with the person to rate that person’s humility. Various relationship factors, such as characteristics of the judge, the target, the relationship, and the information available may affect judgment of a target person’s humility.

What Have We Found?

In many ways William Temple was right. Humility requires thinking of others. Restorative justice thinks of restoring the offender, not getting sweet vengeance. Mercy thinks of acting empathically to alleviate the pain of suffering—when such alleviation is done out of love rather than merely out of one’s own discomfort in seeing someone suffer—instead of holding an offender’s feet to the fire for the full sentence deserved. Forgiveness is best brought about by altruistic forgiveness rather than self-interested forgiveness. Temple’s version of humility, which looks to the other more than the self, is intertwined in all the other virtues. Humility is about thinking of others, having an accurate view of oneself, and presenting oneself modestly. It is, in short, a virtue. As a virtue, it is an illustration of eudaimonia—trying to promote good for others and self. It is formed in character as a habit, requiring diligent and persistent practice over long periods of time. It is then subject to life tests, and emerges when challenged.

Scriptural Example

We see this matter of humility in Philippians 2:3-11. Paul wrote in this famous psalm of humility, “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others. Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: who, being in the very nature of God did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death—even death on a cross! Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (NIV).

This was, of course, read at the meeting of the faithful in Philippi.[23] Paul was not a stranger to the Philippians. He had been jailed in Philippi (Acts 16:6-34), but one evening the jail doors swung open. Later the Philippian jailer discovered the open jail doors, and he drew his sword to kill himself (v. 27). Imagine the scene. The jailer is looking back into a dark and dank cell, sees the doors are open, and concludes that the prisoners have escaped. Paul, though, has not left the cell. He is in the dark but can easily see into the light falling about the jailer. He could easily have reasoned, “This is God’s provision. The guard will kill himself and we’ll waltz to freedom.”

However, Paul did not let the jailer kill himself. He immediately called out, “Don’t harm yourself! We are all here!” (v. 28). Paul naturally thought of others. He faced the test of character, which occurs with virtues, and he passed the test. He gave up his own freedom and risked being killed because of the trumped-up charges he faced. Yet Paul prevented the jailer’s suicide. Paul was a model of humility. The Philippian jailer, and his household, became Christians that very night (vv. 30-33).

As Paul’s hymn to the humility of Jesus was read aloud in Philippi, the Philippian jailer and his family probably heard the letter being read. Imagine the virtues that met at that place and time. Paul was in prison, a man under justice, though it was trumped-up, economics-dominated justice. God showed mercy to Paul by freeing him. The jailer received mercy from Paul—at risk to himself. And that led to forgiveness of the jailer by God, and forgiveness by the jailer of many others afterward.

These four virtues came together, as they often tend to do. The thread weaving them into a single cloth is humility. First is Jesus’ humility, from which all humility takes its cue, and then there is the derivative humility of others. We Christians should be in the forefront of exhibiting these virtues and also helping others to do so, and humility is the glue that holds the virtues together and should characterize us as virtuous.

Are we in the forefront? Is humility our glue? Are we virtuous?

