Virtues such as compassion, patience and self-control may be beneficial not only for others but also for oneself, according to new research my team and I published in the Journal of Personality in December 2025.
Philosophers from Aristotle to al-Fārābī, a 10th-century scholar in what is now Iraq, have argued that virtue is vital for well-being. Yet others, such as Thomas Hobbes and Friedrich Nietzsche, have argued the opposite: Virtue offers no benefit to oneself and is good only for others. This second theory has inspired lots of research in contemporary psychology, which often sees morality and self-interest as fundamentally opposed.
