The complementarity of humility hypothesis: Individual,relational, and physiological effects of mutually humble partners

Abstract

We report two studies of romantic couples that examine the interactive effects of actor and partner humility on individual, relational, and physiological well-being. Using both longitudinal (Study 1) and physiological (Study 2) methods from two samples of romantic couples, we explored the interactive effects of actor and partner humility. Individuals in dyads with complementary high humility reported better mental health over time following a major life transition, the birth of their first child, in Study 1 and higher relationship satisfaction and lower physiological responses (i.e. blood pressure) following the discussion of a topic of disagreement in Study 2. These results suggest that being humble is beneficial when one has a humble partner, but being arrogant – especially within a disagreement with one’s partner – could undermine the benefits of humility. That is, the benefits of humility are greatest in dyads in which both partners are humble.     

Beyond the big five as predictors of dispositions toward ridicule and being laughed at: The HEXACO model and the dark triad

We aimed to extend research on dispositions toward ridicule and being laughed at by testing the localization of the fear of (gelotophobia) and the joy in (gelotophilia) being laughed at, and the joy in laughing at others (katagelasticism) in the HEXACO model and the Dark Triad traits (both have not been examined so far). Study 1 (HEXACO model: N = 216) showed that gelotophobia was related to low extraversion, high emotionality, and low honesty‐humility; gelotophilia to high extraversion and high openness to experience; and katagelasticism to low agreeableness and low honesty‐humility. These results were similar to prior findings based on the Five‐Factor model, and supported the notion that the honesty‐humility trait contributes to the prediction of individual differences in gelotophobia and katagelasticism. Study 2 (Dark Triad: N = 204) showed that gelotophobia was related to high Machiavellianism and low narcissism; gelotophilia to high narcissism; and katagelasticism to high psychopathy and high Machiavellianism. These data helped to clarify our findings on the honesty‐humility trait, showing that gelotophobes and katagelasticists differ in their socially aversive characteristics. Overall, this research provides empirical evidence that dark (but subclinical) traits can be seen as relevant personality predictors of how people deal with laughter and ridicule.     

An interaction model for the role of self-evaluations and antagonistic pursuits in subjective well-being

Popular theorizing about happiness pursuit emphasizes universal paths to happiness, but other theorizing acknowledges different people achieve happiness in different ways (i.e., subjective well-being, SWB). The present work extended this latter perspective by examining how antagonistic pursuit of a grandiose identity (‘narcissistic antagonism’) – generally thought to reduce narcissistic people’s SWB – may relate to increased cognitive well-being (i.e., a component of SWB) for narcissistic people with lower self-esteem. In Study 1, participants (N = 417) reported their narcissism, self-esteem, narcissistic antagonism, and general life satisfaction (to index cognitive well-being). In Study 2 (pre-registered), participants (N = 450) reported their narcissism, self-esteem, narcissistic antagonism, general and domain-specific life satisfaction, and general affect (to index affective well-being, which is a different component of SWB). Both studies revealed narcissistic antagonism related to increased life satisfaction only for more (vs. less) narcissistic people with lower (vs. higher) self-esteem. Study 2 not only replicated this interactive pattern on satisfaction across various life domains but also revealed the interaction may be related to increased negative affect. Broadly, results highlight how different people may enhance features of SWB in different, even ‘dark’, ways.     

The psychological significance of humility

Abstract

Humility is a virtue with a rich and varied past. Its benefits and pitfalls – indeed, its status as a virtue – have been debated by philosophers and theologians. Recently, psychologists have entered into the dialectic, with a small but growing body of empirical research at their disposal. We will discuss this research on humility, including our own recent contributions. Our goal is to shed light on the following three important questions: First, what is humility? Second, why we should care about being humble? Finally, are there constructive steps we can take to induce people to adopt more humble at titudes towards themselves and others? In the process of answering these questions, we will consider the major empirical accounts of humility in the literature, highlight their primary difficulties, and then introduce a new account that cuts through the confusion, getting to the core of what we take humility to be.     

