Humility

Abstract

Abstract Throughout history, humility has been marked with ambivalence, steadily oscillating between the statuses of virtue and vice. Recent scholarship in positive psychology, however, has begun to unveil the nuances of humility and its associations with human health and happiness. In particular, this limited but promising set of literature has persuasively shown that cultural, epistemic, and existential humility reliably corresponds with positive mental health outcomes in a variety of therapeutic contexts. Moreover, this same set of research strongly indicates that humility is positively associated with an array of traits and behaviors that promote overall well-being. Thus humility appears to be a key virtue for fostering human flourishing within mental health settings and beyond. Lastly, religious and spiritual traditions, many of which have dense histories of reflection on humility, may be particularly well equipped with the resources needed to cultivate humility and to enrich an understanding of this old and intricate virtue.