Search

In this chapter, we review the literature on religion/spirituality (R/S) and the twin virtues of humility and gratitude. We focused on articles that were published in peer-reviewed journals and included both a measure of religion/spirituality and humility or gratitude. We focus our review by exploring two questions: (1) how is R/S associated with humility and gratitude, and (2) how might humility and gratitude work in tandem (consistent with the social oil hypothesis of humility)? We found cross-sectional evidence linking R/S and humility and gratitude. Additional work is needed to test the recent theory on how humility and gratitude may work together to promote and protect strong relationships, especially at the collective level. We suggest ways to catalyze research in this area, including the potential for future work aligning humility and gratitude. We also identify implications for practice both in clinical settings and religious communities.

In this response to the target article, we anticipate some challenges that joy researchers will face in attempting to cultivate a research program on a revived and more robust understanding of joy....

Regardless of political/religious affiliation, people tend to hold prejudice towards those with whom they disagree. Cultural humility may be a factor that could mitigate the negative effects of disagreements stemming from religious differences. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to explore whether cultural humility was related to changes in viewpoint following a religious disagreement. A sample of 174 undergraduate college students were paired with a student with whom they disagreed and discussed a contentious religious issue. Afterward, they rated their discussion partner’s cultural humility, their own change in viewpoint, and perceptions of their partner’s change in viewpoint. Results indicated that perceptions of the discussion partner’s cultural humility were related to perceptions of the discussion partner’s change in viewpoint, but not to the partner’s actual self-reported change in viewpoint. We discuss implications of this discrepancy, including potential bias in zero-acquaintance ratings and possible implications for ongoing negotiations in real-world situations.