Humility attenuates negative attitudes and behaviors toward religious out-group members

Humility is marked by the regulation of selfish impulses for the sake of others, including holding a modest view of one’s beliefs (and their relative strengths and weaknesses). In three studies, we evaluated the extent to which humility attenuates negative attitudes, behavioral intentions, and behaviors toward religious out-group members. In Study 1 (N = 159), humility regarding religious beliefs was associated with positive attitudes toward religiously different individuals. In Study 2 (N = 149), relational and intellectual humility were associated with less aggressive behavioral intentions in a hypothetical situation in which their cherished beliefs were criticized. In Study 3 (N = 62), participants implicitly primed with humility administered significantly less hot sauce (a behavioral measure of aggression) to a religious out-group member who criticized their cherished views relative to participants in the neutral prime condition. We highlight the importance of humility in promoting positive attitudes and behaviors toward religious out-group members.     

Intellectual humility and openness to the opposing view

Strong disagreements have stymied today’s political discourse. We investigate intellectual humility – recognizing the limits of one’s knowledge and appreciating others’ intellectual strengths – as one factor that can make disagreements more constructive. In Studies 1 and 2, participants with higher intellectual humility were more open to learning about the opposition’s views during imagined disagreements. In Study 3, those with higher intellectual humility exposed themselves to a greater proportion of opposing political perspectives. In Study 4, making salient a growth mindset of intelligence boosted intellectual humility, and, in turn, openness to opposing views. Results suggest that intellectual humility is associated with openness during disagreement, and that a growth mindset of intelligence may increase intellectual humility. Implications for current political polarization are discussed.     

How happiness expectations relate to the Dark Triad traits

ABSTRACT

In samples of Americans (N = 273) and Indians (N = 194) paid through Mechanical Turk (Study 1) and British (N = 132) volunteers contacted through Reddit (Study 2), we examined how the Dark Triad traits (i.e., psychopathy, narcissism, and Machiavellianism) were associated with happiness expectations when participants imagined solving adaptive tasks. In Study 1, the traits were linked to forecasted happiness in achieving status and power and mate-seeking, with psychopathy demonstrating less happiness when pursuing slow life history tasks (e.g., avoiding diseases), whereas the other two traits led to expectations of happiness when forming social bonds, retaining mates, and avoiding pathogens. In Study 2, the traits were associated with choosing to pursue mating opportunities to induce happiness. Women expected more happiness in response to ensuring their safety over pursuing mating opportunities. We suggest happiness might be an affective feedback system that rewards people for pursuing their life history goals.     

Psychological correlates of reasons for nonbelief: tolerance of ambiguity,intellectual humility,and attachment

ABSTRACT

The process of acquiring beliefs – including the belief that there is no God–is largely implicit. We propose that psychological factors that function largely outside of conscious awareness make different conscious reasons for nonbelief more plausible to different people. The present study focuses on intellectual humility, tolerance of ambiguity and attachment and how they relate to stated reasons for nonbelief. The survey was distributed online to an international network of over 100 atheist, secular, and freethought organisations. As predicted, emotional reasons for nonbelief were positively related to anxious attachment, and intellectual reasons for nonbelief were inversely related to tolerance of ambiguity. We did not find evidence for our hypotheses that intellectual reasons for belief would be related to intellectual humility, or that uncertainty reasons would be related to tolerance of ambiguity, intellectual humility, and avoidant attachment. We unexpectedly found that early socialisation reasons for nonbelief were negatively related to intellectual humility.     

Intellectual arrogance and intellectual humility: correlational evidence for an evolutionary-embodied-epistemological account

Abstract

We outline an evolutionary-embodied-epistemological (EEE) account of intellectual arrogance (IA), proposing that people psychologically experience their important beliefs as valued possessions – mental materialism – that they must fight to keep – ideological territoriality – thereby disposing them toward IA. Nonetheless, IA should still vary, being higher among people taking a hostile and domineering epistemic stance (rejecting reality, resisting evidence) than among those taking an open and deferential one (embracing reality, respecting evidence). Such variations can be predicted from people’s standing on the communion-agency circumplex at multiple levels of analysis (i.e. from their social inclusion and status; dispositional warmth and competence; and behavioral amiability and assertiveness). Using pre-validated indices of mental materialism and ideological territoriality, and an argument evaluation task permitting the quantification of rational objectivity and egotistical bias, we obtained consistent correlational evidence that, as hypothesized, IA is the highest when agency is high and communion low, validating the EEE account.     

