A seemingly universal lesson is that anything taken to its extreme is detrimental. Indeed, there has been growing interest in testing this idea within psychology. These studies have often been framed in terms of Aristotle's doctrine of the golden mean or the idea that virtue lies between the vices of deficiency and excess. Recent explicit reviews of this hypothesis in the psychological literature have led to the paradoxical conclusion that one can have too much virtue (i.e., the too-much-of-a-good-thing effect) despite virtue being identified by the golden mean. We argue in this article that this conclusion is due to a reductionist account of virtues in psychology and the resultant measurement of virtues as general dispositional tendencies in behavior. We review philosophical theory on the golden mean to show that the relationship between virtue and relevant behavior is fundamentally about situation-specific optimality. Using schematic models, we contrast the former measurement approach against the latter to explain the too-much-of-a-good-thing effect and further demonstrate why virtues cannot be properly measured as general tendencies in behavior. We conclude with methodological implications of our theory-informed approach to virtue measurement for research design, evaluation, and conceptualization.

中文翻译：

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翻译中的迷失：角色美德的建构表征。

一个看似普遍的教训是，采取任何极端措施都是有害的。确实，人们越来越有兴趣在心理学中测试这一想法。这些研究通常是根据亚里士多德的黄金中庸学说或美德介于不足与过度之间的观点来进行构架的。最近在心理学文献中对该假设进行了明确的评论，得出了一个自相矛盾的结论，即尽管美德被黄金中庸了，但它仍然可以拥有太多的美德（即，太多的一件好事效应）。我们在本文中认为，这一结论是由于对心理学中美德的还原主义解释以及作为行为的一般性倾向而对美德的由此而来的衡量的结果。我们回顾关于中庸之道的哲学理论，以表明美德与相关行为之间的关系从根本上讲是针对特定情况的最优性。使用示意图模型，我们将前者的度量方法与后者的度量方法进行了对比，以解释太多的“好东西”效应，并进一步证明了为什么美德不能正确地作为行为的一般趋势进行度量。我们以理论上的方法对研究设计，评估和概念化进行美德测量的方法学意义进行了总结。我们将前者的测量方法与后者的方法进行了对比，以解释过多的“好东西”效应，并进一步证明了为什么不能将美德作为行为的一般趋势正确地进行测量。我们以理论上的方法对研究设计，评估和概念化进行美德测量的方法学意义进行了总结。我们将前者的测量方法与后者的测量方法进行了对比，以解释过多的“好东西”效应，并进一步证明了为什么不能将美德作为行为的一般趋势正确地进行测量。我们以理论告知方法进行美德测量的研究设计，评估和概念化的方法学意义作为结论。