In a paper published recently in the Journal of Current Directions in Psychological Science, a team of researchers reviewed different studies of the personality trait; Humility. 

This review paper suggested several explanations on why humility is an important and valuable personality trait and identified some open questions for future research.

“The word “humble” travels so often now as a verb that embodying its gentler spirit, the adjective, can be an invitation to online trolling, professional invisibility or worse.”   - Benedict Carey, The New York Times.

Humility is a relatively new trait of behavior to be studied on its own to social and personality psychology. It is defined by an ability to accurately acknowledge one’s limitations and abilities and an interpersonal stance that is other-oriented rather than self-focused. 

In one of the studies reviewed, some volunteers were scored on a measure of their intellectual humility. This measure was an awareness of how incomplete and fallible their views on political and social issues were. This study found that these scores were greatly linked to curiosity, reflection and open-mindedness rather than political affiliations or their I.Q. measures. 

Since there are many new ongoing researches on humility the researchers suggest there should be ways humility can be taught or integrated into psychotherapy. They highlighted however that those people who need it the most i.e. people with borderline or narcissistic personality disorders, in many situations, would not be willing to accept it.

Humility is also an attribute frequently emphasized in the Quran and is of one of the great Islamic virtues. In English Humility comes from the Latin word Humus which means to be grounded. Therefore, humility is a state of being grounded in the sense that he or she doesn’t think themselves as superior or inferior to another.

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