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RIOB 118 No. of Pages 18

Research in Organizational Behavior xxx (2018) xxx–xxx

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Research in Organizational Behavior

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/riob

Moral humility: In life and at work

Isaac H. Smitha , Maryam Kouchakib,*
a
Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management, Cornell SC Johnson College of Business, Cornell University, United States
b
Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University, United States

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Article history: If behavioral ethics research from the past two decades has taught us nothing else, it has made it
Available online xxx abundantly clear that humans are morally fallible. Indeed, there are everyday examples—in the
workplace and beyond—of people who unwittingly violate their personal moral values, finding numerous
ways to rationalize and justify otherwise morally objectionable behavior. In this article, we argue that
Keywords: acknowledging one’s own moral fallibility and developing moral humility can be an influential step in
Moral humility
helping bridge the gap between a person’s values and behaviors. Specifically, we define and make the
Behavioral ethics
case for moral humility as a fundamental virtue that can help people better avoid unethical behavior and
Ethics
Morality
enable virtuous behavior. Specifically, we explore the potential effects of having low (insufficient), high
(optimal), and extremely high (excessive) levels of moral humility on multiple outcomes at the
individual, interpersonal, and organizational levels. Our hope is to encourage future research on this
important but underexamined construct.
© 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Contents

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 00
Moral humility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 00
Acknowledging our moral fallibility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 00
Moral humility: defined . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 00
The Aristotelian ‘mean’ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 00
Moral humility at the individual level . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 00
Approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 00
Optimal moral humility: moral awareness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 00
Insufficient moral humility: moral blind spots . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 00
Excessive moral humility: moral permissiveness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 00
Ability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 00
Optimal moral humility: moral safeguards . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 00
Insufficient moral humility: moral biases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 00
Excessive moral humility: moral indecision . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 00
Aftermath . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 00
Optimal moral humility: ethical learning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 00
Insufficient moral humility: moral disengagement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 00
Excessive moral humility: moral apathy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 00
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 00
Moral humility at the interpersonal level . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 00
Optimal moral humility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 00
Perceptions of integrity and high moral character . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 00
Learning from others by seeking moral feedback . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 00
Treating others with moral regard . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 00

* Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: isaac.smith@cornell.edu (I.H. Smith), m-kouchaki@kellogg.northwestern.edu (M. Kouchaki).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.riob.2018.12.001
0191-3085/© 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Please cite this article in press as: I.H. Smith, M. Kouchaki, Moral humility: In life and at work, Research in Organizational Behavior (2018),
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Insufficient moral humility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 00

Perceived as self-righteous . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 00
Intolerant of others . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 00
Unintentionally harm others . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 00
Excessive moral humility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 00
Perceived as morally weak . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 00
Unduly influenced by others . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 00
Failing to help or protect others . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 00
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 00
Moral humility in organizations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 00
Optimal moral humility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 00
Ethical culture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 00
Psychological safety . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 00
Moral workplace behavior . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 00
Insufficient moral humility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 00
Inadequate structural fixes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 00
Psychological reactance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 00
Unethical workplace behavior . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 00
Excessive moral humility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 00
Collective corruption . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 00
Less whistleblowing and voice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 00
Unethical workplace behavior . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 00
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 00
The beginnings of a research agenda . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 00
Summary of predictions, assertions, and expectations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 00
Measurement concerns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 00
Additional avenues for future research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 00
Determining an “optimal” level . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 00
Moral learning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 00
Fostering moral humility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 00
Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 00
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 00

