Greater Humility Research Articles

Trajectories

The decades I have traversed have taught me greater humility and a better quality of listening, which results in emotional support in the face of pain and moderation in the use of anti-inflammatories and biological drugs. While immunosuppression has been the therapeutic substrate for autoimmune phenomena, as is obvious, its excess leads to catastrophic results and undesirable effects that make the path more daunting.

Humble with God? How Education and Race Shape the Association Between God-Mediated Control and Humility in Later Life.

In contrast to the vibrant interdisciplinary literature on other virtues, such as forgiveness and gratitude, the study of humility has developed more slowly. Over the 2decades, there has been a proliferation of research on humility. In this study, we assess the interrelationship between a core feature of religious life, God-mediated control, and humility. We assess the interrelationship between God-mediated control (the belief that God is a collaborative partner working together with humans) and humility. We also assess how the relationship between God-mediated control and humility may be conditional on two sociodemographic characteristics among middle-aged and older adults, education and race. Data for this study come from Wave 5 of the Religion, Aging, and Health Study (2013), a nationwide survey of Whites and African Americans (N = 1152). We test our hypotheses with a series of OLS regression models. We find that stronger perceptions of God-mediated control were associated with greater humility among older adults. Results from our moderation analyses also show that the relationship between God-mediated control and greater humility was stronger for low status groups, namely, the less educated and Black older adults. The cognitive belief that God can be trusted as an intimate collaborator in the chaos of human life appears to predict humility among older adults, perhaps by acknowledging one's dependence on a superior being and appreciating the limits of human finitude and acknowledging God's greatness outside one's self. Devoid of secular resources, the less educated and Black Americans might find greater meaning and significance in their association with God and may feel no need to establish their own worth through the attainment of worldly accomplishments or knowledge. Given the centrality of humility to religious/spiritual life, we suggest how future interdisciplinary research can build on the findings of our study.

Posttraumatic Growth in Women With a Long-Standing Experience of Involuntary Childlessness in the Czech Republic

This qualitative research study aimed to examine aspects of posttraumatic growth (PTG) in women with a long-standing experience of involuntary childlessness. In-depth semi-structured interviews, lasting an average of 53 min, were conducted in the Czech Republic. Twenty-four women, averaging 38.8 years old with an average of 6.2 years of infertility experience, participated. They were asked how involuntary childlessness affected/changed their partnerships, sexual life, job, future plans, attitude to children/values/faith, and leisure time. Participants shared both positive and negative aspects of the infertility experience. Data were analyzed using thematic analysis. Five main themes of PTG were identified: strengthening of partnership, greater humility, deeper self-appreciation, reassessment of relationships, and changes in the philosophy of life. These findings could be useful to mental health providers to facilitate the PTG process in patients.

Women pay a steeper price for arrogance: Examining presentation style, gender, and humility

ABSTRACT We report a preregistered experiment in which we examine the way that men and women are perceived on various interpersonal measures when exhibiting differing presentation styles. We also examined the possible moderating effect of participant gender and benevolent sexism. Participants (N = 337) were randomly assigned to read a scenario in which a target individual was depicted with an inflated, neutral, or deflated presentation style. We found that female participants tended to view inflated female targets as more humble. We also found that male participants rated inflated male targets as significantly more humble than female participants did. Further analysis indicated that greater humility was indirectly associated with greater interpersonal warmth, less perceived dominance, and less perceived threat of being controlled. Taken together, these results highlight the importance of presentation in perception and suggest that women end up paying a steeper price than men do for inflating their ideas or accomplishments.

Employee Humility as a Catalyst for Knowledge Sharing Behavior in Kenya’s Universities

