Ethics & Virtues

In this Season 2 wrap-up of With & For, Dr. Pam King reflects on the multifaceted nature of thriving, emphasizing that it’s not a luxury but a necessity for navigating life’s complexities. She and her guests reveal thriving as a relational journey that involves deep connection to others, self-discovery, healing, and aligning purpose with practice. Even amidst struggles and challenges, thriving is possible through an open heart, understanding ourselves as “God’s masterpieces,” and pursuing what is most sacred.

What are you willing to wait for? What are you willing to suffer for? Research psychologist Sarah Schnitker (Baylor University) has done groundbreaking work in the science of patience. By exploring the ways to become more patient with others and ourselves—and discovering the role of this timeless virtue in a flourishing life—she offers us a freeing and stabilizing approach to thinking about goals, perseverance, and navigating our fast-paced world.

Where do you find joy? Is there a way to cultivate more of it in life? If you want more joy in life, explore the ideas below.

If you aren't feeling hopeful these days, intentionally practicing hope can propel your life forward in positive directions. Here's how.

This is a hope focused goal-setting guide to help you develop agency and make a plan for returning hope to your life.

Instead of asking ourselves, "What do I want to achieve this year?" we would be better served by asking, “Who do I want to become?

A spiritual practice for "noticing the good" changes how we experience the world and can lead to more wellbeing and even physical health.

Why do we pause to give thanks at Thanksgiving? How can this make us more grateful people? What do religious traditions teach us?

When we receive gifts, we experience gratitude, and this can be paid forward through giving to others through charity and service.

The spiritual elevation that comes from walking in nature provides a pathway to gratitude, a powerful virtue for spiritual health.

People of faith express gratitude in a variety of ways. Read more to explore spiritual practices to express gratitude.

Explore why the powerful spiritual practice of gratitude change your life. Habituating it can lead to a more virtuous and joyful life.

With professional psychological care more readily available than ever, have we forsaken our responsibilities to each other?

What conversations should we have with young people to help them develop? How do we encourage them to offer their gifts to the world?

Hope vs. Optimism? What’s the difference between these concepts and can someone be hopeless and optimistic?

Adding a dose of patience when setting goals to achieve change can make success more likely and even more enjoyable.  

Most people don't sustain their New Year's resolutions. Here's how to approach your goals in a new way to sustain your journey.

Practical Questions to Promote Conversations About Hope

How Can We Help Those Who Have Left the Church Find Sources of Hope?

Questions That Promote Hopeful Conversations about Existential Thoughts

Healthy spirituality supports and develops the human capacity to love. Part 2 of a 2-part series.

Healthy spirituality supports and develops the human capacity to love. Part 1 of a 2-part series.

Love of God and love of neighbor provide the deepest values on the road to joy as we become more like Christ, as ourselves.

A practice of Introspection, assessing how the day went, can be a valuable tool for understanding where you want to go.

The Thrive Center for Human Development and FULLER Studio present Patience, a five-video series that will change the way you think about patience. Psychologists, Benjamin Houltberg and Sarah Schnitker lead a table discussion with Rabbi Sherre Hirsh, Tasneem Noor, and Harlan Redmond to share their thoughts on the meaning of patience within different cultural contexts, faith traditions, and individuals.     Working with Faith Traditions How do different faith traditions think about the practice of patience? Our moderators join Rabbi Sherre Hirsch, Tasneem Noor, and Harlan Redmond to reflect on the role of patience within their own faith, the patience of God, and wisdom from the Quran.     Each Other Can patience positively transform our relationships with others? Our thought leaders examine how patience can lead to better relationships through listening and understanding each other’s stories.     Self-Care Our panel of experts continue their discussion on patience by reflecting…

Patience is an important virtue to develop to achieve goals, including relationship goals. Here are some ideas to explore if you are feeling impatient.

If there are ways we would like to more fully live into certain virtues, one way to do so is by using the Rule of Life to help us establish new life rhythms.

Learning how what you value shapes your week.

Spirituality is more than a feeling. It is something we live out purposefully. As we practice living into our ideals, they become part of us.

A Thrive Scholars Fellow shares transcendent experiences along with caring adults can stimulate spirituality and virtue development in youth.

How does love contributing to thriving? The practice of the 5 B's of love is explained here.

Joy is more than an emotion. Rebecca Baer reflects on true joy as being rooted in love, sharing a mindfulness practice.

How can we cultivate our joy “muscles?” Pamela Ebstyne King, executive director at the Thrive Center, speaks on what is required for our joy training and the benefits of joy at the 2018 Future of Joy Conference, hosted by the Yale Center for Faith and Culture. Author’s Note This talk was given at the Yale Center for Faith and Culture.

Summary In response to professor of psychology at University of California, Davis, Robert Emmons on gratitude to God, Pamela Ebstyne King explains how gratitude can both guide us and propel us toward thriving and the good life.   Author’s Note This talk was given at the 2022 Integration Symposium and was originally published on FULLER Studio.

Dr. Stephanie Trudeau shifts the conversation from burnout to moral injury, presenting ways we can help those experiencing moral injury.

