Wake Forest Professors Win Grant To Measure Morality

A team of Wake Forest professors has received a $3.9 million dollar grant to study what makes people good, and what the rest of us can learn from them.

The award from the Templeton Religion Trust is among the biggest social science grants in the university's history, and will kick-start what the team is calling “The Beacon Project.”

The three-year initiative aims to identify morally exceptional people in an effort to better understand what makes them good, what society can learn from them, and how others can apply those lessons to their own lives.

Wake Forest psychology professor Will Fleeson is leading the project. He says he believes there's now a hunger for intelligent discussions about morality and what it means.

But he admits defining and measuring morality is not easy. He points to the case of Kim Davis, the Kentucky county clerk who was recently sent to jail after refusing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

“Here's a great example of someone who's being held up by many people as a moral hero, because she's sacrificing her freedom for moral principles,” Fleeson says. “Yet, at the same time, she's being held up as a moral villain by other people because she's using her power to deny people their constitutional right to get married.”

Fleeson says his hope is the project will launch a new field of academic study that starts meaningful conversations about bolstering moral character.