Purpose – This paper is purposed to provide a deeper understanding to the current concept of humility and its role in higher education as far as knowledge dissemination is concerned. Since humility has become increasingly important in latest years, and is recognized as a critical asset for universities particularly due to the growing complexity of dynamic knowledge base environments and the further advancement of regulatory frameworks for competitive advantage. Humility in institutions of higher learning is an idea whose time has come. In light of anticipated challenges and changes that continue to unfold in the 21st century, scholars in public and private universities have suggested a greater need for organizational members to have the humility to acknowledge areas of ignorance and inexperience and to foster the learning and adaptation that will be required to succeed in an increasingly unpredictable workplace. Design/methodology/approach – Explanatory and confirmatory factor analysis have been conducted to explore and validate the factor of humility as a construct of emotional intelligence. The paper is based on an explanatory study that targeted a population of 6,423 academic staff employees in Kenya from 49 selected universities. A sample size of 378 employees was systematically selected and data collected using a structured questionnaire anchored on a five-point Likert scale. The instrument was evaluated for internal consistency and subjected to principal component analysis to explore extant dimensions. Findings: Though humility awareness by academic staff of universities is widely known, more insights need to be drawn to expound more from the benefit of knowledge sharing behavior’s regression results indicated that Humility has a positive and significant effect on knowledge sharing behavior (β = 0.30, p<0.05). Universities in Kenya should be encouraged to focus on humility in order to improve on knowledge sharing behaviours of academic staff since it was evident that whenever academic staff had greater humility in the university, they would inspire and influence universities competitive advantage through knowledge and emotional intelligence. It is treating all people regardless of who they are, with respect, gentleness, kindness, and forgiveness . A person who is humble shares knowledge without measure of superiority, arrogance, and haughtiness of a person towards other people and understands what drives their behaviour, as well as the effects that it has on others as the most common trademarks of intelligence that value the enhancement of knowledge sharing behavior in modern universities as revealed by the study. Originality/value – Humility awareness as a catalyst in universities in Kenya have relatively been downplayed by institutions of higher learning, University management and scholars especially in harnessing knowledge.

John Cage, Henry David Thoreau, Wild Nature, Humility, and Music

John Cage and Henry David Thoreau draw attention to the indeterminacy of wild nature and imply humans cannot entirely control the natural world. This paper argues Cage and Thoreau each encourages his audience to recognize their own human limitations in relation to wildness, and thus each helps his audience to develop greater humility before nature. By reflecting on how Thoreau’s theory relates to Cage’s music, we can recognize how Cage’s music contributes to audiences’ environmental moral education. We can appreciate the role of music in helping audiences to develop values conducive to environmentally sustainable practices.

Hanlon’s Razor

“Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity”—so says Hanlon’s Razor. This principle is designed to curb the human tendency toward explaining other people’s behavior by moralizing it. We ask whether Hanlon’s Razor is good or bad advice. After offering a nuanced interpretation of the principle, we critically evaluate two strategies purporting to show it is good advice. Our discussion highlights important, unsettled questions about an idea that has the potential to infuse greater humility and civility into discourse and debate.

Greater humility can help expand evolutionary social science

Greater humility can help expand evolutionary social science

Migration and Adolescent Health

Migration and Adolescent Health

Science Outside the Lab: Helping Graduate Students in Science and Engineering Understand the Complexities of Science Policy

Helping scientists and engineers challenge received assumptions about how science, engineering, and society relate is a critical cornerstone for macroethics education. Scientific and engineering research are frequently framed as first steps of a value-free linear model that inexorably leads to societal benefit. Social studies of science and assessments of scientific and engineering research speak to the need for a more critical approach to the noble intentions underlying these assumptions. "Science Outside the Lab" is a program designed to help early-career scientists and engineers understand the complexities of science and engineering policy. Assessment of the program entailed a pre-, post-, and 1year follow up survey to gauge student perspectives on relationships between science and society, as well as a pre-post concept map exercise to elicit student conceptualizations of science policy. Students leave Science Outside the Lab with greater humility about the role of scientific expertise in science and engineering policy; greater skepticism toward linear notions of scientific advances benefiting society; a deeper, more nuanced understanding of the actors involved in shaping science policy; and a continued appreciation of the contributions of science and engineering to society. The study presents an efficacious program that helps scientists and engineers make inroads into macroethical debates, reframe the ways in which they think about values of science and engineering in society, and more thoughtfully engage with critical mediators of science and society relationships: policy makers and policy processes.

Assessing the Relationships Among Wisdom, Humility, and Life Satisfaction

The purpose of this study was to test two hypotheses that specify different ways of configuring the interface between wisdom and humility. The first hypothesis specifies that greater wisdom is associated with greater humility. This hypothesis is based on the notion that wisdom is needed in order to know when to activate the virtue of humility. The second hypothesis specifies that the relationship between humility and life satisfaction will vary according to the level of wisdom that is possessed by study participants. This hypothesis is based on the notion that wisdom is needed to successfully implement and regulate humility once it has been activated. The data come from a nationwide survey of middle-aged and older adults (N = 1535). The data support both hypotheses. First greater wisdom is associated with greater humility. Second, the results suggest that the relationship between humility and life satisfaction varies across levels of wisdom. The findings help ground the study of wisdom more firmly in the literature on virtues.

Lost in Eden: Dementia From Paradise

I look at dementia from an eschatological perspective through personal experience as I supported my husband through his journey into Alzheimer’s disease. Building on the notion of a monastic garden, I draw from the contemplatives to understand my own “kairos” moment that changed my perspective on the way church and other providers offer care. Comparing the church to a garden, I argue that people with dementia are priest-bearing sacraments in whose faces God is seen. Looking into the faces of those with dementia, these priests shepherd us to recognize our illusions about life calling us to greater humility.