Introduction as moral individuals (Monin & Jordan, 2009; Dunning, 2007; Mazar,
Amir, & Ariely, 2008)—a motive that plays an important but often
Every day, people who view themselves as good, honest individuals end up tacit role in many of life’s daily experiences. However, while
violating their own personal moral values, sometimes even unknowingly. In the
individuals generally care about morality and have good intentions,
workplace, for example, people lie to co-workers, falsify documents, succumb to
conflicts of interest, violate health and safety regulations, cyber loaf, and the list they often behave in ways that are contrary to their moral values.
goes on. Sometimes, these actions are followed by a sense of regret, implying that Over the past several decades, a host of personal, social, and
people recognize their moral lapses. At other times, people unknowingly act in ways contextual factors have been identified that increase the likelihood
that violate their own values—perhaps due to a simple lack of moral awareness, or that people will engage in unethical behavior—sometimes without
maybe due to self-deception (Tenbrunsel & Messick, 2004). Such examples of
everyday immorality suggest that people often engage in behaviors that are likely
even realizing it. Scholars have developed theories and coined
inconsistent with the very morals and values they hold dear. Indeed, if behavioral terms such as bounded ethicality (Chugh, Bazerman, & Banaji,
ethics research from the past two decades has taught us nothing else, it has made it 2005), moral disengagement (Bandura, 1999, 2016), and ethical
plainly clear that humans are morally fallible. In this article, we argue that fading (Tenbrunsel & Messick, 2004) to help explain how good
recognizing one’s own moral fallibility—and developing moral humility—is an
people can do bad things, and still feel good about themselves. For
important step leading to moral growth and learning.
From a developmental perspective, humility implies a certain level of example, at the individual level, people often use neutralization
teachability. We posit that moral humility, in particular, can foster moral conduct techniques(Bandura, 1999; Bersoff, 1999; Sykes & Matza 1957)—
and ethical learning, as it helps people learn about their own biases and moral such as making advantageous comparisons (e.g., “it’s not like I’m
fallibility (i.e., behavioral ethics), helps people learn from others and learn for robbing a bank”) or blaming victims (e.g., “it’s their own fault, they
themselves what they believe is right and wrong (i.e., normative ethics), and helps
people learn how to better align their behavior with their belief systems (i.e., the
had it coming to them)—to rationalize and justify otherwise
intersection between behavioral and normative ethics). immoral behavior. There are also social and organizational factors
The purpose of this article is to make the case for moral humility as a that help people feel okay about misbehaving, such as institution-
fundamental virtue that can help people avoid unethical behavior and enable alized corruption (Baucus, 1994; Ashforth & Anand, 2003;
virtuous behavior, and to explore potential outcomes of moral humility at the
Rodriguez, Uhlenbruck, & Eden, 2005) that socially normalizes
individual, interpersonal, and organizational levels—all with an eye toward
encouraging future research on this important and morally relevant construct. unethical behavior at a particular organization, or the displace-
ment of responsibility (Bandura, Barbaranelli, Caprara, & Pastorelli,
1996), that allows someone to claim that they were ‘just following
Moral humility orders.’ Indeed, the infamous Milgram experiments (Milgram,
1963, 1965) clearly demonstrated that ordinary people are capable
Acknowledging our moral fallibility of horrendous atrocities, like ostensibly administering life-
threatening electric shocks to an innocent stranger, just because
Most people have a basic need for self-worth (Brown,1986; James they were instructed to do so by an authority figure.
1890; Tesser 1988), and self-worth is affected by moral self-views Similarly, a variety of other contextual factors have been shown
(Crocker & Wolfe, 2001; Dunning, 2007). People therefore generally to influence people’s ethical and unethical behavior—likely outside
develop a strong motive to view themselves and be viewed by others of their own awareness. Kouchaki and Smith (2014), for example,

