EXPLORING THE EFFECT OF HUMILITY ON INTERGROUP BIAS IN COOPERATION: HUMILITY AS A MODERATOR

Abstract

Past research has consistently established the association between humility hallmarks and positive social constructs such as prosociality and cooperation. However, little attention has been paid to the effect of group memberships on humble individuals’ tendencies to engage in positive social interactions with the other party. The present research investigates humility in the context of intergroup bias in cooperative behavior. We examined a total of 217 participants (143 females, 70 males, 4 unspecified; Mage= 20.60; SDage= 2.51) using a two-way between-subjects experiment. Participants were randomly allocated into the in-group or out-group condition through the Minimal Group Paradigm. Participants will then either be induced to experience state humility or neutrality by completing a humility recall task or a neutral recall task respectively. A resource dilemma fishing game was used to examine participants’ cooperative levels with either the in-group member or the out-group member. It was hypothesized that humility priming would reduce the intergroup bias in cooperative behavior towards in-group members. Results from the present research did not support the hypothesis. This finding leaves open the possibility that humility alone might not be sufficient in mitigating the intergroup bias in cooperation.