545847

research-article2014
TRE0010.1177/1477878514545847Theory and Research in EducationLittle

Article
TRE
Theory and Research in Education

Well-doing: Personal
2014, Vol. 12(3) 329346
The Author(s) 2014
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DOI: 10.1177/1477878514545847
quality of lives tre.sagepub.com

Brian R. Little
University of Cambridge, UK

Abstract
What are you doing? and How is it going? are foundational questions we can ask of agents. They
elicit answers that illuminate aspects of well-doing, or felicitous action, by directing attention to an
agents personal projects. Personal projects are constitutive elements of daily existence and are
consequential for a happy and virtuous life. They have been studied within philosophy, especially
in critiques of consequentialist theory. They have been studied by personality psychologists with
a methodology, Personal Projects Analysis that measures the content, appraisal, dynamics, and
impact of the projects being pursued by individuals. In contrast with more traditional ways of
measuring personality, Personal Projects Analysis provides thick descriptions of how happiness
and virtue are embodied in daily action and embedded in social, physical, temporal, and value
contexts. The methodology is designed to facilitate interdisciplinary collaboration in contributing
to the explanation and the enhancement of well-doing and the quality of lives.

Keywords
Happiness, personal projects, Personal Projects Analysis (PPA), quality of lives,
virtue, well-doing

Introduction
How might personality influence the living of a happy and virtuous life? How might this
influence be assessed? In answering these questions, it is important to differentiate the
having and the doing aspects of personality (Allport, 1937; Cantor, 1990). The former
is studied by trait psychology and examines stable dispositions that individuals have and
that are assumed to influence the quality of our lives. From this perspective, happy and
virtuous lives derive, in part, from traits that are biogenic, causal forces that are relatively
resistant to change. There is some consensus among personality researchers that there are

Corresponding author:
Brian R. Little, Department of Psychology, University of Cambridge, Free School Lane, Cambridge CB23RQ,
UK.
Email: bl321@cam.ac.uk

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330 Theory and Research in Education 12(3)

five major traits, the so-called Big Five, which emerge in studies in a wide array of lan-
guages and cultures: openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeable-
ness, and neuroticism. There is also extensive evidence that these traits are associated with
diverse aspects of well-being, for example, that extraversion (positively) and neuroticism
(negatively) are reliably associated with happiness (e.g. Costa and McCrae, 1980) and
that conscientiousness is linked to diverse types of human achievement (e.g. Ozer and
Benet-Martnez, 2006; Roberts etal., 2009). With respect to virtue, the trait approach has
also received attention, although not as extensively as with well-being. For example, trait-
like measures of virtues, such as Peterson and Seligmans (2004) VIA (Values in Action)
measure, are thought to be highly redundant with the Big Five traits (Noftle etal., 2011).
For reasons that I elaborate in what follows, I believe that trait measures of the hav-
ing aspects of personality, while providing a useful perspective on aspects of the good
life, are unable to address some of the subtle and critical factors that arise when we are
trying to live happy and moral lives.
The doing aspect of personality is studied by personality researchers who focus upon
an individuals action in context, such as their personal projects (Little, 1983). Personal
projects are assumed not only to reflect and express individuals personalities, but they
also implicate a set of contextual features that are missing in the trait approach. Both
approaches have significant contributions to make to the study of well-being and virtue.
The contributions of trait psychology to this venture are well known, albeit contentious
(Kristjnsson, 2013). I am going to present the case for a personal project approach to the
quality of human lives. From this perspective, happiness and virtue are embodied in the
projects to which we commit and are embedded within contextual features that can facili-
tate or frustrate their pursuit (Little, 1983; Little etal., 2007). More specifically, I will
make the case that, on both theoretical and methodological grounds, the study of personal
projects, the doings of daily lives, provides us greater scope for reflection on happiness
and virtue than the study of the havings of those who are doing the doing.
The explication of this case is organized in three sections. First, after a brief concep-
tual overview of what we typically mean when we talk about a person pursuing personal
projects, I will discuss some recent philosophical perspectives on personal projects that
raise questions central to the analysis and adjudication of human well-being and virtue.
Second, 12 foundational measurement criteria for the assessment of personal projects
will be reviewed, with an emphasis upon how they differ from the measurement criteria
used for assessing personality and moral traits. Third, I discuss two examples of how a
project analytic perspective can illuminate aspects of living well: The first explores some
surprising evidence about the self-expressive projects of high school students and the
second illustrates how our personal projects may require us to act out of character and
how that can enhance our flourishing or bring us to our knees.

