Wednesday, January 4, 2012

Humble People Offer More Help To Others

Jack Dikian
January 2012

According to research findings published online in the Journal of Positive Psychology, arrogant people are less likely than those who are humble to offer help to someone in need.

Lead author Jordan LaBouff, a lecturer in psychology at the University of Maine (research work while a doctoral candidate at Baylor University) said students in an experiment were asked how many hours during the coming three weeks they would be willing to meet with an injured student to provide aid. Humble persons offered more time to help than less humble ones.

In other work, when students were asked to associate as quickly as possible traits that applied to themselves, as well as “agreeableness”, humility predicted helping others consistently.

It seems the research indicates that humility is a positive quality with potential benefits. Many factors (such as time pressure, number of bystanders, momentary feelings of empathy, etc) influence whether people will volunteer to help a fellow human in need, it appears that humble people, on average, are more helpful than individuals who are egotistical or conceited.

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