Abstract

According to situationism in psychology, behavior is primarily influenced by external situational factors rather than internal traits or motivations such as virtues. Environmental ethicists wish to promote pro-environmental behaviors capable of providing adequate protection for the environment, but situationist critiques suggest that character traits, and environmental virtues, are not as behaviorally robust as is typically supposed. Their views present a dilemma. Because ethicists cannot rely on virtues to produce pro-environmental behaviors, the only real way of salvaging environmental virtue theory is to reject or at least minimize the requirement that environmental ethics must provide protection and assistance to the environment. Virtue theory is often favored by environmentalists precisely because it does matter what one's reasons are for acting, even if one's actions are ineffective at producing positive results. However, because endorsing behaviorally ineffective virtues, for whatever reason, entails that environmental ethicists are abandoning the goal of helping and protecting the environment, environmental ethicists should consider looking elsewhere than virtues and focus instead on the role of situations.