IMHO

Humility has a bad reputation. The definition for humility and humbleness in my Random House dictionary includes: “having feelings of insignificance, inferiority, subservience…low in rank, importance, status, quality etc.” But recently I sat in on a panel at the Association for Psychological Science convention where the scholars had a much more appreciative view.

June Tangney of George Mason University emphasized that humility is not equivalent to low self-esteem. Rather, the humble person has an accurate view of herself. She can acknowledge her mistakes. She has low self-focus. She is aware of her place in the grand scheme of things and is sensitive to larger and possibly higher forces.

The humble person has the ability to be “unselved.”

Humility is not modesty either, Tangney argues. The modest person has a moderate view of himself, but may still think about himself all the time.  Humility is better seen as the opposite of narcissism. The narcissist has a damaged sense of self and is consequently self-centered a great deal of the time, reacting in defensive ways to ego threat. The humble person has an accurate and durable sense of self and can see the relationship between the self and the larger world.

Jennifer Crocker of Ohio State spoke next. She spoke of the costly pursuit of self-esteem. I suppose one could distinguish between actions that are done expressly to raise self-esteem (like buying a fancy car) and events that are done for other reasons that obliquely raise self-esteem (like writing a great symphony).

Along these lines, Crocker described the tension between self-transcendence and self-affirmation. Self-affirmation is about being proud and powerful and in control. Self-transcendence is about being engaged in activities in which the self is melded into a task or a relationship. According to various studies Crocker cited, people who have experienced self-transcendence are more open to evidence that counters their own views, and feel more connected to others.

Crocker also noted that self-transcendence is contagious. The best way to get a roommate who is responsive to your feelings is to be a responsive roommate yourself.   The final irony is that people who transcend themselves often have more self-esteem. Humility produces self-esteem; it is not the opposite of it.

Kirk Warren Brown of Virginia Commonwealth University described the maladies suffered by people who feel that their ego is at risk in every social interaction. People who can’t quiet the self see the world in distorted ways and hyper-react to stress. But people who possess mindfulness, an accurate awareness of self and a receptive attention to present experience, suffer from lower cortisol spikes when they are put in stressful situations. Mindfulness contextualizes the self, and produces many good outcomes.

Brown also pointed out that people will react as strongly to threats to their social identity as to threats to their physical safety (a phenomenon that should be studied by all Middle East negotiators).

Mark Leary of Duke University wrapped up the panel. Leary wrote an excellent book called “The Curse of the Self” back when he was at Wake Forest. At this event, he pointed out that there are times when each of us is egotistical and there are times when each of us is decentered and humble. Each of us shifts in and out of what he called an egoic versus a hypo-egoic mindset. So, Leary asked, what determines whether people respond to something egotistically or non-egotistically?

It must have to do with the quality of a person’s self-awareness. People can think about themselves at various levels of abstraction, Leary emphasized. When you are living in the present, you have minimal thoughts about how you are being perceived. You are focused on the concrete circumstances of what you are doing, not on your reputation or worth. A person in this hypo-egoic state has a less individualized sense of self and will not overreact to ego threats. That person will react to events with equanimity. He will not overgeneralize—just because I am good at this one particular thing does not mean I am wonderful in all things.

Leary pointed out that children start out egotistically and only become hypo-egoic as they develop more cognitive abilities and as they see themselves as part of a larger picture. Maybe humility is the product of civilization.

This panel was just one of many at the APS convention, but somehow the subject is central. We have done so much to try to boost self-esteem over the past few decades, but in many cases we seem to have ended up with people with unstable self-esteem, who can zoom up to high pride and down to low despair. It also seems to be true that the definition of the human self is changing. We are not so hyper-aware of all the variables that influence behavior; it is hard to identify the role that the individual agent plays. Somehow the self has to be reconceptualized in an age when everybody is so aware of the importance of genetic influences, network theories, unconscious processes and social contagions. Whatever else this work does, it should increase our sense of humility.