Please cite this article in press as: I.H. Smith, M. Kouchaki, Moral humility: In life and at work, Research in Organizational Behavior (2018),
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.riob.2018.12.001
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found that after the unremarkable experiences of everyday life,
people seemed to have less self-control in the afternoon than the
morning, resulting in more cheating behavior in the afternoon.
This effect seems to be more pronounced for “morning people,”
whose natural circadian rhythms leave them with even less
cognitive energy in the afternoon (Gunia, Barnes, & Sah, 2014;
Ingram et al., 2016). Contextual factors can also affect ethical
behavior by influencing the way people frame a particular
situation or decision. Kern & Chugh (2009), for example, found
that people are more likely to engage in unethical behavior when a
decision is framed as though they have something to lose (vs. gain).
And simply the presence of money has been shown to prime a
business decision frame (vs. ethical frame) and lead people to
behave less ethically (Kouchaki, Smith-Crowe, Brief, & Sousa,
2013). Finally, even incidental emotions like anxiety (Kouchaki &
Desai, 2015), haptic factors like darkness and dimmed lighting
(Zhong, Bohns, & Gino, 2010), and even air pollution (Lu, Lee, Gino,
& Galinsky, 2018) have been shown to increase unethical behavior
and intentions.
In sum, a large body of research now demonstrates that well-
intentioned people can behave in ways that are inconsistent with,
and even betray, the moral values to which they subscribe. In other
words, by virtue of being human, it seems that people are morally
fallible. We assert that recognizing one’s own moral fallibility is a
key aspect of moral humility, and an important step toward closing
any gaps between a person’s espoused values and their enacted
behaviors.
Moral humility: defined
General humility, as a trait or virtue, has long been the topic of
complex discussions across philosophical, religious, and scientific
disciplines (Aquinas, 1989; Kesebir, 2014; Morris, Brotheridge, &
Urbanski, 2005; Owens, Johnson, & Mitchell, 2013). Although there
is not necessarily a simple, consensus definition of humility,
psychology and organizational scholars have recently begun to
integrate philosophical and religious perspectives into a concep-
tualization of humility as a construct that centers around three
core attributes: (1) acknowledging the limitations of one’s own
abilities (2) valuing and having an appreciation for others’
strengths and contributions, and (3) having a perspective that
transcends the self (e.g., Kesebir, 2014; Owens, Johnson, & Mitchell,
2013; Porter & Schumann, 2018; Tangney, 2000).
First, humility entails a willingness to recognize the limitations
of one’s own abilities. Humble people are able to take a hard look at
themselves and non-defensively acknowledge their own weak-
nesses, limitations, and imperfections, while still recognizing their
individual strengths (Kesebir, 2014). In this sense, humility does
not necessarily imply self-denigration or a lack of confidence, but it
can reflect a healthy awareness of one’s present capabilities.
Second, humility involves an openness to and recognition of other
people’s strengths and abilities. Humble people are often
teachable, appreciating the strengths and contributions of others
and seeing value in trying to learn from them (Owens et al., 2013).
And third, humility is characterized by a perspective that
transcends an exclusive focus on the self (Kesebir, 2014). Humble
people are often able to keep their own successes and abilities in
proper perspective, understanding that they are simply one part of
a larger, connected whole (Morris et al., 2005; Tangney, 2000).
These three attributes of humility can co-occur and reinforce one
another. As humble people acknowledge their own fallibility and
appreciate the strengths of others, they often feel more connected
to forces larger than themselves—like humanity, nature, or even
Deity (Worthington, 2007).
As it relates specifically to the moral domain, humility has been
considered a foundational part of morality by philosophers,
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https://doi.org/10.1016/j.riob.2018.12.001
3
theologians, and even organizational scholars. From a philosophi-
cal perspective, the Kantian view of humility has been defined as,
“that meta-attitude that constitutes the moral agent's proper
perspective on himself as a dependent and corrupt, but capable
and dignified rational agent” (Grenberg, 2005, p.133; but see
Louden, 2007). From a theological perspective, humility is a
foundational principle in many of the world’s major religions,
including Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, and Islam (Owens &
Hekman, 2012). And even in organizations, humility has been
considered one of the “organizational virtues” that can help
organizations build a strong moral foundation (Cameron, Dutton, &
Quinn, 2003).
However, while there clearly seems to be a link between
humility and morality, in this article we take a more nuanced
approach and explore moral humility specifically—conceptualized
as a domain-specific construct, in contrast to the broader attribute
of general humility. Previous research suggests that a person’s
degree of humility can vary by context or across domains. For
example, people can have humility with respect to one aspect of
their lives (e.g., general intelligence) while simultaneously lacking
humility with respect to another (e.g., athletic ability). Consistent
with a domain-specific approach to studying humility (e.g., Leary
et al., 2017; Owens et al., 2018), we conceptualize moral humility
as comprising the definitional attributes of general humility,
described previously, but applied specifically to the domain of
human moral functioning. We therefore define moral humility as
follows:
Moral humility is a virtue composed of having (a) a recognition of
one’s own moral fallibility, (b) an appreciation for the moral
strengths and moral views of others, and (c) a moral perspective
that transcends the self
Our definition of moral humility is informed by and closely
related to Owens et al.’s (2018) definition of expressed leader
