Well-doing: Personal projects and the quality of lives

Philosophical accounts of personal projects

Philosophers have used the concept of personal projects to illustrate issues critical to, and critical of, moral philosophy. Williams (1982) in his critique of utilitarian and Kantian accounts of morality claimed that individuals have ‘ground projects’ in their lives that make their lives worth living and without which it may seem futile to carry on. He argues that ignoring the personal projects of an agent constitutes an assault on that person’s integrity. Integrity for Williams is indexed by the set of ground projects with which we identify and that make us who we are. Both utilitarian and Kantian accounts of morality in Williams’ view fail to deal adequately with the concept of agency – where what we most internalize as core to our self is sacrificed to the calculus of what is best for all.

Lomasky (1987) has proposed a theory of rights based on a detailed and nuanced analysis of personal project pursuit. He is particularly careful to emphasize that personal projects are not restrictively self-focused. He posits that all project pursuers exhibit their agency by differentially favoring their own projects. But, he claims, there are also sound reasons to believe that humans have a biological disposition toward empathy that counteracts naked egoism:

There is a biological basis . . . to the denial that human beings are best modeled as fundamentally egoistic. Although each project pursuer does possess reason to favor differentially the ends to which he is committed, an inbuilt tendency to empathize with persons must also be recognized. The two are not necessarily opposed sources of motivation; rather, it can be expected that empathetic response will be reflected in the choices of projects that agents make. (Lomasky, 1987: 69)

More recently, the normative claim of personal projects has been explored by Betzler (2013) who regards projects as providing both shape and content to a life. They shape our lives by creating commitments that provide direction and coherence to daily lives. Coherence is achieved as a balance between striving toward project goals and settling on those that will be temporarily or permanently set aside. The content of projects provides value and a sense of meaning that will enhance well-being and stimulate both narrative and normative identity. In discussing well-being from a first-person perspective, Tiberius (2010) views reflection about the content of our personal projects and coming to terms with their complexity and potential conflict as key aspects of phronesis or practical wisdom. Although the psychological research on personal projects was developed independently of these philosophical perspectives, it is clear that there is considerable conceptual overlap.

Personal projects as units of analysis for personality science

A rationale and methodology for Personal Projects Analysis (PPA) was originally proposed by Little (1983) and elaborated in subsequent publications (Little, 1989, 1998, 1999b, 2007; Palys and Little, 1983). It was developed as a theoretical contribution to the person–situation debate in psychology and provided an alternative to locating either personality traits or environments (situations, contexts) as the prime source of influence on human conduct (Little, 1999a). Personal projects were seen as transactional units of analysis, intimately linked to both the propensities of individuals and the contexts within which action emerges. Personal project analysis provided a way of integrating and reconciling conflicting perspectives on personality that had become unnecessarily divisive (Little, 2006). The larger framework within which PPA was developed was a social ecological one, illustrated in Figure 1 (Little, 1999a, 2000a; Little and Ryan, 1979). Within this larger framework, personal projects are postulated as convergence points between stable and dynamic features of persons and environments in predicting diverse aspects of human flourishing. While acknowledging that persons and environments have direct influence upon the quality of lives, the framework draws particular attention to the content, appraisal, and dynamics of personal projects.

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 1.

A social ecological model of human flourishing (based on Little, 1999a).

Formally, personal projects are ‘extended sets of personally salient action in context’ (Little, 1999a). Let us consider each term and examine it through the eyes of Victoria, a fictitious, but I hope plausible exemplar of the kind of individuals we wish to understand by exploring their personal projects. Today she is visiting her mother in a care home. ‘Visit mom’ is extended action in two senses. First, it is extended in the quotidian – today the visit lasts just under 2 hours and has a beginning, middle, and an end. It also is extended in the sense that it links to a core project, ‘always take care of mom’, that has been enacted over several years. Her ‘visit mom’ project comprises sets of action such as driving to the care home, picking up some prescription medicine, and setting aside, yet again, a friend’s request to have lunch. Projects are always extended sets of action even though the duration may be very brief. Victoria’s ‘get fit’ project, first considered a month ago, was tentatively planned and then quickly abandoned as more urgent and demanding projects staked their claim on her commitments. Personal projects are personally salient to the extent that they stand out as actions for which you have some volitional investment: the difference, we might say, between a calculated wink and an automatic blink. And personal projects always take place in context. The ‘visit Mom’ project is facilitated by the proximity of Victoria’s place of residence to the care home, by the availability of reliable transportation, by the active assistance of her husband, Albert, and by the flex policies of her work place that allow her to slip away when needed. And, more subtly, it is enabled by the forbearance of her friends, who really miss her.