Notes

1. Everett L. Worthington Jr., Coming to Peace with Psychology: What Christians Can Learn from Psychological Science (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2010).
2. Ernst Fehr and B. Rockenbach, “Human Altruism: Economic, Neural, and Evolutionary Perspectives,” Current Opinion in Neurobiology 14 (2004): 784-90.
3. Rebecca P. Kiefer, “Apology in a Restorative Justice Context” (master’s thesis, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, Virginia, 2005); and idem, “Facework in Offenders and Victims in a Role Play Simulation of Restorative Justice” (doctoral diss., Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, Virginia, 2007).
4. Charlotte van Oyen Witvliet, Nathaniel G. Wade, Everett L. Worthington Jr., and Jo-Ann Tsang, “Apology and Restitution: The Effects of Each on Victims’ Unforgiveness, Empathy, Forgiveness, and Emotional Psychophysiology in the Context of Crime” (unpublished manuscript, Hope College, Holland, Michigan, 2011).
5. Robert D. Carlisle, Jo-Ann Tsang, Nadia Y. Ahmad, Everett L. Worthington Jr., Charlotte van Oyen Witvliet, and Nathaniel G. Wade, “Do Actions Speak Louder than Words? Differential Effects of Apology and Restitution on Behavioural and Self-report Measures of Forgiveness” Journal of Positive Psychology 7 (2012): 294-305.
6. Aubrey L. Gartner and Everett L. Worthington Jr., “Mercy: Self-Report and Behavioral Measures of an Under-investigated but Important Construct” (unpublished manuscript, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, Virginia, 2011).
7. Stanley Milgram, Obedience to Authority (New York: Harper & Row, 1974). His experiment is described in the first article in this series (Bibliotheca Sacra 170 [January–March 2013]: 3-16).
8. Milgram, Obedience to Authority.
9. Everett L. Worthington Jr., Forgiving and Reconciling: Bridges to Wholeness and Hope (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2003); idem, Forgiveness and Reconciliation: Theory and Application (New York: Brunner-Routledge, 2006); and idem, A Just Forgiveness: Responsible Healing without Excusing Injustice (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2009).
10. Lewis B. Smedes, Forgive and Forget: Healing the Hurts We Don’t Deserve (New York: Harper & Row, 1984).
11. Gregory L. Jones, Embodying Forgiveness (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995).
12. Michael E. McCullough, Julie J. Exline, and Roy F. Baumeister, “An Annotated Bibliography of Research on Forgiveness and Related Concepts,” in Dimensions of Forgiveness: Psychological Research and Theological Perspectives, ed. Everett L. Worthington Jr. (Philadelphia: Templeton Foundation, 1998), 193-317.
13. Michael Scherer, Kathryn L. Cooke, and Everett L. Worthington Jr., “Forgiveness Bibliography,” in Handbook of Forgiveness, ed. Everett L. Worthington Jr. (New York: Brunner-Routledge, 2005), 507-56.
14. Everett L. Worthington, Jr., Charlotte van Oyen Witvliet, Pietro Petrini, and Andrea L. Miller, “Forgiveness, Health, and Well-being: A Review of Evidence for Emotional versus Decisional Forgiveness, Dispositional Forgivingness, and Reduced Unforgiveness,” Journal of Behavioral Medicine 30 (2007): 291-302.
15. Loren Toussaint and Jon Webb, “Theoretical and Empirical Connections between Forgiveness, Mental Health, and Well-being,” in Handbook of Forgiveness, 349-62.
16. Caryl E. Rusbult, Peggy A. Hannon, Shevaun L. Stocker, and Eli J. Finkel, “Forgiveness and Relational Repair,” in Handbook of Forgiveness, 185-206.
17. D. E. Davis, J. N. Hook, and Everett L. Worthington Jr., “Research on Religion/Spirituality and Forgiveness: A Meta-analytic Review,” Psychology of Religion and Spirituality (forthcoming).
18. Everett L. Worthington Jr., Steven J. Sandage, and Jack W. Berry, “Group Interventions to Promote Forgiveness: What Researchers and Clinicians Ought to Know,” in Forgiveness: Theory, Research and Practice, ed. Michael E. McCullough, Kenneth I. Pargament, and Carl E. Thoresen (New York: Guilford, 2000): 228-53.
19. Moses was said to be “a very humble man, more humble than anyone else on the face of the earth” (Num. 12:3).
20. Everett L. Worthington Jr., Humility: The Quiet Virtue (Philadelphia: Templeton Foundation, 2007).
21. Don E. Davis, Everett L. Worthington Jr., and Joshua N. Hook, “Relational Humility: A Review of Definitions and Measurement Strategies,” Journal of Positive Psychology 5 (2010): 243-52; and Don E. Davis et al., “Humility as Personality Judgment: Conceptualization and Development of the Relational Humility Scale (RHS),” Journal for Personality Assessment 93 (2011): 225-34.
22. Ibid.
23. Jonathan D. Worthington, “Humility,” Sermon at Bon Accord Free Church of Scotland, Aberdeen, Scotland, 2010.