Beyond brands: Happy adolescents see the good in people

How does happiness affect adolescents’ stereotypes of other people? Using a collage methodology with 60 adolescents aged 12–18, we find that happier adolescents hold more positive stereotypes of others compared to those who are less happy. We also find that happier adolescents are less likely to form impressions of people based on surface level cues such as the products and brands that people own. Finally, our results show that happier adolescents have a more nuanced view of others, (e.g., some cool kids wear expensive brands, but some shop at thrift stores), compared to their less happy counterparts, who tend to oversimplify their view of others (e.g., all cool kids wear expensive brands, all doctors drive a BMW).     

Do adolescents’ self-concepts moderate the relationship between STEM stereotypes and motivation?

Professionals in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) are often stereotyped as geniuses and nerds (e.g., socially awkward). These stereotypes may demotivate some individuals from pursuing or remaining in STEM. However, these beliefs may enhance motivation among individuals who feel that they fit in with the stereotype. Guided by balanced identity theory and expectancy-value theory, our study investigated the effect of trait-based stereotypes about people in STEM among a sample of 256 U.S. high school students (M_age?=?16, 59% girls, 65% Asian, 15% Latinx, 10% White). We assessed students’ trait-based nerd and genius stereotypes about STEM and related self-concepts as well as their STEM motivation (competence and value beliefs). Consistent with balanced identity theory, the effect and direction of endorsing nerd-genius stereotypes was moderated by a student’s own self-concepts. Endorsing stereotypes was negatively related to motivation—but only among those low in the related self-concept. Among those high in related self-concepts (e.g., high in nerd-genius self-concept), endorsing STEM stereotypes (e.g., STEM is for geniuses) was unrelated to STEM motivation. Girls, underrepresented students of color, and potential first-generation college students may especially be negatively affected by the stereotypes due to a greater likelihood that these stereotypes will be incongruent with their self-concepts. Thus, trait-based stereotypes about people in STEM may perpetuate current gaps in STEM.

     

The Shield of Defense or the Sword of Prosecution?How Self‐Regulatory Focus Relates to Responses to Crime

People can strive to attain goals in one of two ways: They can be tolerant of risk and focus on attaining successes, or they can be intolerant of risk and focus on avoiding pitfalls and failures. These differences, termed promotion focus and prevention focus, respectively, have been related to differences in how personal goals are understood, but not yet applied to policy issues. Two studies examine the implications of chronic (Study 1) and experimentally induced (Study 2) promotion vs. prevention goals for a law‐and‐order mind set. Participants high in promotion focus assigned more punishment to a criminal (Study 1). Compared to prevention‐focused participants, experimentally induced promotion focus increased the likelihood of arresting a suspect and justifying this choice (Study 2).     

Investigating the origins of political views: biases in explanation predict conservative attitudes in children and adults

We tested the hypothesis that political attitudes are influenced by an information‐processing factor – namely, a bias in the content of everyday explanations. Because many societal phenomena are enormously complex, people's understanding of them often relies on heuristic shortcuts. For instance, when generating explanations for such phenomena (e.g., why does this group have low status?), people often rely on facts that they can retrieve easily from memory – facts that are skewed toward inherent or intrinsic features (e.g., this group is unintelligent). We hypothesized that this bias in the content of heuristic explanations leads to a tendency to (1) view socioeconomic stratification as acceptable and (2) prefer current societal arrangements to alternative ones, two hallmarks of conservative ideology. Moreover, since the inherence bias in explanation is present across development, we expected it to shape children's proto‐political judgments as well. Three studies with adults and 4‐ to 8‐year‐old children (N = 784) provided support for these predictions: Not only did individual differences in reliance on inherent explanations uniquely predict endorsement of conservative views (particularly the stratification‐supporting component; Study 1), but manipulations of this explanatory bias also had downstream consequences for political attitudes in both children and adults (Studies 2 and 3). This work contributes to our understanding of the origins of political attitudes.     

