ABSTRACT

Habitual virtuous actions are performed repeatedly and automatically, that is, apparently without thinking. In this chapter, I bring recent work on automaticity in cognitive and social psychology to bear on our understanding of habitual virtuous actions. In section 2, I off er a brief primer on automaticity, focusing mainly on one form, goal-dependent automaticity. Goal-dependent automaticity, I believe, furnishes a promising empirical framework for understanding habitual virtuous actions, including how and why such actions can occur across many objectively

diff erent situation-types. In section 3, I examine recent accounts of habitual action and habitual virtuous action advanced by Pollard (2003). I give my own account of habitual action in terms of goal-dependent automaticity in section 4, and extend it to the case of habitual virtuous action in section 5.