The methodology of PPA

PPA methodology is based on a set of measurement criteria that differ considerably from those guiding traditional assessment in personality psychology, especially trait psychology. I will first outline the basic procedures we use in PPA and then explicate the measurement criteria that are met by this kind of assessment (Little, 2000b).

PPA comprises four basic modules, an Elicitation Matrix, Appraisal Matrices, Cross-Impact Matrices, and a Hierarchy Module. For details of each of these PPA modules, see Little and Gee (2007) and for worked examples, see Little and Coulombe (in press).

The Elicitation Matrix requires agents to list their personal projects in short phrases (e.g. ‘try to understand Albert better’). These project listings, written in the idiosyncratic language of the participants, provide the answer to one of our opening questions, ‘What are you doing?’ The data from this module can be examined through content analytic procedures including the assessment of the linguistic features of how projects are phrased and specification of the different domains (e.g. interpersonal, vocational, health, etc.) in which projects are pursued.

In the Appraisal Matrices, participants rate each personal project on a set of standard as well as ad hoc dimensions. Informally, this PPA Module asks our second opening question, ‘How’s it going?’ of each of a person’s elicited projects. Formally, a j × k matrix is completed by the participant, in which j personal projects are rated on (typically) a 0 to 10 scale across k dimensions (such as Enjoyment, Difficulty, Control, Stress, etc.). Both j and k are variables, with j typically being 10, and k between 17 and 24. These constraints are modifiable, however, depending on the research questions being explored. The matrix also contains ‘Open’ columns in which individuals provide information about ‘with whom’ a project is being carried out and ‘where’ it is primarily located. The Elicitation Matrix data can be analyzed at the level of the single case or at the aggregate level for normative analysis. Aggregate level analysis involves calculation of k total scores (typically the mean of each of the k features across the j projects).

The Cross-Impact Matrix and the Joint Cross-Impact Matrix are each based on the assumption that personal projects form interacting systems and that a project may have a facilitating or frustrating effect on others within the system. In the Cross-Impact Matrix, participants rate each project on its degree of positive impact and negative impact on each of the other elicited projects. The Joint Cross-Impact Matrix carries out the same analyses but involves the examination of the mutual impact of two or more individuals’ projects (see Salmela-Aro and Little, 2007).

The Hierarchy Module locates each personal project within a hierarchy of superordinate (e.g. values, higher order goals) and subordinate acts (e.g. schedulable acts). The participants are asked a series of iterative questions about ‘why’ they are engaged in a project (which accesses a set of increasingly superordinate reasons) and ‘how’ they engage with the project (which accesses a set of increasingly subordinate acts through which the project gets accomplished (see Little and Coulombe, in press, for a worked example).

Let’s look at how each of these PPA modules would be used to cast light on Victoria’s ‘visit mom’ project. The project would appear in the Elicitation Matrix along with Victoria’s other personal projects. She might phrase it somewhat differently than I have. She might phrase it as ‘try to get to the care-home’, a phrasing that Chambers (2007) has shown is not as conducive to successful pursuit as a more direct one. How is she doing with this project? The Appraisal Matrix provides detailed information on whether she sees this as a meaningful pursuit (e.g. enjoyable, value congruent, self-expressive), whether it is manageable (e.g. control, time-adequacy), and whether it is a solitary venture or one that is supported by and connected with other people. Her ‘With Whom’ column might indicate that in every one of her most stressful projects, her husband Albert is included in the project. Only in the constantly deferred ‘get fit’ project is he conspicuously absent. In the Cross-Impact Matrix, we can assume that her ‘visit mom’ and ‘exercise more’ projects will be in conflict, in fact her numerous projects concerned with her mother are likely to potentiate each other but conflict with other pursuits that matter to Victoria. The Joint Cross-Impact Matrices completed by Victoria and Albert would show precisely where the greatest points of conflict are occurring in their project systems. But they might also cast light on one shared project, ‘meditation classes’, in which they support each other and feel personally fulfilled. Finally, in Victoria’s Hierarchy Module, she may find that her ‘visit Mom’ project is adjacent to a core value ‘giving back’ for which she needs no further justification. In response to the ‘How’ question, she may show that there is a nicely articulated set of steps through which her project can be implemented. For Victoria, in other words, the ‘visit Mom’ project is both meaningful and manageable.

