How can people become lastingly more humble? Development of a long-term humility-boosting program

Humility is a virtue characterized by a secure, accepting self-view and high focus on other people instead of oneself. Over the past decade, a growing body of research has investigated the nature of humility—what humility is, how to measure it, and how to make people feel temporarily more humble. However, although humility is a positive, socially-valued quality, to date no research has examined how to help people become sustainably more humble. Our proposal will first study the types of people who are highly motivated to increase their humility, addressing the question of whether only the humble seek to become more humble. We will then integrate recent research on short-term humility-boosting activities into a comprehensive single-time-point humility intervention and a long-term program aimed at making people habitually more humble. In addition, we will test the outcomes of such a program, such as improved well-being and job satisfaction, in both a general sample of U.S. adults and a sample of business students. Our research thus aims to demonstrate the personal and social importance of humility. The findings will be published in major journals, presented at conferences, disseminated to leading media outlets, and, ultimately, described in a co-authored book about our proposed humility-boosting program. Finally, we aim to bring greater attention to the social importance of humility and ways that it can be increased, with the ultimate goal of promoting a more humble, and less self-focused, society.