Are there national virtues? Insights from a two nation comparative analysis
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| Year of publication | 2012 |
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| Description | We understand character strengths and virtues as morally good characteristics that everyone can either possess or learn. In this paper, we examined central virtues of two national groups including the difference in India and the Czech Republic, Europe. For assessing the variety and divergence, open ended questions were specially constructed which asked the groups to describe positive virtues and negative virtues that guided their behaviour. A crucial question was asked to rank order a fixed list of 15 virtues that were established as most important by a group of religious leaders. Graphical result in terms of rank order percentage of the virtues show that there may be considerable agreement about some crucial virtues that can be classified as international virtues, but there seem to be some virtues that vary greatly in importance and might be called national virtues. As an initiative to a cross cultural theoretical formulation, a critical discussion about the virtues have been presented that might emerge as a promising description of national cultures. |