Methodological criteria for assessment of personal projects

Personal projects were developed as analytic units within personality psychology with four broad methodological criteria as guides. First, drawing on George Kelly’s (1955) personal construct theory, PPA took a constructivist position on assessment. We assumed that the way that individuals construe their words is central to understanding how their personalities were shaped and how their lives progressed. Second, drawing on social ecological theory, personal projects took a contextualist view of human action – a belief that our personalities and projects are shaped, in part, by situations, places, and enveloping contexts (Little, 1987b, 2010). Third, by their very nature, personal projects are conative endeavors that involve striving, effort, and volitional engagement with a world of conflicting possibilities (Little, 1999b). Fourth, personal projects provide the possibility for consiliency between research traditions in personality psychology that otherwise operate in separate silos. For example, PPA was designed so that the intensive study of the single case and normative analysis of groups of individuals were both possible. We turn now to specific examples of how these broad measurement criteria are exemplified in PPA, with a specific focus on what they can contribute to our understanding of Victoria and Albert and how their personal projects shape their happiness and values and the quality of their lives.

Constructivist assessment: Reflexive, personally salient, and evocative

The kinds of analytic units we use in personality assessment and research reveal our assumptions about human nature, the stance we will take toward them in our explorations, and the specific type of methods deemed appropriate. Kelly (1955) proposed a reflexive theory of personality, one in which personal constructs, his unit of analysis, applied equally to the behavior of the agent being assessed and the scientist doing the assessing. Kelly assumed that each of us is a scientist, not just those with a PhD. We erect hypotheses, test them, and revise them in the light of our experiences. Our personal constructs can serve both as frames that structure our lives and cages that trap us, like the worker who boasts of a quarter century of experience that is really just 1 year of experience repeated 24 times. Personal projects, too, are reflexive units of analysis (Little, 1972). Just as the psychological assessor has exploratory projects that need to be sourced, structured, and nurtured, so too do those whom we are assessing. This means that the concept of a person that we assume and the stance we take toward agents are markedly different from those typically taken in psychological research. We are genuinely interested in soliciting accounts from those we study about the activities that define their lives and the projects to which they are partial that consume their time and interest.

The information that is generated in project analytic inquiry is consequently personally salient to the agent being assessed. In conventional trait measurement, the items reflect concerns that are salient to the researcher; in PPA, the unit of analysis is the direct answer to the question of ‘what are you doing?’

A further consequence of adopting a constructivist approach to personal project assessment is that the procedure itself can be highly evocative – participants often report enjoying the experience and finding it engaging (Omodei and Wearing, 1990). Although I don’t want to claim that all psychological assessment must be evocative, it does add value to the process if the participant becomes fully involved. The rapid proliferation of web-based testing procedures can both frustrate and facilitate the assessment experience. Many personality questionnaires can now be completed online in a few minutes and require little thought or reflection. PPA requires more of the agent. In the process of elucidating the content, appraisal and impact of their projects they are dealing, in a systematic fashion, with issues that matter to them personally. And this experience can be enhanced by the online incorporation of data visualization techniques and other feedback procedures that add even further evocativeness to the experience (Little, 2005). For example, a popular website called 43 Things (http://www.43things.com) asks individuals to list their life goals and then provides extensive feedback from other individuals such as affirming its value, providing details of how others have worked on a similar project, and hints on avoiding problems. The whole logic of PPA encourages researchers to develop similar applications. Studies could be designed in which students’ personal projects could receive online feedback from peers, teachers and even cool moral philosophers. Or dead ones, for that matter. While the use of WWAD (What Would Aristotle Do?) probes may be seen as rather fanciful, the point is that the technology is already available in which such scripts could be employed. In short, when we assess individuals about the pursuit of their core projects and the social ecology of doing good and being well it seems bizarre for the procedure to be anything other than evocative and creative. Most certainly, psychological assessment neither should be nor needs to be as deeply boring as it sometimes is (Little, 2005).