Openness to Experience and regulatory focus: Evidence of motivation from fit

Regulatory fit occurs when one’s strategies of goal pursuit sustain one’s interests in an activity, which can enhance motivation [e.g., Higgins, E. T. (2005). Value from regulatory fit. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 14, 209–213]. Because the strategic inclinations of people high (low) in Openness are similar to those of people in a promotion (prevention) focus, regulatory fit should be possible. We found that people higher in Openness were more motivated to pursue promotion-related goals (hopes/aspirations in Study 1 and a gain-framed goal in Study 2) and less motivated to pursue prevention-related goals (duties/obligations in Study 1 and a loss-framed goal in Study 2). We discuss how other traits might relate to motivation to pursue promotion- and prevention-related goals as well as other future research directions for regulatory focus and Openness.     

Extraversion and Agreeableness: Divergent Routes to Daily Satisfaction With Social Relationships

We examined the unique effects of extraversion and agreeableness (and honesty‐humility) on everyday satisfaction with family, friends, romantic life, and acquaintances, and explored potential mediators of these effects. Three diary studies (Ns = 206, 139, 185) were conducted on Singaporean university students. In Studies 1 and 2, participants rated their satisfaction with different relationship categories. In Study 3, participants rated their satisfaction and social interactions with 10 target individuals each day for a 1‐week period. Both extraversion and agreeableness predicted relationship satisfaction. However, the effect of extraversion was mediated by greater levels of trust in others, whereas the effect of agreeableness was mediated by less frequent negative exchanges (e.g., criticism, perceived anger, and perceived neglect). The effect of honesty‐humility on negative exchanges was similar to agreeableness. When both were entered as predictors, only the effect of honesty‐humility was significant. We discuss how the processes by which personality affect relationship satisfaction vary depending on the trait as well as the particular measure that is used (IPIP NEO PI‐R, California Q‐Set, and IPIP‐HEXACO).     

When Mental States Matter,When They Don't,and What That Means for Morality

Research has shown that moral judgments depend on the capacity to engage in mental state reasoning. In this article, we will first review behavioral and neural evidence for the role of mental states (e.g., people's beliefs, desires, intentions) in judgments of right and wrong. Second, we will consider cases where mental states appear at first to matter less (i.e., when people assign moral blame for accidents and when explicit information about mental states is missing). Third, we will consider cases where mental states, in fact, matter less, specifically, in cases of “purity” violations (e.g., committing incest, consuming taboo foods). We will discuss how and why mental states do not matter equivalently across the multi‐dimensional space of morality. In the fourth section of this article, we will elaborate on the possibility that norms against harmful actions and norms against “impure” actions serve distinct functions – for regulating interpersonal interactions (i.e., harm) versus for protecting the self (i.e., purity). In the fifth and final section, we will speculate on possible differences in how we represent and reason about other people's mental states versus our own beliefs and intentions. In addressing these issues, we aim to provide insight into the complex structure and distinct functions of mental state reasoning and moral cognition. We conclude that mental state reasoning allows us to make sense of other moral agents in order to understand their past actions, to predict their future behavior, and to evaluate them as potential friends or foes.     

Giving,Fast and Slow: Reflection Increases Costly (but Not Uncostly) Charitable Giving