moral humility, which also applies a general definition of humility
to the moral context. But our definition is broader, including
intrapersonal humility in addition to the interpersonal humility
that Owens et al. (2018) address. Moreover, our definition applies
to all aspects of a person’s individual morality, whereas Owens
et al. (2018) focus their definition on situations in which leaders
specifically face ethical dilemmas or moral issues. Like Owens et al.
(2018), however, we expect the components of our definition to
work together and often reinforce each other.
The Aristotelian ‘mean’
For Aristotle (1893), simply having a particular virtue is
insufficient; it is important to have the right amount of that virtue:
“Virtue, then, has to deal with feelings or passions and with
outward acts, in which excess is wrong and deficiency also is
blamed, but the mean amount is praised and is right . . . excess
and deficiency are characteristic of vice, hitting the mean is
characteristic of virtue” (p. 46, italics added).
For example, having too little courage may lead to inaction and
cowardice; whereas having too much courage may lead to
recklessness and ill-advised risk-taking. True moral virtue, then,
lies in finding the mean between deficiency and excess. Similarly,
we assert that having too little or too much moral humility can lead
to negative outcomes. In general, we conceptualize moral humility
as existing on a continuum and expect a curvilinear (i.e., inverted
u-shaped) relationship between moral humility and positive
outcomes. We posit that people with low (or insufficient) levels
of moral humility will be more likely to suffer from moral blind
spots and biased moral judgments, to be more likely to justify and
rationalize immoral behavior, and to become entrenched in their
(perhaps faulty) attempts to live their moral values. In contrast, we
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propose that people who exhibit increasingly high levels of moral
humility (approaching some optimal level) will be more likely to
recognize their own moral fallibility and institute safeguards to
protect against moral lapses; they will demonstrate a teachability
that will aide in their moral development. However, at extremely
high (excessive) levels of moral humility, we suggest that an
extreme moral relativism and moral permissiveness may result,
leading people to struggle with important morally relevant
decisions and situations.
In Fig. 1, we graphically depict the curvilinear relationship we
propose between moral humility and its associated outcomes—as
moral humility increases from low to high to excessively high. In
the section that follows, we integrate our perspective on moral
humility with both behavioral ethics and organizational research.
Although we rely on a large body of empirical evidence that
demonstrates the prevalence of human moral fallibility, the ideas
we present on the potential role of moral humility in promoting
(and sometimes hindering) ethical learning—and, ultimately,
moral behavior—is largely theoretical, with the hope of generating
new avenues for future empirical research. The category labels (see
Fig. 1) and section headings that follow, therefore, are in no way
meant to present an exhaustive review of relevant literature, nor a
typology (with mutually exclusive categories) of potential out-
comes of having different levels of moral humility; rather, we
organize our discussion in a way designed to fuel new research
questions and promote future theorizing. Lastly, our treatment of
high (optimal), low (insufficient) and extremely high (excessive)
levels of moral humility are not meant to imply a categorical
conceptualization of moral humility; these simply represent
prototypical levels with which to explore and discuss the various
consequences of moral humility. As mentioned above, we view
moral humility as lying on a continuum, with positive outcomes
increasing as moral humility increases from low to high, up to an
inflection point. Beyond that point, however, at excessive levels of
moral humility, we predict that additional negative outcomes
will emerge.
Moral humility at the individual level
Traditionally, scholars have used a rational lens to explore
moral decision making, often assuming that people employ a
systematic, deliberative process when facing ethical dilemmas
(e.g., Kohlberg, 1981; Rest, 1986). Rest’s (1986) influential four-
component model, for example, outlines a rational and generally
sequential decision-making process: having an initial moral
awareness, making a moral judgment, being motivated and having
moral intentions to appropriately act in response to the moral
judgment, and, finally, engaging in moral behavior. In recent
decades, however, this rationalistic approach has been augmented
by a large body of research examining the intuitive and sometimes
automatic (versus deliberative) decision-making processes that
heavily influence people’s moral decisions and behaviors (see
Haidt, 2001; Reynolds, 2006; Sonenshein, 2007).
Attempting to integrate these different lines of research, Moore
and Gino (2015) recently presented a psychological process model
of moral decision making, introducing an approach-ability-
aftermath (AAA) framework that provides a “systematic way of
thinking about how rationalist approaches such as Rest’s can be
disrupted by non-deliberative processes” (p. 238). Their frame-
work describes the intuitive, contextual, and sometimes noncon-
scious influences that affect how people approach moral decisions,
whether they have the ability to enact their moral judgments, and
how they understand and encode their behavior in the immediate
aftermath.
At the individual level, we argue that optimal levels of moral
humility can play an important role in promoting ethical learning
and mitigating psychological barriers to moral behavior (e.g.,
biases, rationalizations, moral blindness). In this section, we use
Moore and Gino’s (2015) AAA model as an organizing framework
from which to discuss the role of moral humility. The temporal
nature of their model is critical, because we expect moral humility
to influence moral decision making differently at different stages of
the process.

