Faculty Mentor
Dr. Philip Watkins
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2018
Department
Psychology
Abstract
Humility has long been overlooked in psychological studies but may have important benefits to our overall subjective well-being. The most widely accepted definition among researchers of humility includes viewing oneself realistically and accurately and involved focusing on others more than oneself. We conducted a two-month prospective study where 150 students filled out questionnaires at two separate time points. The questionnaires included the Hill Humility Scale, Satisfaction with Life Scale (SWLS), The short version of the Gratitude, Resentment, and Appreciation Test (GRAT-S), the Personal Entitlement Scale (PES) and two joy scales (SJS and DJS) along with other measures. Partial correlations showed that humility predicted significant increases in gratitude, happiness, and joy over time. Moreover, Time 1 humility predicted significant decreases in personal entitlement as measured by the DES. These prospective correlations provide promising evidence that humility promotes well-being and positive traits, while it appears to inhibit entitlement and other negative traits. Humility may be a human virtue that is important to the good life and creating positive, pro-social relationships with others.
Recommended Citation
Hutton, Brandy and Johnson, Kirsha, "The Benefits of Humilty: Correlations with Gratitude, Happiness, and Joy" (2018). 2018 Symposium. 24.
https://dc.ewu.edu/scrw_2018/24
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International License.