Personal projects: A conceptual overview

Personal projects are constituent elements of daily lives. They can range from the routine
tasks of daily lives to the overarching aspirations of a lifetime, from put out the dog to
liberate my people. We may initiate our projects or they may be thrust upon us. They may
be individualistic pursuits or communal ones. Some of our projects may bring us joy and
others may devastate us. Our core projects, those in which we are particularly and singularly

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Little 331

invested, may be sustainable pursuits that enhance our well-being and be constitutive of our
flourishing. Or they may come to nothing and frustrate our deepest aspirations. In short, as
I will explain later, our well-being reflects the state of affairs of our personal projects. We
might say, indeed, that human well-being is contingent upon well-doing.

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 persons
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 coun-
teracts 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 pro-
posed by Little (1983) and elaborated in subsequent publications (Little, 1989, 1998,

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332 Theory and Research in Education 12(3)

1999b, 2007; Palys and Little, 1983). It was developed as a theoretical contribution to the
personsituation debate in psychology and provided an alternative to locating either per-
sonality 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 rec-
onciling conflicting perspectives on personality that had become unnecessarily divisive
(Little, 2006). The larger framework within which PPA was developed was a social eco-
logical 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 con-
tent, appraisal, and dynamics of personal projects.
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 friends
request to have lunch. Projects are always extended sets of action even though the dura-
tion may be very brief. Victorias get fit project, first considered a month ago, was tenta-
tively 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
Victorias place of residence to the care home, by the availability of reliable transporta-
tion, 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 psychol-
ogy. I will first outline the basic procedures we use in PPA and then explicate the meas-
urement 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).

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Little 333

Biogenic sources Sociogenic sources

Stable person Stable context
A features features
B
e.g. e.g.
- fixed traits - eco-setting features
- abilities - cultural norms
- enduring preferences - economic cycles

C Dynamic Dynamic
D
person features context features

e.g. e.g
- free traits - restorative niches

Idiogenic sources
E
Personal Projects

Meaning Manage- Community Positive Negative

ability / Support Affect Affect

F Well-doing and flourishing

e.g.
- hedonic well-being (life satisfaction, positive affect)
- eudaimonic well-being (meaning, accomplishments,
relationships, social participation)
-physical well-being

Figure 1. A social ecological model of human flourishing (based on Little, 1999a).

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, Hows it going? of each of a persons elicited projects. Formally, a jk matrix
is completed by the participant, in which j personal projects are rated on (typically) a 0

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334 Theory and Research in Education 12(3)

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 superordi-
nate (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).
Lets look at how each of these PPA modules would be used to cast light on Victorias
visit mom project. The project would appear in the Elicitation Matrix along with
Victorias 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 ven-
ture 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 conspicu-
ously absent. In the Cross-Impact Matrix, we can assume that her visit mom and exer-
cise 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 sup-
port each other and feel personally fulfilled. Finally, in Victorias 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.

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Little 335

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 Kellys (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 envelop-
ing contexts (Little, 1987b, 2010). Third, by their very nature, personal projects are cona-
tive 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 qual-
ity 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 explora-
tions, 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 con-
structs 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 experi-
ence 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 inter-
ested 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 person-
ally 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

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336 Theory and Research in Education 12(3)

I dont 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 elu-
cidating the content, appraisal and impact of their projects they are dealing, in a system-
atic 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 pro-
jects could receive online feedback from peers, teachers and even cool moral philoso-
phers. 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, per-
sonal 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 methodologi-
cal 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 eco-
logically 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 Edinburghs 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 pro-
jects. 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 fea-
tures 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

