Do virtues like being compassionate increase your well-being?
The emerging science of virtue aims to find out.
We've all been there: helping someone when you're exhausted, biting your tongue when someone's being difficult, or resisting that tempting dessert when you're trying to eat healthier. In those moments, being virtuous doesn't exactly feel good. So why do we keep hearing that virtue and happiness go hand in hand?
New research published in the Journal of Personality in December 2025 tackles this age-old question, and the findings might surprise you.
The Great Debate: Does Virtue Help You or Just Everyone Else?
This isn't a new argument. Philosophers have been wrestling with it for centuries. Aristotle and the 10th-century scholar al-Fārābī believed that being virtuous was essential for one's own well-being. But skeptics like Thomas Hobbes and Friedrich Nietzsche flipped that idea on its head, arguing that virtue only benefits others while you get the short end of the stick.
Modern psychology has leaned toward the skeptics' view, often treating morality and self-interest as opposing forces. Sure, studies show that generosity makes people happier, but what about the harder virtues? The ones that don't feel good in the moment?
Think about it: compassion means exposing yourself to other people's pain. Patience requires dealing with irritating situations. Self-control means denying yourself what you want or pushing through something difficult. None of that sounds particularly pleasant.
Testing Virtue in Real Life
To get to the bottom of this, researchers examined over 43,000 moments from 1,218 people's daily lives. They used two different approaches: prompting adolescents to answer questions at random times throughout their day, and asking adults to reflect on their previous day's experiences.
The researchers focused on three specific virtues—compassion, patience, and self-control—and tracked both how people felt (pleasant vs. unpleasant emotions) and whether they found their activities meaningful.
The Results: It's Complicated (But in a Good Way)
Here's where it gets interesting. The researchers confirmed what we all suspected: situations that call for compassion, patience, or self-control genuinely do feel worse than other situations. When you're dealing with someone in need or a difficult person, you naturally experience more negative emotions and fewer positive ones.
But here's the twist: people who consistently practice these virtues cope better with these challenging situations. Those who are habitually more compassionate, patient, and self-controlled report better overall well-being. And even for the same person, on days when they display more of these virtues than usual, they tend to feel better than they normally do.
In other words, yes, virtuous situations are harder. But being virtuous helps you handle them better—and actually improves how you feel.
Why This Matters
These findings support the ancient wisdom of Aristotle over the cynicism of Nietzsche. Virtue isn't just good for others; it's good for you too.
This research also contributes to an emerging shift in how scientists study morality. Instead of just examining how we make moral judgments or what external factors influence our behavior, researchers are increasingly interested in moral character traits and how they shape our entire lives.
What We Still Don't Know
As with all good research, this study raises as many questions as it answers. Do these benefits of virtue hold up across different life stages and cultures? Since this wasn't a randomized experiment, could there be some other factor that boosts both virtue and well-being simultaneously? Or does the relationship work in reverse—does feeling good make us more virtuous?
The most intriguing possibility is that there might be a "virtuous cycle" at play: virtue promotes well-being, which in turn promotes more virtue. If that's true, the next big question is how to help people get that positive cycle started.
The Takeaway
Being compassionate, patient, and self-controlled isn't always easy or immediately rewarding. Those moments when virtue is called for genuinely are more challenging than everyday life. But the research suggests that cultivating these qualities doesn't just make you a better person for others—it makes your own life better too.
So the next time you're practicing patience with a difficult colleague, showing compassion to someone struggling, or exercising self-control in a tempting situation, remember: you're not just doing the right thing. You might just be doing something good for yourself as well.