Assessing the relationships among race, religion, humility, and self-forgiveness: A longitudinal investigation.

Social and behavioral scientists have shown a growing interest in the study of virtues due, in part, to the influence of positive psychology. The underlying premise in this research is that adopting key virtues promotes a better quality of life. Consistent with this orientation, the purpose of this study is to assess the relationship between humility and self-forgiveness over time. The analyses are organized around three issues. First, it is proposed that older Blacks will be more humble than older Whites and older Blacks will be more likely to forgive themselves than older Whites. Second, it is hypothesized that, over time, more humble older people are more likely to forgive themselves than individuals who are less humble. Third, it is proposed that greater involvement in religion is associated with greater humility and greater self-forgiveness. Data from a nationwide longitudinal survey of older adults provides support for all these hypotheses.

When Scripture Meets Scripture

This article gives an overview of the issues and implications involved in the ways that scripture uses scripture. While the major focus is on the New Testament's use of the Old Testament, many of the issues discussed apply also to the use of earlier Old Testament texts by later Old Testament writers. These issues include more “technical” matters, such as the nature and scope of usage and the accuracy of citations, as well as more “theological” matters, such as the function of scripture and the interpretive techniques used by the biblical writers. All of these issues have profound significance for the church's understanding of the nature and authority of scripture, and the way(s) that the church uses scripture to speak to its contemporary context. Above all, a careful examination of scripture's use of scripture invites us to a greater humility about our exegetical methods, a greater dependence on the work of the Holy Spirit as we read, and a greater faith in the God who speaks to us through these scriptures.

Victorian refashioning: Rosalind as a paragon of victorian womanhood

This essay investigates how Victorians refashioned Rosalind to make her conform to that era's "Angel-of-the-House" ideal of femininity. The study examines three sites where this refashioning transpired: the stage, literary criticism, and literary texts in which Rosalind appears. Nineteenth-century efforts to establish Rosalind as a paragon of womanhood usually followed one or both of the following methods. First, Victorians downplayed Rosalind's independence, aggressiveness, and wit, emphasizing instead her modesty, emotionalism, and serviceableness. Second, they portrayed Celia as especially admirable for her greater humility, self-sacrifice, and tenderness, providing a contrast to show how Rosalind, or any woman, must tame herself.

From Function to Felicitude: Physical Disability and the Search for Happiness in Health Services Research

Historically, research and practice in physical disability have emphasized the destructive and disabling consequences of illness and injury. More recently, we have begun to measure outcomes related to health, satisfaction, and quality-of-life. There has been little systematic attention to the study of happiness, felicitude, but data show that even for many of the people with most notable impairment, levels of happiness are high. The quest for felicitude requires methodological changes and, more significantly, greater professional humility to appreciate that people with both physical and intellectual impairments are able to experience and articulate their own satisfaction, pleasure, and joy. Fortified with this unpretentiousness, we can find happiness and begin to incorporate it as an outcome of clinical and public health programs.

Clinical Judgment Is Essential-Reply

I agree with Romano's insightful observations. There are many problems with Monday morning quarterbacking. We need to be cognizant of the fact that it is easy to be accurate in the diagnostic process if one is reviewing a case after the fact with complete laboratory and autopsy reports. It is easy to do morning report with students and residents when you have all the answers neatly summed up while the students and residents have been up all night on the front line with patients. Legal and medical professionals may appear brilliant if they know the answer in advance; however, if they were presented with the case without the answer, they might also be baffled. My article 1 emphasized such an issue in the diagnosis of pulmonary embolism. We need to develop greater humility about the diagnostic process and put ourselves in the shoes of our colleagues who must make difficult diagnoses

Is Living Donation Still Justifiable?

Present 'techno-medicine' has brought about clinical results that were simply unthinkable only a few years ago. Just how positive these results really are is beginning to emerge today with growing clarity. Yet, typical of techno-medicine is the way it solves certain problems whilst at the same time creating others. Organ replacement therapy clearly illustrates this modern predicament. Nowadays the death of an organ does not necessarily spell death to the individual. But the miracle of survival thus achieved entails a whole series of complex, controversial, or unsolved repercussions (ethical, logistic, clinical, economic). To find a solution to these would require more progressive thinking by our politicians if they are to grasp the real social importance of technomedicine; and greater humility from our scientists who must be prepared to admit that the widespread application of scientific results hinges entirely on their acceptance by politicians. Such concrete, trusting collaboration between the two orders of politics and science is still utopian. The ethics of living-donor transplantation conform to the rule: results (here moral as well as clinical) following on results (the creation of the renal 'new man' brought about by present techno-medicine).

