Eudaimonic Growth: How Virtues and Motives Shape the Narrative Self and Its Development within a Social Ecology

Abstract

This project investigates how virtues shape people’s life stories within a social ecology of families, social institutions, and cultural master narratives. Life stories allow us to study how virtues serve as motives for action, as themes in a person’s self-identity, and as reflections of cultural belief systems. In this talk we show how life stories portray eudaimonic growth, that is, the development of virtues like wisdom, compassion, authenticity, and self-actualization. We pay special attention to eudaimonic growth in non-idealized circumstances, notably gender inequities of social power and expectations, whether in the family or at work. We are studying these topics in two phases. Phase I, currently in progress, involves life story interviews with 100 adults. First these participants complete an online personality survey that focuses on eudaimonic virtues like wisdom, perspective-taking, compassion, gratitude, moral orientations, and transcending self-interest. Our research team then conducts a life story interview of two-to-three hours with each of these participants. Phase II, in the next academic year, focuses on family stories—interviews with 50 of the target individuals and 2-to-3 family members, all of whom also take an online personality survey, as in Phase I. All interviews are transcribed and analyzed both quantitatively and qualitatively. These participants are also part of a larger, longitudinal study of University of Dayton alumni. Thus we expect to gain a better understanding of how virtues shape life stories within a social ecology of family and cultural master narratives in the current two years—and how life stories predict eudaimonic growth in the decades to come.