Contextualist assessment: Representative, temporal, and policy relevant

Contextualist assessment takes seriously the embedded nature of human personality. Unlike traits, which are typically conceived of as trans-contextual units of analysis, personal projects are pursued within a social ecology that ranges from the micro-contexts of single acts to the macro-contexts of cultural and historical influences. The methodological implication of this is that PPA needs to access these features of project pursuit. We elicit, in several different modules, information about the social, physical, and temporal ecologies within which the projects are embedded, what we technically refer to as ecologically representative measurement (Little, 2000a). For example, in the Elicitation Matrix, the content of the projects themselves will often convey information about the eco-setting like ‘cope with Edinburgh’s weather’ or ‘find a place where I can escape from the noise’. The Open Columns (the ‘Where’ and ‘With Whom’ spaces in the Appraisal Matrix) enable us to calculate various indices, such as whether projects are carried out as solo ventures or with others, and if the latter, whether they involve a small or broad range of other individuals. The ‘Where’ column allows us literally to map the project landscape of agents and calculate indices of the geographical distance traveled in pursuit of projects. Well-being is inversely related to the physical distance between the places where people pursue their projects (Martennson, 1977), a finding that will resonate for those, like Victoria, whose daily pursuits involve a dash between house, hospital, day-care center, and work place. More intensive analysis with PPA can examine the specific features of the daily ecology that facilitate or frustrate project pursuit, such as the barriers to older people using outdoor spaces (Sugyama and Ward Thompson, 2005) or the impact of a firm’s organizational climate on workers’ sense of autonomy in their work projects (Phillips et al., 1997).

An important aspect of project pursuit is the temporal ecology in which it is enacted. Personal projects are, by definition, temporally extended – they are diachronic events and co-exist with other projects, both one’s own and those of other people. The possibility for conflict brought about merely by time constraints raises both prudential and moral problems for agents. Prudentially, the choice of which project to pursue at any given time involves consideration of its standing relative to other competing projects in that person’s metaphorical or real ‘To Do’ list. Some of the earliest empirical research on procrastination was carried out within a project analytic framework using PPA (Lay, 1986; Pychyl and Little, 1998). Morally, the temporal ecology involves interpersonal tradeoffs in which conflict between an agent’s pursuits conflict, at any given time, with those of other agents. Here, questions of forbearance, generosity, and supererogation arise, not just as abstract aspects of the good, but also as the thickly textured doings of daily life.

The third contextualist feature of PPA derives directly from the social ecological framework depicted in Figure 1. The research agenda of PPA informs us not only about the personal projects of individuals but also about the relatively stable and dynamic contexts in which they are enacted and such data are policy relevant.

Since its inception in the late 1970s, PPA data have been stored in SEAbank (Social Ecological Assessment data bank), which contains information about the content, appraisal, and impacts of personal projects, at both the individual project and the aggregate level (Little and Gee, 2007). It also contains data from measures of personality, health, and subjective well-being and, importantly from a policy perspective, demographic, and locational data. This allows us to explore questions such as in which regions, cities, or locales individuals are pursuing projects that are particularly high in a sense of agency, or what living arrangements are most conducive to the pursuit of value-congruent projects for elderly people? In short, PPA provides us with rich information about the features of both persons and their environments through analyzing the ‘carrier units’ that convey their joint influence (Little, 1989).

