Abstract
The present research is a preliminary investigation of the concurrent and temporal relationships between humility and two forms of well-being: emotional and psychological well-being. Humility, emotional well-being and psychological well-being were measured twice 6 weeks apart. Humility correlated positively with psychological well-being at both time-points, but was positively related to emotional well-being at only one time-point. In addition, we used structural equation modeling to perform cross-lagged panel analyses, and found that psychological well-being predicted an increase in humility over time, but humility did not predict changes in psychological well-being over time. In addition, there were no cross-lagged associations between emotional well-being and humility. The results suggest that humility does not necessarily lead to more pleasant or fulfilling experiences, but psychological well-being is conducive to cultivating humility.
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Notes
Perceived life satisfaction might be relevant to the current research but was not included in this paper because we aim to focus on emotional and psychological wellbeing. Humility and life satisfaction did not correlate at Time 1, r = .11, p = .23, but correlated positively at Time 2, r = .20, p = .03. Using cross-lagged analyses in which the outcome at Time 2 was regressed onto the predictor and the same outcome at Time 1, we found that humility at Time 1 did not predict any changes in life satisfaction and, b = .02, SE = .15, p = .89, and neither did life satisfaction at Time 1 predict changes in humility, b = .06, SE = .03, p = .07.
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Tong, E.M.W., Lum, D.J.K., Sasaki, E. et al. Concurrent and Temporal Relationships Between Humility and Emotional and Psychological Well-Being. J Happiness Stud 20, 1343–1358 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10902-018-0002-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10902-018-0002-3