Abstract
Philosophers who have written on modesty have largely agreed that it is a virtue, and that it therefore has an important psychological component. Mere modest behavior, it is often argued, is actually false modesty if it is generated by the wrong kind of mental state. The philosophical debate about modesty has largely focused on the question of which kind of mental state—cognitive, motivational, or evaluative—best captures the virtue of modesty. We therefore conducted a series of experiments to see which philosophical account matches the folk concept of modesty. Surprisingly, we found that the folk concept is primarily behavioral. This leads us to argue that modesty may not be a virtue, but that if it is none of the extant philosophical accounts have properly explained why.
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Notes
N = 160, aged 18–6 years, mean age = 31 years; 74 female; 94% reporting English as a native language. Participants were U.S. residents, recruited and tested online using Amazon Mechanical Turk and Qualtrics, and compensated $0.35 for approximately 2 min of their time. These same recruitment and compensation procedures were used in all the experiments reported here. Repeat participation was prevented within and across experiments.
N = 80, aged 20–64, mean age = 34 years; 34 female; 99% reporting English as a native language.
N = 160, aged 19–61, mean age = 33 years; 66 female; 99% reporting English as a native language.
An incomplete but representative sample includes Wilson (2014), who claims his motivational account “appears to get things right with regards (ii) giving an account of false modesty” (78); Schuler (Schueler 1997), whose paper is dedicated in part to showing the error in Allan Bennett’s witticism that “all modesty is false modesty, otherwise it wouldn’t be modesty” (467); and Ridge (2000), who opens his paper by asserting that an account is untenable if it is “unable to distinguish genuine from false modesty” (269). Even Woodcock (2008), whose social account of modesty makes room for what many theorists would want to treat as false modesty, readily admits that “Driver and her critics are certainly correct to want to avoid the kid of false modesty that involves arrogant beliefs masked behind a veneer of restraint” (11).
We thank an anonymous referee for raising this issue.
An independent reason that modesty is not an Aristotelian virtue is that, in his description of the magnanimous person—who he regards as particularly virtuous—Aristotle emphasizes that this person “thinks himself worthy of great things” is “concerned especially with honor and dishonors”, and even “seems arrogant.” Someone who underrates her accomplishments, by contrast, is “pusillanimous” which is a vice that mirrors vanity (Aristotle 1999, 56–59).
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Acknowledgements
For helpful discussion and feedback, we are very grateful to audiences at conferences from the following associations: the Buffalo Experimental Philosophy Conference (2015), the Society of Philosophy and Psychology (2105), and the Canadian Philosophical Association (2015). This research was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Ontario Ministry of Economic Development and Innovation, and the Canada Research Chairs Program.
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Weaver, S., Doucet, M. & Turri, J. It’s What’s on the Inside that Counts... Or is It? Virtue and the Psychological Criteria of Modesty. Rev.Phil.Psych. 8, 653–669 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13164-017-0333-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13164-017-0333-8