Conative assessment: Systemic, middle-level, and modular

Personal projects form systems and the resulting systemic properties allow us to access important information about the motivational force of the doings of individuals. Personal projects are conative endeavors embodying a person’s striving for and volitional pursuit of valued ends. A pivotal feature of the systemic, volitional nature of personal projects is the role played by core projects. Core projects provide support for and meaning to other pursuits and in this sense represent the architectonic core of a person’s project system. We can assess the core nature of a personal project by examining the extent to which it is implicatively linked with every other project using an adaptation of the PPA Hierarchy module. A core project, under this measure, is one that has a rich array of linkages with other projects – if it were to be removed from the project system most other projects would fall as well. Some projects, even important and compelling ones, might be isolated from the rest of a person’s pursuits. Shake them and not much happens elsewhere. Shake a core project, however, and the whole structure might come tumbling down. Indeed, by adapting aspects of the PPA Hierarchy Module personal project researchers have shown that core projects are particularly resistant to change. If Victoria’s project of nurturing her mom were not a core one then she might be willing to re-appraise its importance or turn it over to her brother or even abandon it. But if it is core, as I am assuming here, it will be a defining pursuit and one that would be resolutely defended. Sometimes seemingly inscrutable behavior can be made sense of by realizing that your actions or comments may be getting very close to a person’s core project, and they may react accordingly.

The Hierarchy Module allows us to locate personal projects in terms of a hierarchy of action ranging from subordinate acts, through middle-level pursuits, up to superordinate concerns, typically values. The distinctive feature of PPA is its ability to assess how these different levels of analysis work together. In this respect, personal projects are middle-level units of analysis that allow access to both the principled reasons and the pragmatic actions of their pursuit. Some individuals seem to tilt their projects more to the micro-level acts through which they are achieved, whereas others tilt more to the values that are being enacted through the project (see also Vallacher and Wegner, 1987). The former strategy is more likely to conduce to progress in one’s projects and the latter is more likely to foster a sense of meaning. This can lead to what we have called a meaning-manageability trade-off in project pursuit in which some individuals have deeply meaningful ‘magnificent obsessions’ that may never truly get implicated and others have entirely do-able doings that they and others see as ‘trivial pursuits’ (Little, 1989).

However, our empirical evidence suggests that meaningfulness and manageability of personal projects are orthogonal constructs not negative correlated ones. So for some individuals, their project pursuits are both meaningless and unmanageable, and their well-being will be compromised. But there is a fortunate group of individuals whose personal projects, including their core projects, are both expressions of their deepest values and crafted in such a way as to promote successful pursuit. Central to that successful pursuit may be the ability and desire to flexibly alternate between the principled and pragmatic aspects of project pursuit.

There is an important methodological implication of the systemic, conative nature of personal projects and this is the need for modular assessment. Most psychological assessment devices are fixed, rather than modular. They require both the assessor and the person being assessed to adhere to a rigid standardized regimen. Any deviation from this regimen invalidates the test. As a consequence, it is difficult, if not impossible, to adapt the test to new issues of interest, new constructs that emerge in a field or the distinctive features of the individual, group, or eco-setting being assessed. PPA, in contrast, is a multi-modular methodology explicitly designed to be fully flexible and adaptive. We have already seen how PPA is based on several interconnected modules that serve as a kind of logic board through which there can be cross-talk. But there is more modularity within each of the modules. For example, we can augment the standard set of appraisal dimensions by ad hoc dimensions relevant to the individual or group being assessed. In studying middle-aged men, we have added a dimension tapping how old they feel when engaged in each of their projects, finding that when they engage in administrative projects men feel much older and when they engage sports pursuits they feel much younger. We have added relevant dimensions to tap into the distinctive social ecologies of groups as diverse as Newfoundland fishers, anorexic patients in urban centers, senior high-tech executives, pregnant women, and entrepreneurs. Each of these groups is administered the standard set of PPA dimensions which can be used for comparative purposes with other groups and for cumulative use in running meta-analyses. What we frequently find is that it is the special dimensions added specifically for that group which have the greatest utility in predicting consequential features of project pursuit, such as subjective well-being or more objectively measured success. In a sense, then, PPA has an invitational quality to it as an assessment methodology. It asks the researcher not just to choose the right test to measure a particular construct as in conventional assessment. Rather, it invites the researcher to work collaboratively with those she wishes to assess in order to incorporate new dimensions that can then be compared for the predictive or explanatory value relative to standard dimensions. For those wishing to study virtue as embodied in project pursuit, for example, it is possible to create new appraisal dimensions that assess some of the major constructs derived from philosophical analyses of project pursuit.

