Morality has a dark side. Our moral tendencies breed rigidity, conflict, extremism, hate, intolerance, and violence. In this project, I proposed moral humility as one antidote to these dark features of our morality. Given that moral humility is a largely empirically unexplored phenomenon, across ten studies (N = 10,978) in this project, I investigated its measurement and structure, its nature and correlates, and its implications in a context characterized by the dark features of our morality. To these ends, I first developed a moral humility scale using psychometric factor analytic methods (EFA and CFA), which comprised of three factors—moral fallibility, moral openness/learning, and moral superiority. Second, I probed its nomological network, specifically testing its relationship to personality, religiosity, ideology, political extremity, moral grandstanding, and other relevant constructs. Moral humility was associated with other constructs in expected and sensible ways, such as higher openness to experience and modesty, and lower moral grandstanding and political extremity. Third and importantly, I tested its predictive validity in the context of political polarization in the US. Polarization was chosen as the context because research has suggested that it is a moralized context with features associated with the dark aspects of morality. Across correlational studies, I found that moral humility was associated with lower levels of polarization across a range of outcomes. It was associated with lower antipathy and antagonism towards outgroup, lower rigidity in one’s own political views, and lower rejection of compromise and contact, amongst other outcomes. These findings provided strong evidence to suggest that moral humility could be ameliorative in contexts that bring out our dark moral nature. These studies also established moral humility’s incremental validity over related and important constructs like moral relativism and intellectual humility, indicating that moral humility is likely a distinct construct and has unique explanatory value. Finally, I designed five moral humility interventions and tested its impact on moral humility and polarization using experimental design. I found that some interventions worked more consistently in increasing moral humility – providing evidence that moral humility can be targeted and increased using interventions. These interventions also lowered polarization, such as decreasing antipathy against political outgroup and increasing willingness toward cross-cutting exposure, thus further supporting moral humility’s predictive and causal role in moralized and high-conflict situations. The experimental studies also established moral humility’s discriminant validity from close constructs like moral relativism and intellectual humility, reinforcing that moral humility offers a distinct and meaningful mechanism through which moralized conflicts and contexts can be understood and addressed. This project also highlighted gaps in the current understanding of moral humility and laid the groundwork for future inquiry into the nature and significance, such as its impact on moral behaviors and moral improvement, mechanism underlying change and development of moral humility, and contextual and cultural variations in moral humility. Taken together, this project is the first comprehensive investigation into moral humility. By developing a validated measure, mapping its conceptual network, and demonstrating its predictive and causal role in moralized context like political polarization, this research establishes moral humility as a theoretically meaningful and practically consequential construct. It provides insight into how moral humility could help counter the dark and ugly aspects of our morality and quell the rigidity, intolerance, and antagonism that often accompany moralized intergroup conflicts. Finally, it opens doors for a deeper understanding of moral humility across outcomes, individuals, context, and cultures.
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