Replication Data for: Virtue adherence, mental health, and the parental cultivation of character

In classical Greek and Roman philosophy, living virtuously is tantamount to wellbeing. This paper aims to expand the empirical literature on virtue in several ways. First, using a novel U.S. survey of parents and adolescents (n=1,849), I introduce and validate a measure of adherence to Cardinal virtues among youth. Virtue is highly associated with mental health (r=0.52) and a broad measure of psychological functioning (r=0.69) in unadjusted and adjusted models, and it is strongly predicted by parental reports of virtue cultivation (r=0.48). Second, using the Global Flourishing Project, I find that a shortened measure of virtue adherence strongly predicts adult mental health in 21 of 22 countries (n=202,730), with effect sizes reaching r=0.43 after adjusting for measurement error using Hunter-Schmidt methods for meta-analysis. Parental religiosity and the quality of parent-child relationships during childhood predict virtue adherence. The results suggest alignment with virtues may be an important aspect of lifelong psychological health.