Phronesis:
Abstract: Phronesis (practical wisdom) has come under increased scrutiny of late within neo-Aristotelian moral psychology, character education and virtue-based professional ethics. While great strides have been made within the Jubilee Centre since 2019 in understanding the concept of phronesis and creating a theoretically viable instrument to measure it, the instrument originally designed by the Centre, the Long Phronesis Measure (LPM), turned out to be practically unwieldy, in the sense of taking too long to complete (over 45 minutes) and being complicated to score. The aim of the final phase of the 2019– 2023 Phronesis Project, reported upon here, was to go back to the drawing board and create an easier-to-use instrument, referred to as a Short Phronesis Measure (SPM), while retaining as much as possible the theoretical considerations that motivated the original measure.
This report: Explores the proposed conceptual contours of phronesis, and charts the journey from the Jubilee Centre’s four-componential Aristotelian Phronesis Model (APM) to the Long Phronesis Measure (LPM), created in the early stages of the Phronesis Project, with a special focus on its practical shortcomings. Describes four empirical studies with large UK (N = 2000; N = 1000) and US (N = 1000) samples that helped create a viable Short Phronesis Measure (SPM). Discusses and contextualises the new measure. Paves the way for further practical research and suggests the next steps in further strengthening the measure.
Key findings:Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses helped create a theoretically credible and practically viable measure of phronesis, which should not take more than 20 minutes to complete. The data confirm acceptable psychometric properties overall: a good fit with a three-component model of phronesis (including the emotion-regulation, blueprint/moral identity and adjudication components), and also an adequate fit with a four-component model (including the constitutive/moral perception component); hence supporting in all essentials the original Jubilee Centre’s APM conceptualisation. The three factors in the best-fit threefactor model predict flourishing, as Aristotle would have anticipated, apart from that of financial security. This adds considerable backbone to the APM, especially because flourishing was not explored as part of the development of the original LPM. While the findings from the UK and US samples mostly coincide in terms of model fit, US participants reported higher levels of phronesis across almost all its variables. The reasons for this apparent cultural difference are not entirely clear at present. Various subsidiary measures were administered to understand more fully the workings of phronesis and its relationships to other personality and characterological variables; but those await further analysis and are beyond the scope of the current report.
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