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Little 337

of a firms organizational climate on workers sense of autonomy in their work projects

(Phillips etal., 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 ones own and those of other people. The possibil-
ity 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 per-
sons metaphorical or real To Do list. Some of the earliest empirical research on pro-
crastination 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 agents 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 con-
texts 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 aggre-
gate level (Little and Gee, 2007). It also contains data from measures of personality,
health, and subjective well-being and, importantly from a policy perspective, demo-
graphic, 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-congru-
ent 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 persons striving for and voli-
tional 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
persons project system. We can assess the core nature of a personal project by examin-
ing the extent to which it is implicatively linked with every other project using an adap-
tation 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 com-
pelling ones, might be isolated from the rest of a persons 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

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338 Theory and Research in Education 12(3)

personal project researchers have shown that core projects are particularly resistant to
change. If Victorias 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 persons
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 ones 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 mean-
ingful 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 success-
ful 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 assess-
ment devices are fixed, rather than modular. They require both the assessor and the per-
son 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 pro-
jects 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

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Little 339

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 great-
est 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 Wilsons (1998) advocacy of
consiliency (literally, jumping together) between different fields of discourse in the sci-
ences and the humanities. Many fields are relevant to the study of personal project pur-
suit 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 letalone 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 differ-
ences 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 etal., 2004). But PPA
provides the possibility of conjoint measurement of assessing individuals both idio-
graphically 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 con-
gruency in ones 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 pro-
jects without aggregating scores for comparative analysis. We may find, for example,
that Victorias projects are such that the higher the degree of value congruency in her
projects, the lower the degree of enjoyment. Alberts 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 pro-
ject pursuit although they represent different levels of measurement. An important meas-
urement 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

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340 Theory and Research in Education 12(3)

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 modu-
lar 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 ones 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 struc-
ture: 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 pro-
jects as similar to the Big Five factors retrieved from trait studies corresponding respec-
tively to Openness to Experience, Conscientiousness, Agreeableness, Extraversion, and
Neuroticism. Both trait and project measures are useful for understanding how peoples
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 fac-
tor (Albuquerque etal., 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 etal., 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 persons 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

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Little 341

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 ones
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 signifi-
cance? 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 pro-
jects. 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-expres-
sive, 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), BoyfriendGirlfriend (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 inti-
mate 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 adult-
hood? 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 pro-
jects, 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

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342 Theory and Research in Education 12(3)

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 ones 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 mothers
welfare, Victoria can adopt the script of Hurricane Vicky and, through forceful and
insistent action, get some justice in a bureaucratic world that just didnt 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 ones behavioral repertoire, to stretch a bit rather than stay within
ones 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 etal., 2002;
Zelenski etal., 2012). However, there might be potential costs to acting against ones bio-
genic 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 any-
thing 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 mean-
ingful, manageable, supported by others, and generate more positive than negative emo-
tions 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 perspec-
tive that shares a number of assumptions with the project analytic perspective (Ryan and
Deci, 2001; Ryan etal., 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.

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Little 343

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 pur-
suit are those that arise from our interactions with other agents. We have found that the
emotional support of ones 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 stimula-
tion 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 bureau-
cracy 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 sus-
tained 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.

Funding
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or
not-for-profit sectors.

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Author biography
Brian R. Little received his early education in British Columbia and his PhD in psychology from
the University of California, Berkeley. He has taught at Oxford, Carleton, and Harvard Universities
and from 2012 to 2014 was Distinguished Scholar in Social and Developmental Psychology at the
University of Cambridge. He currently lectures in the Department of Psychology at Cambridge
and at the Judge Cambridge Business School. He is a Fellow of Cambridges Well-being Institute
and a Distinguished Research Professor Emeritus at Carleton University. His research focuses on
personality and well-being and he initiated research on personal projects as an analytic unit for
studying both. He has co-edited Personal Project Pursuit: Goals, Action, and Human Flourishing,
Erlbaum, 2007, and his trade book, Me, Myself and Us: The Science of Personality and the Art of
Well-Being will be published in October, 2014.

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