Postdoctoral Researcher, Dr. Susan Mangan provides research-based activities to help us experience the positive emotion of elevation.

Dr. Susan Mangan explains the role and benefits of moral elevation in inspiring us to help our communities.

Dr. Pamela King reflects on her hopes for her son as he graduates high school and her new role as a partner in this next phase of their lives.

Dr. Meredith Hope discusses the role of religion in youth thriving and ways caring adults can help enable spirituality in adolescence.

How do you become more joyful?

Want more joy even during the tough times?

Leanne Bishara shares 4 research-backed ways parents and teens can face difficulties with patience.

Dr. Stephanie Trudeau breaks down the Mamba Mentality framework and offers tips for how to integrate it into our own lives.

How can caring adults equip youth for a journey of long-lasting joy? Pamela King highlights the 3 essentials needed.

Joy serves a guide to what matters most to us. Discover how joy can be nurtured spiritually and vocationally in youth.

Joy is a powerful virtue that can improve our wellbeing. Learn how you can nurture joy in youth through their body senses and relationships.

Summary Pamela Ebstyne King responds to Cameron Lee, Professor of Marriage and Family Studies at Fuller Theological Seminary, on hope and humility as clinical virtues, reflecting on telos, hope as an orientation, and the importance of having an eschatological anchor in a fragmented society.   Author’s Note This talk was given at the 2018 Integration Symposium and was originally published on FULLER Studio.  …

Summary Executive director of the Thrive Center, Pamela Ebstyne King explains the key differences between happiness and joy, pointing to purpose as the key to discovering true joy in this interview. Author’s Note This interview was originally published on Yale Youth Ministry Institute.   About the Author Pamela Ebstyne King Pamela Ebstyne King is the executive director of the Thrive Center and serves as the Peter L. Benson Professor of Applied Developmental Science at Fuller Theological Seminary. Her primary academic interests are applied research at the intersection of human thriving and spiritual development. Dr. King’s work combines theology, empirical research, and community engagement to further understand what contexts and settings enable all people to thrive.  …

Book: The Routledge International Handbook of Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Character Development, Volume I Conceptualizing and Defining Character Chapter 18 (34 pages) Theological Perspectives on Beliefs and Communities of Practice Virtue Systems as an Integrative Approach for Psychologists   Abstract In order to offer a theological perspective of virtue development, we treat virtues as habitus, moral habits that are cultivated in local communities with transcendent belief narratives. Virtues are dependent on traditions to inform their purpose or telos and to give definition to the good life. Although psychology offers a conceptualization of virtues focused on the self-system—including characteristic adaptations and transcendent narrative identity—psychology is less clear on how virtues are shaped and informed by the beliefs and practices of their contextualized communities. An exploration of specific features of theological systems offers insight into virtue-enriching ecologies. Informed by Relational Developmental Systems metatheory, we propose a Virtues…

This project seeks to integrate the theological and psychological perspectives of joy and flourishing.

Abstract An extensive body of research points toward spirituality and religiousness as resources for promoting human thriving. People with strong connections to the transcendent and religious meaning in life often view morals and values as central to their self-concepts. Although moral identity theory and contemporary views of virtue development emphasize the importance of narrative identity for habituated moral action, the two are often discussed in isolation of each other. In this chapter, the authors highlight how their commonality is particularly evident when examining the potential of religion to provide a transcendent self-narrative that leads to virtue formation and moral action within social contexts. This chapter describes how young people integrate religion and morality in their own lives, and it provides a broad overview of research linking religion to moral and virtue development through an ideological, social, and transcendent context.

Our team seeks to test and develop a theoretical framework to help guide future research on gratitude.

Citation King, P. E., Baer, R. A., Noe, S. A., Trudeau, S., Mangan, S. A., & Constable, S. R. (2022). Shades of Gratitude: Exploring Varieties of Transcendent Beliefs and Experience. Religions, 13(11), 1091. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel13111091 Abstract The study of gratitude has expanded beyond interpersonal gratitude and considers how people respond to gifts that are not caused by human agency. Given the discord between the prominent understanding of gratitude requiring the appropriate recognition of a gift to a giver and the increasing divergence of transcendent belief systems that do not acknowledge a transcendent or cosmic giver, we explored how people with different worldviews viewed and experienced gratitude. Transcendence does not hinge on metaphysical beliefs, but it can be experienced phenomenologically and subjectively. We conducted a case-study narrative analysis (N = 6) that represents participants from three different categories of belief systems: theistic, non-theistic but spiritual, and other. Our findings demonstrate how people…

Citation King, P. E. (2020). Joy Distinguished: Teleological Perspectives of Joy as a Virtue. Journal of Positive Psychology, 15(1), 33-39. Abstract The most specific psychological literature associates joy with goodness; however, psychological science has no clear means to distinguish one good thing from another or to decipher the degree of goodness required to designate joy beyond subjective or conventional opinion. In order to provide a framework for a science of joy that identifies both the psychological processes that comprise joy and a means of understanding and operationalizing goodness, I conceptualize joy as a virtue of knowing, feeling, and doing what matters most and propose a teleological framework to conceptualize goodness. Such a multidimensional understanding of joy informed by characteristic adaptations given meaning by a transcendent narrative identity and a developmental, contextual telos of the reciprocating self sheds light on the potential power of joy as a psychological phenomenon favorable for…

