Tag: virtue ethics

Rethinking Ethics in Psychology

Ethics is always about values. In psychology, as in most professions, students are often taught to approach ethics through three frameworks: 

  1. Virtue ethics (What kind of person should I be?)
  2. Deontology (What duties must I follow?)
  3. Utilitarianism (What outcome will maximize the good?)

Each offers a way of defining “the good.” These approaches remain useful, helping psychologists clarify responsibilities, make difficult decisions, and justify their reasoning. Yet each framework risks being used as a strategic, rhetorical tool to back a predetermined position. The same action can be rationalized as duty, optimal outcome, or virtue, shifting the focus from genuine ethics to self-justification. 

What if we made attention—the genuine act of perceiving and staying present in situations—the starting point of ethics, rather than rules or outcomes?

Ethics as Attention

The philosopher Simone Weil wrote, “Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.” For Weil, paying attention is already an ethical act. It means suspending assumptions long enough to notice what is truly happening. This matters as much in the consulting room as in the classroom. 

A psychologist who pays close attention can tell when silence means something, when irritation masks fear, or when something important goes unsaid. No code of ethics tells you how to respond in these moments. Paying attention is the ethical act. In contrast, when we rely too heavily on abstract frameworks, we risk skipping over this important stage of perception. We rush to categorize, justify, or resolve. Ethics then becomes about defending an action rather than sensing what a situation is calling for. 

To clarify the distinction: morality is about judgment—applying universal principles consistently. Ethics, as I am proposing, focuses on responsiveness—actively perceiving a specific situation and considering how best to respond. Morality asks, “What should I do in general?” Ethics asks, “What is happening here, and how can I respond now?” This shift seems small, but it is significant. Morality gives answers and often shuts down possibilities. Ethics, as attention, keeps things open and starts with not knowing. Psychologists need this, because much of their work happens in situations without easy answers.

The Problem of Comparison

Professional psychology education often focuses on outcomes and comparisons: Who has the most clients? Whose intervention is “evidence-based”? Who secures the most funding? Accountability matters, but this culture of comparison can narrow our focus. We start to value what is visible, measurable, and ranked. This comes at the expense of the subtler textures of human life. In therapy, this pressure can lead clinicians to measure “progress” only by symptom checklists. They may miss the more fragile forms of growth—such as trust, presence, and shared silence—that defy easy measurement. When ethics becomes only compliance or output, it grows too thin. It cannot handle the complexity of real psychological life.

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Small Practices of Ethical Attention

What might it look like to cultivate ethics as attention in psychology? Here are some simple practices:

  • Reflective journaling: After sessions, clinicians can note what was said, what they felt, what they avoided, or what unsettled them. Attention grows by noticing what escapes immediate explanation.
  • Naming subtle ruptures: Instead of ignoring the slight withdrawal of a client or the tension in a supervision meeting, name it gently: “I noticed some silence after I said that—what was it like for you?”
  • Suspending judgment: Rather than deciding too quickly what a behavior “means,” stay with the ambiguity: “Something feels important here, but I’m not sure yet what it is.”

These are not alternatives to ethical codes. They are complements. Codes set the minimum. Attention sustains the depth.

Becoming Present

For psychologists, ethics means more than preventing harm or avoiding misconduct. It means being present with the people and situations you face. It means noticing when something matters, even if no rule was broken. 

Ethics is about more than compliance; it is about who we are becoming. It challenges us to ask not just “What should I do?” but “Who am I becoming through my actions?”

Character as moral fiction

There is a growing interest in virtue ethics. For example, studies with Positive Psychology and Leadership often use the term virtuousness to refer to a kind of high performance or excellence. Mark Alfano’s book; Character as Moral Fiction places itself within this ongoing debate that has roots going back to Aristotle’s.

In short Alfano’s thesis is as follows: if you tell a person that he or she is honest or respectful, the person will be motivated to act in accordance herewith. His idea is strongly related to the self-fulfilling prophecies that we associate with the placebo effect, where the belief involved in placebos is that “they are true because they are announced, not announced because they are true.” 

 Alfano’s argument is, therefore, not utilitarian, i.e. because it produces good consequences; nor deontological, i.e. because it is based on an absolute rule of moral behavior. Instead Alfano injects moral philosophy with the idea that fictional inventions can improve us morally. What Alfano does is that he quite ingeniously takes a well-known phenomenon that words can create belief or even obedience to certain virtues, e.g. something similar is seen in personal selection, appreciative inquiry, and recognition management. The point is that a description (or postulate, even) can affect us.

To begin with Alfano distinguishes between normative theory (e.g. what is good and virtuous), moral psychology (e.g. describing and explaining human conduct), and moral technology that “attempts to bridge the gap between moral psychology and normative theory by proposing ways in which we … can become more as we should be.” Thus, Alfano doesn’t interfere with the moral categories or the definitions of moral virtuous. Instead he presents us with a moralizing pep-talk that shows that we can do more of what is already defined as being virtuous. It’s an optimistic book.

A large part of the book reads like a dense literature study that also aims at defending his thesis — especially against the challenge of the situation.  Alfano’s contribution to this debate is that he tries to change the relative strength between the agent, the social environment, and the environment as such. Instead of letting a specific situation or context affect us, it is better to create individual expectations that would affect the outcome. Hereby he also adds to the triad within social psychology. Philip Zimbardo, for example, refers to the individual, the situation and the system. To put is simple: Zimbardo tries to avoid vicious behavior by creating a virtuous situation, whereas Alfano tries to overcome a potential bad situation by stimulating the individual towards doing good by saying that he or she already is good — it is here fiction can play a role since the positive characteristic of the person may only be an invention.  

Alfano defines a “factious virtue” as a creative making or calibration. For example, a person “may not be virtuous in fact“; however, a “tactically deployed fictions result in factitious virtue.” The idea is very attractive. Yet, I still think that Alfano is too limited in his use of fiction and the potential to create new experiences, perhaps even provide us with new concepts by which to live. 

Let us imagine a young academic. Just like anyone else, he or she is subjected to the slogans of positive thinking that dictates more efficiency and personal growth, just because he or she can. Based on Alfano’s thesis the young academic will live up to this positive description of his or her factitious virtuous, yet these virtuous might also be the ones that will lead the same person straight to depression, anxiety, and stress. Our young academic might not be doing what he or she really can, because he or she is being persuaded or motivated into playing the role of being good according to the ideals defined by someone else, i.e. efficient according to what objectives; growth according to what ideals? 

The problem with the thesis, therefore, is not whether being honest and generous are attractive characteristics, but how one might live out these virtues even if they contrast with the ideals of the majority, i.e. with the norms of our present performance society. This debate is absent in Alfano’s work.

Thus, the core challenge for Alfano is, as I see it, whether we actually know what is good beforehand or not. Alfano assumes that we do know beforehand. However, What if the context is not given? What if lying actually is the only way for a person to remain generous? His use of fiction is restricted by what is already defined as being good, right and virtuous. Yet, the most serious moral and ethical challenges today are so due to their uncertainties.

 Regardless of my interventions, this book is what both moral psychology and normative theory needs: a fresh and courageous approach. It is especially enriching for students of moral psychology, because the author generously refers to so many studies, but it could also serve the vast theory within management and organizational studies that tries to convert people. 

Alfano’s “factious virtue” proposes how we might become more as we should be. He wants to guide us, but as with any guide, one should be courteous in respect of the objectives.

First published in Metapsychology, 2014.

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