Consilient assessment: Conjoint, integrative, and directly applicable

The final set of assessment criteria guiding PPA relates to Wilson’s (1998) advocacy of consiliency (literally, jumping together) between different fields of discourse in the sciences and the humanities. Many fields are relevant to the study of personal project pursuit and the modular flexibility of PPA enables such fields to join in the jumping if they so desire. Within psychology there are two fields of assessment research that seldom interact let alone leap together. One is the intensive study of the single case, often referred to as idiographic assessment. The other is the comparative analysis of individual differences or normative assessment. The conflict between these two approaches has a long history, and it has received renewed attention recently with a series of attacks upon the logic and relevance of normative measurement (e.g. Borsboom et al., 2004). But PPA provides the possibility of conjoint measurement – of assessing individuals both idiographically and normatively.

Consider, for example, that we were interested in exploring the relation between eudaimonic and hedonistic well-being by assessing the correlation between value congruency in one’s personal projects and enjoyment of them (McGregor and Little, 1998). We could do this in two ways. First, we can do a normative analysis in which we create two vectors, based on the mean rating (across projects) of individuals’ appraisals of how value congruent and enjoyable their projects are. We might find, for example, that at the normative level, there are modestly positive correlations between these two dimensions. Second, we could assess the relation idiographically by focusing only on the projects of a single individual and calculating the correlation between the dimensions across projects without aggregating scores for comparative analysis. We may find, for example, that Victoria’s projects are such that the higher the degree of value congruency in her projects, the lower the degree of enjoyment. Albert’s project matrix might show the very opposite. His most value-congruent pursuits are those that make him the happiest. Both idiographic and normative approaches are legitimate ways of exploring aspects of project pursuit although they represent different levels of measurement. An important measurement issue arises when we attempt to generalize from the individual level to the normative level of analysis. This is the technical question of whether the dimensionality of normative project space is isomorphic with that of the aggregated individual spaces. In an extensive and important analysis of this issue, Gee (1998) found a high degree of isomorphism between individual and normative project spaces. For example, there is a consistent negative correlation between stress and efficacy in personal projects at the normative level and similarly at the individual level. But there are a few individuals for whom this relation may be reversed. Such cases might possibly be of clinical interest.

Beyond providing a means of linking idiographic and normative analysis, PPA was developed more broadly as an integrative methodology, one that encouraged exploration of the cognitive, affective, conative, and behavioral aspects of project pursuit. The modular capacity of PPA helped facilitate this aspiration. For example, the original appraisal dimensions were heavily weighted in terms or ‘cognitive’ or cooler dimensions such as whether a project was construed as under one’s control, initiated by oneself, likely to be successfully completed, and so on. But when the affective turn in psychological science occurred in subsequent decades, we were able to create new dimensions that tapped not only into how agents think about their project but how they feel about it as well. Our most recent versions of PPA have split the original Appraisal Matrix into two: The first concerns what people think about their projects with the standard PPA dimensions except for enjoyment and stress. The second asks them how they feel about each project when they engage in it, including dimensions such as excitement, joy, love, anger, anxiety, and hatred. Factor analytic studies of this expanded matrix have generated a five-factor structure: project meaning, manageability, connection, positive effect, and negative effect. A good case can be made for seeing these factors derived from the study of personal projects as similar to the Big Five factors retrieved from trait studies corresponding respectively to Openness to Experience, Conscientiousness, Agreeableness, Extraversion, and Neuroticism. Both trait and project measures are useful for understanding how people’s lives are going, although I would claim that while traits may predict consequential aspects of well-being and virtuous conduct, that influence is routed through the personal projects that are pursued by them. Indeed, there is empirical evidence that the impact of traits on well-being is fully mediated by project dimensions, especially be the sense of efficacy experienced in the pursuit of projects, a key dimension of the manageability factor (Albuquerque et al., 2013).