+
Outcomes

Moral Humility

Low (Insufficient) High (Optimal) Extremely High (Excessive)

Moral Humility Moral Humility Moral Humility

Individual Approach: Moral Blind Spots Approach: Moral Awareness Approach: Moral Permissiveness
Outcomes Bounded ethicality/ethical fading Moral attentiveness Moral blindness
Extreme moral universalism Ethical learning orientation Extreme moral relativism

Ability: Moral Biases Ability: Moral Safeguards Ability: Moral Indecision

Motivated moral reasoning Moral habits/routines Low moral courage
Moral overconfidence Avoid tempting situations Low moral efficacy

Aftermath: Moral Disengagement Aftermath: Ethical Learning Aftermath: Moral Apathy

Rationalization Self-reflection Moral discouragement
Motivated forgetting Moral teachability Moral confusion

Interpersonal Perceived as self-righteous Perceived as having integrity Perceived as morally weak

Outcomes Intolerant of others Seek moral feedback from others Unduly influenced by others
Unintentionally harm others Treat others with moral regard Fail to protect others

Organizational Inadequate structural fixes Ethical culture Collective corruption

Outcomes Psychological reactance Psychological safety Less whistleblowing & voice
Unethical workplace behavior Ethical workplace behavior Unethical workplace behavior

Fig. 1. The Aristotelian mean of moral humility across levels.

