Imagine a team of researchers embarking on a scientific adventure. They come from different disciplines like philosophy, psychology, linguistics, and anthropology, all joining forces to unlock the mysteries of cognition. But as they navigate through the complex landscape of interdisciplinary research, they encounter challenges that dampen their initial enthusiasm. However, a glimmer of hope emerges from this study – it reveals that fostering specific intellectual character strengths can overcome these obstacles. By cultivating these virtues, researchers can tap into their intellectual motivation and harness the power of collaboration in acquiring knowledge. These virtues fall into three domains – intellectual virtues, social virtues, and interpersonal intellectual virtues. The latter, in particular, are unique because they thrive in interpersonal settings and bridge the gap between intellectual pursuits and social interactions. They are like the secret sauce that brings about successful collective epistemic endeavors. Now, with this valuable insight, the door is open for scholars to further explore how these virtues can enhance interdisciplinary research and pave the way for groundbreaking discoveries! So go ahead, dive into the full article and uncover the hidden potential of intellectual virtues in interdisciplinary collaborations.

Abstract
Through a qualitative approach, this study identified a specific subgroup of intellectual virtues necessary for developing interdisciplinary research. Cognitive science was initially conceived as a new discipline emerging from various fields, including philosophy, psychology, artificial intelligence, linguistics, and anthropology. Thus, a frequent debate among cognitive scientists is whether the initial multidisciplinary program successfully developed into a mature interdisciplinary field or evolved into a set of independent sciences of cognition. For several years, interdisciplinarity has been an aspiration for the academy, although the difficulties limiting the success of interdisciplinary collaborations have begun to erode that initial optimism. Our analysis suggests that the problems hindering the success of interdisciplinarity can be overcome by fostering certain intellectual character strengths in scholars. The Consensual Qualitative Research method was used to analyze nine semi-structured interviews involving researchers with a long personal trajectory of interdisciplinary research between the sciences and the humanities. Three virtue domains emerged from the interviews’ analysis: (i) intellectual virtues, (ii) social virtues, and (iii) interpersonal intellectual virtues. The virtues of the third domain intersect with intellectual and social ones. They are intellectual because they pursue epistemic goods. But, unlike other intellectual virtues, they only develop in interpersonal settings, so they can also be considered to have a social component. Interpersonal intellectual virtues can be thus defined as intellectual character traits that facilitate the acquisition of knowledge (intellectual motivation) with and through other people in a reciprocal way (social environment). These virtues are essential for developing any successful collective epistemic enterprise, interdisciplinary research being a privileged context where these qualities manifest themselves in a relevant way.

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