What’s Virtue Got to Do with It? Experimental Evidence for Increasing Intellectual Character in Higher Education

Intellectual virtues are gaining popularity in higher education as students, and citizens more broadly, face a torrent of (mis)information in the digital age. To foster the development of individuals with the attributes of careful, reflective thinking consonant with the ideals of liberal education, intellectual character education is being promoted. To date, the testing of this general theory has been limited to exploratory, pilot, or non-experimental evaluations. We report a multi-year experiment of a novel online, course-embedded intellectual virtue curriculum delivered in university classes that was designed to improve undergraduates’ thinking dispositions. Within each course, we randomly assigned students (N = 361) to receive either the intellectual virtue curriculum or a control condition. College students in the intervention condition experienced a series of modules and activities related to developing four key thinking dispositions (curiosity, humility, integrity, and tenacity). We assessed students on these four dispositions and three self-reported knowledge of intellectual virtue measures at pretest and posttest. The analyses showed that the intervention has a positive impact on the intellectual virtue(s) of undergraduate students enrolled at university. Additionally, we find large effects of the intervention on self-reported knowledge measures. Results have implications for virtue science, character education programs, and studies related to improving critical thinking.