The final consilient feature of PPA is that it facilitates interaction between theoretical and applied research. Unlike traits, which are recalcitrant to change, personal projects can be dropped, delegated, expanded, made smaller, abandoned, or re-invigorated. This direct applicability of PPA has led to its being adopted in applied fields such as clinical and counseling psychology, landscape design, occupational therapy, organizational development, and rehabilitation (Little et al., 2007). Some of these applied uses of PPA are designed to change the way in which individuals construe and manage their projects; others are concerned with enhancing the capacity of the person’s context to facilitate the accomplishment of core projects.

Although the applied uses of PPA are promising, they require close attention to the complexity of the link between personal projects and the quality of life. For example, Matsuba (2000) found that ‘moral exemplars’ among those in transition to adulthood are highly agreeable individuals but they experience low levels of coherence within their personal project systems. This is somewhat surprising, in that we might have expected those living highly virtuous lives to craft well-integrated sets of interlocked projects. But perhaps this shows something more subtle – that a virtuous life may be a messy life and that trying to make it more coherent while increasing a sense of well-being may reduce the beneficence of the well-doing that made things messy.

I wish to conclude by giving two more detailed examples of how a project analytic approach can address aspects of well-doing, happiness, and virtue. The first involves an educational context and concerns the link between a sense of self-identity in one’s projects and giving to others. The second involves how, in the service of our personal projects, we may act out of character, and why this matters.

Self-identity and intimate connection: The personal projects of adolescents

What are the personal projects of adolescents and how do they appraise their significance? We explored this question in a study of Canadian high school students (see Little, 1987a). All students in the school were administered PPA, and we examined how they appraised projects in different domains such as academic and interpersonal projects. Of particular interest to us was to determine in which project domains, students experienced a high level of self-identity – a sense that the project was truly self-expressive, that it could be seen as a personal trademark. The results were revealing. Mean scores of ratings on self-identity for different project domains (the potential range was from 0 to 10) indicated that the most self-expressive domains for the students were as follows: Sports (8.14), Boyfriend–Girlfriend (8.45), Sex (8.63), Spiritual (8.85), and Community/Volunteering (9.75). It is interesting to speculate on what is the common element in these domains. Each involves a sense of connection, perhaps even intimate connection, with others: The camaraderie of sports teams, the intimate tenderness of sexual exploration, the merging with the other that is said to occur in spiritual quests, and the capaciousness experienced when giving to others all represent varieties of intimate connection. But why ought this to be experienced as self-expressive? Why do teenagers experience these intimate connections with others as deeply self-expressive? Some of the classic theories of social development argue that in order to achieve a sense of intimacy with others one needs first to have achieved a firm sense of personal self-identity. Only after that sense of independent identity is established can one move into truly intimate connection with others. But I wonder if the data from PPA might reveal something rather different. Could it be that a sense of personal identity and a sense of intimate connection with others are co-constituted in adolescence and young adulthood? I discover who I am by what I do to and with others. Well-doing and the quality of a life may emerge as a continuing transaction between an individual agent and others who matter to her through projects that engage both.

Acting out of character: Free traits and the sustainable pursuit of core projects

One of the consequences of pursuing our personal projects, particularly our core projects, is that their successful accomplishment might require us to act in ways that run counter to our biogenic traits through the expression of what I call ‘free traits’ (Little, 1996, 2000a). An introverted teacher advances her core project of exciting her students about mathematics, by acting counter-dispositionally as a highly extraverted person. She is enacting the free trait of extraversion. A highly agreeable woman, like Victoria, might find that she needs to act in a decidedly disagreeable way in order to redress a wrong suffered by her mother. A neurotic student might suck it up for all of April in order to successfully complete his project to graduate with highest honors.

In each of these cases, we witness individuals acting out of character. I mean this in two senses. It is out of character in the sense that it contrasts with the way in which the individual typically behaves. But the phrase ‘acting out of character’ also means acting on the basis of one’s character – that is, acting in the service of values that matter. Victoria may be a sensitive and rather shy person, but when it comes to her mother’s welfare, Victoria can adopt the script of ‘Hurricane Vicky’ and, through forceful and insistent action, get some justice in a bureaucratic world that just didn’t seem to listen.