Citation King, P. E. (2020). Anchored in hope. In C. Lee (Ed.) Integration as Integrity: Christian Therapist as Peacemaker. Wipf and Stock Publishers. Abstract What is “integration”? Christians serving in the psychological professions have long debated the proper way to understand the relationship between “psychology” on the one hand, and “theology” or “Christianity” or “the Christian faith” on the other. This book argues for understanding integration as a matter of personal integrity: it’s not about bridging or blending academic disciplines, but about having a coherent vocational identity. What narrative will hold together both our core identity as Christians and our developing identity as clinicians? Peacemaking is proposed as the central motif, based on the Beatitudes of Jesus. Christian therapists who understand themselves as peacemakers will in turn cultivate the clinical virtues of hope, humility, compassion, and Sabbath rest. Copyright Year: 2024 Holder: Wipf and Stock Publishers DOI: https://wipfandstock.com/9781532686689/integration-as-integrity/…

Citation King, P. E. & Argue, S. (2020). Purpose, Finding Joy in Life Direction. (Chapter and curriculum guide.) In D. White and S. Farmer (Eds). Joy: a Guide to Youth Ministry. Nashville: General Board of Higher Education and Ministry of the United Methodist Church. Abstract Published in cooperation with Yale University and taking cues from theologians such as Miroslav Volf and recent reflections on joy as the crown of the good life, this ecumenical group of contributors insists that reclaiming joy for youth ministry is crucial in light of modern secularism, which has eviscerated the world of such things as mystery, wonder, grace, and transcendence. The modern world urges us to work and consume compulsively; to value its creatures only for their use or to serve our egos. While consumption sometimes yields momentary fun or happiness, only rarely does it yield joy. This book contrarily asserts that to reclaim…

Citation King, P. E., & Defoy, F. (2020). Joy as a virtue: The means and ends of joy. Journal of Psychology and Theology, 48(4), 308-31. Abstract To grasp human flourishing and thriving, we must understand joy. However, no theoretical models explain the complexity of joy as a fruit of the Spirit, nor fully account for its impact on human life. We suggest that joy is best conceptualized as a virtue, a psychological habit, comprised of characteristic adaptations and given meaning by transcendent narrative identity. Thus joy involves knowing, feeling, and enacting what matters most. Developmental science and Christian theological approaches to teleology inform the ultimate ends to which joy is aimed. They suggest that telos, the purpose or goal of development, may be understood as a dynamic process that perpetuates human and social thriving and involves (1) the growing…

Citation King, P. E., Schnitker, S. A., & Houltberg, B. (2020). Religious groups and institutions as a context for moral development: Religion as fertile ground. Handbook of Moral Development (ed. L. Jensen). New York: Oxford University Press, 592-612. Abstract An extensive body of research points toward spirituality and religiousness as resources for promoting human thriving. People with strong connections to the transcendent and religious meaning in life often view morals and values as central to their self-concepts. Although moral identity theory and contemporary views of virtue development emphasize the importance of narrative identity for habituated moral action, the two are often discussed in isolation of each other. In this chapter, the authors highlight how their commonality is particularly evident when examining the potential of religion to provide a transcendent self-narrative that leads to virtue formation and moral action within social contexts. This chapter describes how young people integrate religion and…

Citation Schnitker, S. A., King, P. E., & Houltberg, B. (2019). Religion, Spirituality, and Thriving: Transcendent Narrative, Virtue, and Lived Purpose. In Hardy, S. & King, P. E. (eds.). Special section: Processes of religious and spiritual influence in adolescence, Journal of Research on Adolescence, 29(2), 276-290. Abstract A theory is proposed to explain how religion/spirituality (R/S) is related to positive youth development and thriving. The concept of telos is employed to define thriving as continued growth through strength-based living that leads to contributing to one’s communities and living out one’s ethical ideals. Virtue development is proposed as a primary process by which R/S promotes thriving. Virtues are defined as hybrid personality units emerging when characteristic adaptations are given meaning by a transcendent narrative identity. R/S contributes to virtue formation through the ideological, social, and transcendent contexts embedded within religion by providing opportunities to grow both the characteristic adaptations and transcendent…

Longitudinal study by Sarah Schnitker to explore spirituality and virtue formation in physicians. An Exploration of the Role of Religion and Spirituality on Virtue Formation in Physicians.

Sarah Schnitker examines the connection between intercessory prayer and generosity with student researchers. Examining the Effects of Moral Intuitions and Intercessory Prayer on Generous Behavior.

Sarah Schnitker and Ben Houltberg examine the contexts in which teen athletes develop character strengths.

Thrive scholars measure 3 dimensions of intellectual humility for human thriving.

Sarah Schnitker and student researchers study the impact of goal sanctification on gratitude, generosity, and thrift.

Does goal satisfaction increase goal achievement? Sarah Schnitker examines personality dynamics.