Virtue Development and Relational Flourishing

Below are some of the virtues highlighted in our research on Virtue Development and Relational Flourishing. More details about the project can be reviewed here at virtueandflourishing.com.

Humility

Research on humility has increased dramatically in the last decade. We have sought to understand humility within the human experience, and our research and writing has focused on humility in connection with the following:

  • spirituality and religion (e.g., barriers, attachment to God)
  • psychotherapy
  • intercultural competence and social justice
  • racial perspectives
  • depression
  • romantic relationships
  • forgiveness
  • graduate training
Humility Publications

 

Forgiveness

We seek to understand how partner- and self-forgiveness intersect with multiple areas of the human experience, and delineate ways to foster forgiveness to alleviate suffering, and promote healing, growth, and change.

Areas in which we have examined forgiveness include:

  • spirituality
  • romantic relationships (Americans and Indians)
  • couple, family, and group therapy
  • borderline personality disorder
  • cross-culturally (Cameroonians and Americans)
Forgiveness Publications

 

Relational Virtue Engagement Scale (RVE) – Choe et al., 2023 & Jankowski et al., 2024

Description

The Relational Virtue Engagement Scale (RVE) is a 11-item measure of general virtuousness. The RVE was designed to have an intermediate level of specificity (i.e., not trait nor state-level) to be more sensitive to changes in implicit relational virtues through recent behaviors. The RVE has been validated across two studies (Choe et al., 2023; Jankowski et al., 2024), and has been utilized within practice-based studies with psychotherapy clients (e.g., Crabtree et al., 2025; Jankowski et al., 2025). The RVE has shown to have a bi-factor model with a strong general factor of virtuousness.  It can also be used as various subscales that assess more specific relational virtues (i.e., cultural humility, intellectual humility, gratitude, forgiveness, allocentricity).

Instructions:

In the last week*, how often have you engaged in the following behaviors, if they were appropriate to the situation?

* This time frame may be adjusted as needed.

Scale:

1 = Never 2 3 4 5 = Almost always

Items:

  1. I was genuinely interested in learning more about a cultural difference.
  2. I worked to see a different perspective about a cultural difference.
  3. I reminded myself that I might not be right about a cultural difference.
  4. I acknowledged the contributions of others.
  5. I took moments to enjoy a sense of gratitude.
  6. I expressed gratitude to others.
  7. I worked at forgiving a hurt.
  8. I tried to see an offense from a different perspective.
  9. I reminded myself that I may not be as “right” as I feel.
  10. I sought alternative points of view on a disagreement.
  11. I explored the limitations of my perspective on an area of disagreement.

Scoring:

The full scale and all subscales can be calculated as the mean of the items included in that scale. Higher scores indicate higher virtue engagement.

General Virtuousness: All items

Cultural humility: 1, 2, 3, 4

Intellectual humility (perspective-taking): 9, 10, 11

Allocentricity: 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11

Gratitude: 5, 6

Forgiveness: 7, 8

References

Choe, E. J. Y., Jankowski, P. J., Sandage, S. J., Crabtree, S. A., & Captari, L. E. (2022). A practice‐based study of cultural humility and well‐being among psychotherapy clients. Counselling and Psychotherapy Research, 23(1), 152-163. https://doi.org/10.1002/capr.12599

Crabtree, S. A., Captari, L. E., Hydinger, K. R., Jankowski, P. J., & Sandage, S. E. (2025). Virtue engagement in contemporary relational psychotherapy: A mixed-methods practice-based study. Counselling and Psychotherapy Research, 25, 1-14. https://doi.org/10.1002/capr.12856

Jankowski, P. J., Sandage, S. J., Captari, L. E., Crabtree, S. A., Choe, E. J. Y., & Gerstenblith, J. (2024). A practice‐based study of relational virtues and alliance correspondence in psychodynamic psychotherapy. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 80(6), 1323-1344. https://doi.org/10.1002/jclp.23669

Jankowski, P. J., Sandage, S. J., Davis, D. E., Stein, L., & Choe, E. J. Y. (2025). Validating self-other differentiation in a psychodynamic psychotherapy context: Virtues, emotion regulation, and well-being. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 81, 985-996. https://doi.org/10.1002/jclp.70012

 

The development of this measure was supported by two grants from the John Templeton Foundation on Virtue, Flourishing, and Mental Healthcare (#61603, #63654).