Book Review: The Character Gap: How Good Are We? (2018), by Christian B. Miller, New York, NY: Oxford University Press

The good news is, you probably don’t have any vices.

The bad news is, you probably don’t have any virtues either.

In The Character Gap: How Good Are We?, Christian Miller argues that most of us are neither virtuous nor vicious, but somewhere in between. We have mixed characters. We are capable of accomplishing tremendous good in the world, but also of doing terrible things. On one level, this should be unsurprising, since—if we’re being honest—many of us waver between (1) glorious visions of ourselves when we do something kind, and (2) horror and disappointment when we fail to act according to a given standard. Oftentimes, we marvel at our own deeds, and then dismay ourselves, multiple times over the course of the same day. This unstable egoism of our lived experience indicates it is probably unlikely that we have the settled moral states that constitute traditional “virtue” and “vice.” We are far too unpredictable for that.

On another level, however, this should be surprising because of how liberally we wield virtue and vice terms in daily life. Particularly with virtues, we eagerly attribute honesty, kindness, and integrity to ourselves and to others who likely do not qualify as such. There is a chasm between our readiness to apply these terms and actual instances of them. Thankfully, we need not resign ourselves to the absence of virtue. Miller’s project extends beyond this news of our (likely) virtue-lessness and reveals strategies by which we can develop virtues to close the “character gap”—the space between how we really are, and the people of good character we should become.

This is, of course, assuming you won’t want to close the character gap in the other direc-tion—to develop your vices. If you do, this is the wrong book for that.

The Character Gap pursues questions along these lines—using empirical research to refine our self-understanding with respect to virtue and vice so we know where we stand and then offering tactics to move us in the direction of virtue. Miller draws on his research through The Character Project, a Templeton-funded, multidisciplinary research initiative on character. This book is engagingly written and full of stories of virtue and vice, as well as empirical studies that provide a sense of how people typically respond in moral situations. The Character Gap is accessible to a broad audience, but it is still marked by the precision and clarity characteristic of Miller’s more academic philosophical work. It is also personal—as it touches on questions of imparting virtue to his son, as well as concerns Miller has for academic integrity and cheating behaviors in his own classroom. It is a book that both startles and equips the reader—by highlighting weaknesses in our self-understanding and normative moral failures in given situations, and then offering strategies for improvement. I highly recommend it.

The book has three sections, which take the form of questions: (1) What is Character and Why Is it Important?, (2) What Does Character Actually Look Like Today?, and (3) What Can We do to Improve Our Character?. In what follows, I highlight key ideas and potential challenges.

There is an episode recorded early in The Character Gap, in which Miller attempts to answer his 3-year-old’s why questions involving cleaning up his toys:

Miller is pressed to answer the why questions of character, which is a tall order in speaking to philosophers, let alone toddlers: Why ought we to be good? What makes good actions choice-worthy? In the first section, Miller provides four possible responses to the why questions of virtue, which can be loosely categorized as aesthetic, altruistic, theological, and pragmatic: (1) Virtuous lives are admirable and inspiring. (2) Good character typically makes the world a better place. (3) Moral goodness is often internal to religious practice. (4) A good character can be rewarding, in terms of personal fulfillment or external rewards.

So, why ought we to be good? It’s a difficult question, but it is a crucial one for our purposes because only those actions done for the right reasons can be virtuous. This clarifies why virtue is so rare and why most of us lack it. Even if we perform good actions, it is difficult to perform them for the right reasons— rather than to relieve guilt, or from vain conceit, or perhaps to garner tax deductions. Furthermore, it is difficult to perform good actions over an extended period of time, from a settled disposition, irrespective of context. We are easily thwarted by different situations.

To demonstrate this, Miller introduces us in the second section to empirical research in helping, harming, lying, and cheating that demonstrates our mixed characters. We learn that we often fail to help in situations we might assume we would have helped. Furthermore, we are likely too egoistically motivated to be compassionate. But—don’t worry—we are probably not cruel either. We limit our cheating behaviors but still do, in fact, cheat. We also go out of the way to be helpful at times, particularly if—oddly enough—help is requested while we are exiting restrooms, that is, in situations of slight embarrassment.

A strength of this section is Miller’s treatment of the Milgram experiments. The 1963 shock administration test is often used to demonstrate our willingness to be utterly ruthless toward one another when prompted by authority figures. Many participants in the study complained. Still, they complied and were willing to do things they might not have done otherwise. Miller adds richness to this evaluation by examining additional Milgram experiments performed around that time— experiments which demonstrate that people rarely perform gratuitous acts of cruelty. Miller’s examination of Milgram highlights the salience of the situation for predicting our actions, and he explains why it is unlikely that people in the 1963 Milgram experiment were acting from settled dispositions of malice.

I also appreciate the final section, where Miller offers strategies for cultivating virtue. Some examples include nudging, virtue labeling, having moral role models, and education. He discusses strategies of varying successes, as well as potential pitfalls. For example, some strategies might cause people to act in virtuous ways over the short-term, but actually impede the development of virtue over the long-term by developing the wrong motivations for action. Miller discusses how moral cultivation is about having the right affections, not simply the right ideas about ourselves. He also explores the resources available for moral transformation in the Christian tradition, which assumes we are incapable of becoming good without divine assistance.

I suppose someone might challenge The Character Gap by asking why it matters that we preserve the language of “virtue” and “vice” for the rare few who possess them. It is natural to wield these terms freely in order to highlight excellences, however partial, in the world around us. One reason for preserving the purity of “virtue” is to give us a standard to work towards. If virtues are facile and rampant, I am disincentivized from taking a hard look at myself and acknowledging I have room for moral growth. Another reason Miller offers is that recognizing that most of us have mixed characters helps us to manage expectations— for others and for ourselves.

I recommend this book to anyone with an interest in virtue or character, or more generally, in living a good life. It is a quick, enjoyable read and a great introduction to questions of character and moral purpose we should probably all be asking ourselves. I commend Dr. Miller for making his academic work accessible to a popular audience.