In this autobiographical statement, the author conveys several lessons learned over the course of developmental research on social cognition, moral commitment, character, and purpose. The lessons include: (1) always check theoretical claims against real-world observations and intuitions; (2) always start a research program with deep attention to the field’s past achievements, including those made decades ago; (3) employ available insights from humanities domains such as literature, philosophy, and theology; and (4) approach any new research topic with both small-scale idiographic methods in addition to larger-scale nomothetic study methods. The chapter closes with an explanation of the author’s choice to focus on problem-centered research rather than general theory-building, with the hope that studying specific problems would inform theory-building, so that the research benefits would flow both ways, from theory to real-life problems and back again.

Democracy’s realisation depends upon citizens’ aspirations and capacities to sustain forms of self-governance that promote the expression of their personalities and the full actualisation of their potentials. The development of citizens’ personalities and of democracy are in fact mutually interdependent. Whereas citizens’ world views, reasoning, values, aspirations and habits are crucial to sustain the functioning of democratic institutions, the latter set the conditions for nurturing beliefs, motivations and behaviours that accord with their optimal development and with the pursuit of the common good. This makes democracy a challenge that cannot be successfully achieved unless grounded on the moral commitment of all citizens to treat each other with the same respect as each would like to be treated and to care for one another’s wellbeing as one might care for one’s own growth and happiness. Democracy is destined to fail unless the moral agency of citizens operates as a moderator of the new iniquities carried by modernity.