The Development of Positive Attributes of Character: On the Embodiment of Specificity, Holism, and Self-System Processes

Abstract

Positive character involves a system of mutually beneficial relations between an individual and the context that coherently vary across ontogenetic time and enable the individual to engage the social world as a moral agent. We present ideas about the development of positive character attributes using three constructs associated with relational developmental systems (RDS) metatheory: the specificity of mutually beneficial individual context dynamics across time and place; holistic integration of dynamic processes of an individual with both the context and all cognitive, affective, and behavioral processes; and integration of the character system with other facets of the self-system. These features of RDS-based ideas coalesce on the embodiment of positive character development. We discuss the need for a more robust interrogation of embodied features of the character development system by suggesting that the coaction of morphological/physiological processes with cultural processes becomes part of a program of the integrated individual <=> contextual processes involved in the description, explanation, and optimization of the development of positive attributes of character. We discuss moments of programmatic research that should be involved in this interrogation, and we point to the potential contribution of theory-predicated research about the embodied development of positive attributes of character to enhancing the presence of moral agency and social justice in the world.