Are people intuitively generous or stingy? Does reflection make people more willing to give generous amounts to charity? Findings across the literature are mixed, with many studies finding no clear relationship between reflection and charitable giving (e.g., Hauge, Brekke, Johansson, Johansson‐Stenman, & Svedsäter, 2016 ; Tinghög et al., 2016 ), while others find that reflection negatively affects giving (e.g., Small, Loewenstein, & Slovic, 2007 ), and still others find that reflection is positively associated with giving (e.g., Lohse, Goeschl, & Diederich, 2014 ). I demonstrate that reflection consistently increases costly giving to charity. In Study 1, people were initially reluctant to give costly amounts of money to charity, but those who reflected about the decision were more willing to give. In Studies 2–3, I isolated the role of costly stakes by randomly assigning people to either an uncostly donation (Are people intuitively generous or stingy? Does reflection make people more willing to give generous amounts to charity? Findings across the literature are mixed, with many studies finding no clear relationship between reflection and charitable giving (e.g., Hauge, Brekke, Johansson, Johansson‐Stenman, & Svedsäter, 2016 ; Tinghög et al., 2016 ), while others find that reflection negatively affects giving (e.g., Small, Loewenstein, & Slovic, 2007 ), and still others find that reflection is positively associated with giving (e.g., Lohse, Goeschl, & Diederich, 2014 ). I demonstrate that reflection consistently increases costly giving to charity. In Study 1, people were initially reluctant to give costly amounts of money to charity, but those who reflected about the decision were more willing to give. In Studies 2–3, I isolated the role of costly stakes by randomly assigning people to either an uncostly donation ($0.40) or costly donation condition (e.g., $100), and randomly assigning them to decide under time pressure or after reflecting. Reflection increased their willingness to give costly amounts, but did not influence their willingness to give uncostly amounts. Similarly, the relationship between decision time and giving was positive when the stakes were costly but was relatively flat when the stakes were uncostly (Study 4). Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Feeling bad about progress does not lead people want to change their health behaviour

Objective: When do people decide to do something about problematic health behaviours? Theoretical models and pragmatic considerations suggest that people should take action when they feel bad about their progress – in other words, when they experience negative progress-related affect. However, the impact of progress-related affect on goal striving has rarely been investigated.

Design and Methods: Study 1 (N = 744) adopted a cross-sectional design and examined the extent to which measures of progress-related affect were correlated with intentions to take action. Study 2 (N = 409) investigated the impact of manipulating progress-related affect on intentions and behaviour in an experimental design.

Results: Study 1 found that, while engaging in health behaviours had the expected affective consequences (e.g. people felt bad when they were not eating healthily, exercising regularly or limiting their alcohol consumption), it was feeling good rather than bad about progress that was associated with stronger intentions. Study 2 replicated these findings. Participants induced to feel good about their eating behaviour had marginally stronger intentions to eat healthily than participants led to feel bad about their eating behaviour.

Conclusion: The findings have implications for interventions designed to promote changes in health behaviour, as well as theoretical frameworks for understanding self-regulation.     

Intellectual humility predicts COVID-19 preventive practices through greater adoption of data-driven information and feelings of responsibility

Preventive health practices have been crucial to mitigating viral spread during the COVID-19 pandemic. In two studies, we examined whether intellectual humility—openness to one's existing knowledge being inaccurate—related to greater engagement in preventive health practices (social distancing, handwashing, mask-wearing). In Study 1, we found that intellectually humble people were more likely to engage in COVID-19 preventive practices. Additionally, this link was driven by intellectually humble people's tendency to adopt information from data-driven sources (e.g., medical experts) and greater feelings of responsibility over the outcomes of COVID-19. In Study 2, we found support for these relationships over time (2 weeks). Additionally, Study 2 showed that the link between intellectual humility and preventive practices was driven by a greater tendency to adopt data-driven information when encountering it, rather than actively seeking out such information. These findings reveal the promising role of intellectual humility in making well-informed decisions during public health crises.     

Not “just words”: Exposure to homophobic epithets leads to dehumanizing and physical distancing from gay men

We examined whether homophobic epithets (e.g., faggot) function as labels of deviance for homosexuals that contribute to their dehumanization and physical distance. Across two studies, participants were supraliminally (Study 1) and subliminally (Study 2) exposed to a homophobic epithet, a category label, or a generic insult. Participants were then asked to associate human‐related and animal‐related words to homosexuals and heterosexuals. Results showed that after exposure to a homophobic epithet, compared with a category label or a generic insult, participants associated less human‐related words with homosexuals, indicating dehumanization. In Study 2, we also assessed the effect of a homophobic epithet on physical distance from a target group member and found that homophobic epithets led to greater physical distancing of a gay man. These findings indicate that homophobic epithets foster dehumanization and avoidance of gay people, in ways that other insults or labels do not.