“Clothe yourselves with humility”: Humility can promote fairness

Abstract

Humility, as a virtue and personality trait, promotes the development of other positive qualities in individuals. Across two studies, we employed economic game paradigms dictator game (DG) and ultimatum game (UG) to measure individuals' fairness behavior and explore the role of humility on fairness. The results revealed that individuals with high levels of trait humility behaved more fairly (Study 1, N = 72), and humility priming could also promote fairness behavior (Study 2, N = 60). Furthermore, humble individuals exhibited higher levels of fairness perceptions in the DG, while they adhered more closely to their internal fairness perceptions in the UG, despite there being no significant difference in fairness perceptions compared to the control group. Our findings suggest that humility promotes individuals to behave more fairly while holding higher fairness perceptions. These results contribute to a deeper understanding of the value of humility, and offer a feasible pathway to promote fairness and harmony in society.