Not Available

AbstractJan Swammerdam was one of the first scientists to do biological research on the basis of physico‐theology. He was a very religious man and thought that by studying the secrets of nature he could best serve the Almighty God. He saw his life's work in demostrating the importance of God in the world of the smallest animals. The most important works of Swammerdam refer to the world of the insects and other lower animals, which he called the „legions of the God of Israel”︁, through which God tells mankind to recognize their sins, to desist from them and to honour him with greater humility. „The miracles of nature”︁ he said „are an open bible, which everywhere points to God as its eternal origin.”︁ This is one of the reasons for the title of the work Biblia naturae. It was Swammerdam's declared aim to demonstrate that the insects were no less perfect than the higher animals. Therefore, he tried to refute all three arguments used by his contemporaries to show up the difference between the higher animals and the insects: 1. insects were believed to have no inner anatomy; 2. they were thought to originate by spontanous generation; 3. development occurred through „metamorphosis”︁. Swammerdam succeeded in refuting all three arguments by exact studies of the nature and development of the insects. Most important for him was his aim to demonstrate that even the structure and the development of the smallest of animals demonstrate that they could only be made by God himself. Science as God's worship must be strictly objective, he said, because only than could one understand the laws of nature and in this way the real nature of God himself.

Delayed auditory feedback: personality and order of administration.

From an introductory course in psychology 40 subjects received credit for their participation in an experiment on delayed auditory feedback. Subjects read two lists, I and 11, under conditions of delayed and non-delayed auditory feedback. The order of lists was reversed for half the subjects, and 10 subjects each were assigned to delay-first or delay-second conditions with each list order. Both delayed feedback and non-delayed conditions were administered via the Allison Model 22 Clinical and Research audiometer. Delay was presented monaurally with a ,266-sec. lapse, and non-delay conditions involved simultaneous sound reproduction, also through earphones. All subjects were pretested with pure tones to ensure that no hearing loss greater than 10 dB was present, and passages were read by subjects with all feedback occurring at 40 dB above threshold. A 2 X 2 X 2 partially repeated analysis of variance was used to evaluate differences in toral reading time according to delayed feedback (present, absent), order of passage (1-11, 11-1) , and order of delay (yes-no, no-yes) . Significant differences appeared for the main effect of delay ( p < .01), and for the interactions of delayed feedback with order of delay and order of passage ( p < .01). Specifically, increased reading time with delayed feedback appeared only when delay was administered in the first position (190.6, 163.1 sec.; p < .01) . A significant decrease of reading time under delayed feedback was associated with the appearance of delay in the second position (183.5, 174.7 sec.; j~ < .05). Errors of blocking, omission, addition, repetition, substitution, and pronunciation were also evaluated. Numbers tended to be small and distributions extremely deviant from the normal for these scores. Applications of the non-parametric sign test both within and across cells yielded suggestive ( p < .25) increases in error associated with delay for blocking and pronunciation. Reliability of rater for the blind identification of all errors from taped material ranged from .85 to 1.00 ( p < .01). For groups with a significant effect of delayed feedback, the time difference (delay minus non-delay) was correlated with scores from Cattell's 16 PF. In one cell, results indicated that effects of delayed feedback were maximized for subjects with a lower intellectual level (B, .42, p < .15) , and greater emotionality (C, .41, p < .15) , trustfulness (L , .61, p < .05) , and apprehension (0, .78, p < .05). For the second group delayed feedback was associated with greater humility (E, .41, fi < .15) , practicality (M, .59, p <, .O5), experimental thinking (41, .54, p < .05) , control (Q3. .GI, p < .05) , and tenslon (Q,, .54, p < .05). Yates ( 2 ) , in his review of early research, notes differences in delayed feedback occurring relative to reading material (where subtle differences may exist), adaptation, and personality. He also cites studies in which delayed feedback provided a experience and experiments in which a GSR reaction is associated with performance under delayed feedback. The present experiment utilized a delay slightly greater than the generally optimum .2 sec. ( 1 ) which might explain the extreme adaptation effects associated with order of delay. Correlations of effects, where these occurred, with personaliry variables support the stressful (sympathetic activation, emotional) nature of the experience. Order of passage probably led to significant effects because of the subtle, i.e.. presently unclear!, factors ( 2 ) . In overview, the current experiment may be regarded as a replication of effects of order, passage, and personality which have been reported previously, though not in unison, by various authors.