Acting out of character by adopting free traits has both benefits and costs. The most important benefit is that it can help a person achieve a core project. It also provides an opportunity to increase one’s behavioral repertoire, to stretch a bit rather than stay within one’s more biogenically comfortable range. Sometimes counter-dispositional behavior can bring about unanticipated benefits. There is evidence, for example, that when introverted individuals act as extraverts they experience more positive emotions (Fleeson et al., 2002; Zelenski et al., 2012). However, there might be potential costs to acting against one’s biogenic dispositions, especially if the free-trait behavior occurs over an extended period of time. On the basis of some exploratory research (Little and Joseph, 2007), I have suggested that there may be psychological and physiological costs to engaging in protracted free-trait behavior. Victoria may be able to act disagreeably over a period of several days without incurring any costs. But I doubt that this could be extended over weeks or months without it taking a toll. I suspect this is not an uncommon situation. In pursuing projects of value, our well-doing can compromise our well-being. The introverted teacher who acts out of character because she adores both mathematics and her students might burn out after a school term and both her health and her evocative teaching might suffer. But is there anything that might mitigate these costs of acting out of character? I think there is and it can be understood by examining how human flourishing relates to project pursuit.

One of the central propositions of project analytic theory is that human flourishing is contingent upon the sustainable pursuit of core projects (Little, 2011). Sustainability can be enhanced by both internal and external factors. Internally, core projects that are meaningful, manageable, supported by others, and generate more positive than negative emotions are more sustainable. We persist more in such projects, and they will have sufficient motivational force to withstand temporary setbacks. Importantly, having manageable or efficacious projects is not sufficient in itself to sustain their pursuit; the projects also need to be meaningful. For example, PPA has been adopted in some studies (Sheldon and Kasser, 1998) to explore aspects of Self-Determination Theory, a motivational perspective that shares a number of assumptions with the project analytic perspective (Ryan and Deci, 2001; Ryan et al., 2013). Sheldon and Kasser demonstrated that well-being is enhanced when individuals are experiencing efficacious project pursuit, but only if those projects are also meaningful in the sense of being experienced as self-determined. Checking off a daily list of trivial pursuits, however, much it might promote a feeling of accomplishment will not be a sustainable path to well-being; sustainable pursuit is a meaningful pursuit that is anticipated to be successfully accomplished.

External factors are also significant for the sustainable pursuit of core projects. As we see in Figure 1, contextual factors have both direct and indirect effects on aspects of living well. Some of the most powerful influences that will facilitate core project pursuit are those that arise from our interactions with other agents. We have found that the emotional support of one’s partner was critical to the personal project of having a baby, both in terms of subjective appraisals of the experience of giving birth and objective measures of healthy delivery (McKeen, 1984). And when we explored the factors that promoted successful entrepreneurial activity, the same factor, emotional support of partners, was a strong predictor of both subjective and objective success – of creating a flourishing venture – a company that they thought of as ‘our baby’ (Dowden, 2004).

And what about those individuals who are required to act out of character in their core project pursuits? We have proposed that the costs of such behavior can be reduced by the availability of restorative resources that allow individuals’ access to places or states in which biogenic needs are met and their natures can be nurtured (Little, 2010; Little and Joseph, 2007). The introverted teacher might find a restorative niche in a quiet room that she repairs to right after class and which gives her the reduced stimulation and quiescence that are important to biogenically introverted people. Victoria might find that if she engages in meditation after a protracted period of being pushy, she feels restored and rejuvenated, ready to take up cudgels against heartless bureaucracy again on Tuesday. In each of these cases, personal projects are rooted in ethical commitments and routed through social ecologies that can mitigate or exacerbating the costs involved. Leading a good and virtuous life, from a project analytic view, is not merely the possession of morally admirable traits or happy dispositions. It is the sustained pursuit of core projects – well-doing embodied in meaningful projects – that creates the quality of human lives. They give us reasons to carry on in even the most perplexing of times and to engage with the singular and shared challenges that confront each of us on our Tuesday mornings.