Virtue trade-offs in everyday life.

Abstract

Is it usually possible to be virtuous in all ways, or do people experience ubiquitous trade-offs among moral virtues? Past work has examined a limited set of virtue pairs (e.g., honesty vs. compassion, fairness vs. loyalty) and focused on situations in which trade-offs are likely to occur. Across 2 day reconstruction method studies featuring representative U.S. samples, we investigate the frequency and experience of trade-offs among 12 virtues in everyday life. In Study 1 (N = 377), participants reported virtue conflicts during 12,385 episodes across 1 week. In Study 2 (N = 988), participants elaborated on one trade-off episode. Trade-offs most often involved honesty and courage, and coding of open-ended responses showed that many (but not all) trade-offs reflected a general tension between benevolence and integrity. Overall, however, prevalence estimates suggested that virtue enactments tend to be largely compatible in daily life. People felt less happy when they experienced a virtue trade-off, but it also mattered how they resolved them. People most often prioritized one virtue over the other (57%) but were most satisfied with their decision in the rare cases (12%) when they overcame the trade-off by showing high levels of both virtues. Finally, there was a general mismatch between people's proclaimed virtue preferences and which virtues they prioritized when they experienced an everyday trade-off (e.g., people prioritized honesty the most in the abstract but the least in everyday decisions). These findings highlight the importance of studying moral decision-making in ecologically valid contexts and have implications for moral education. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).