Self, motivation, and virtue, or how we learned to stop worrying and love deep integration

The Self, Motivation, and Virtue Project (Snow and Narvaez, 2015) was developed “to open avenues of inquiry into virtue using the framework of the ‘self,’ instead of ‘personality,’ to require deep and ongoing interdisciplinary collaboration, and to stimulate methodological innovation into the study of virtue.” But what does it mean to use a “framework of self” instead of a “framework of personality”? What do we mean by “self” and “personality”? In this chapter we provide a conceptual review and integration of self and personality, as well as identity, motivation, virtue, and well-being. In clarifying these different concepts, we demonstrate that the concept of personality—when conceptualized as extending beyond personality traits—provides the broadest, most inclusive framework for understanding self, identity, motivation, and virtue, as well as all other traits and characteristic adaptations.