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Approach
By ‘approach,’ Moore and Gino (2015) refer to the way that
people construe their decisions and situations, including the
extent to which they are aware (or unware) of the ethical
implications of a given choice. Although some people tend to be
more or less sensitive to recognizing moral concerns in general
(Reynolds, 2008), all people are morally fallible to an extent, and
that fallibility often starts with the very way a person approaches a
morally relevant situation.
Optimal moral humility: moral awareness
The very first step in most rational models of ethical decision
making, such as Rest’s (1986), is to have moral awareness. If
individuals do not recognize the moral implications of a decision,
then they proceed with an amoral decision-making process, which
can lead to unintentional unethical outcomes (Tenbrunsel &
Smith-Crowe, 2008). Indeed, making sound, ethical decisions
largely depends on a person’s ability to recognize and consider the
moral aspects of a situation. For example, approaching a decision
from a strictly economic perspective can lead people to make
decisions that seemingly disregard important moral implications
(see Gneezy & Rustichini, 2000; Tenbrunsel & Messick, 1999).
Having moral awareness, then, is somewhat of a prerequisite for
engaging in thoughtful moral decision making—without it, such
decisions are often made based on “gut feelings” that may or may
not reflect the morally relevant issues at hand.
We submit that having a high level of moral humility can
increase a person’s moral awareness by increasing their moral
attentiveness (Reynolds, 2008). Whereas moral awareness simply
entails the recognition that a specific situation contains moral
content, moral attentiveness refers to a person’s tendency to
actively screen for and identify moral content in situations, in
general. We envision a person with greater moral humility to be
more morally attentive, because they will likely approach decisions
with a greater amount of moral caution, acknowledging their own
moral fallibility. Their moral vigilance will increase the scanning of
decision environments for morally relevant information. It has
been shown that those who question their own competence often
engage in greater information search related to accomplishing a
given task (Weiss & Knight, 1980). Similarly, perhaps people who
question their own moral capabilities are more likely to be on the
lookout for morally relevant information, increasing their moral
attentiveness. And, not surprisingly, being morally attentive has
been shown to increase moral awareness (Reynolds, 2008).
In addition, moral humility may increase moral awareness
because it helps people see beyond themselves and look past their
limited self-interest. Prior research suggests that general humility
involves an outward other-orientation, rather than merely an
inward self-focus (Davis et al., 2011; Tangney, 2000, 2002; Peterson
& Seligman, 2004), and we have specifically conceptualized moral
humility as a moral perspective that transcends the self. People
with optimal levels of moral humility may therefore be more
attuned to the moral implications of their decisions on others.
Indeed, a functionalist view of morality (Haidt & Kesebir, 2010)
suggests that moral systems exist to facilitate cooperative group
living and are rooted in social relationships. At its core, then,
morality is largely about balancing self-interest with the interests
of other people (Frimer, Walker, Dunlop, Lee, & Riches, 2011). The
outward focus associated with having moral humility might thus
increase moral awareness by helping people recognize the
potential impact or harm of a given behavior on others.
Finally, because moral humility involves recognizing the moral
strengths of others and being teachable, those with high levels of
moral humility may be more likely to develop an ethical learning
orientation. In a general sense, a learning orientation involves a
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5
mind-set that motivates people to develop skills, knowledge, and
competence (Dweck, 1986). Applied to the moral domain,
specifically, being morally teachable implies not only a desire to
grow and develop—from a moral character perspective—but an
openness that would enable such growth and development to take
place. We thus posit that having moral humility can lead people to
adopt an ethical learning orientation, wherein they approach new
situations, decisions, and even other people with an eye toward
developing moral character and moral competency. Such an
orientation would likely increase their moral attentiveness, as they
search for morally relevant information (but with a focus on
learning, not necessarily vigilance).
Having moral humility and an ethical learning orientation
might also lead individuals to focus on ethical aspirations and thus
set moral learning goals. According to Colby and Damon (1992),
moral exemplars integrate their personal and moral goals so that
they become indistinguishable from one another. But an obstacle
that may prevent people from adopting moral learning goals is the
fear and anxiety of reputational threats and negative evaluations
should they fail to achieve their goal. However, because of the
lower levels of self-focus and entitlement associated with humility
(Kesebir, 2014), having high moral humility might help buffer
against such anxieties, decreasing the psychological barriers
people face when thinking about setting morally relevant learning
goals.
In sum, we argue that moral humility can positively affect the
way people approach moral situations, by helping them be more
morally attentive and morally aware. We also propose that moral
humility may lead people to adopt ethical learning orientations,
which would also affect the way they approach moral situations,
perhaps even leading them to set personal moral goals. That said,
in addition to these positive outcomes of having high moral
humility, we believe that there are negative outcomes associated
with having too little, or insufficient moral humility—to which we
now turn.
Insufficient moral humility: moral blind spots
Somewhat of a corollary to our argument that having moral
humility is positively related to having moral awareness, it stands
to reason that having low, or insufficient, moral humility is
positively related to having moral blind spots. The notion of blinds
spots (Bazerman & Tenbrunsel, 2011) is in many respects the
antitheses of moral awareness. Research on bounded ethicality
(see Chugh et al., 2005) and ethical fading (see Tenbrunsel &
Messick, 2004) has demonstrated that when making decisions,
people regularly fail to perceive and process morally relevant
information that is available to them.
For example, decision makers at Ford Motor Company suffered
from moral blind spots when they failed to recall defective Ford
Pintos after learning that the car could burst into flames upon
being rear-ended. Consequently, several people—including three
teenage girls—died in fiery crashes that might have been
prevented. The initial decision not to recall the vehicles was
largely the result of a simple cost-benefit analysis. Conspicuously
missing from this analysis was a consideration of the ethical or
moral aspects of the decision. According to one member of the
decision-making team, the cognitive framework being used to
make this important business decision “influenced [him] to
perceive recall issues in terms of the prevailing decision
environment and to unconsciously overlook key features of the
Pinto case . . . . [his] perceptions and actions precluded consider-
ation of the issues in ethical terms” (Gioia, 1992, p. 385).
We argue that having insufficient moral humility may increase
the likelihood of approaching situations with moral blind spots not
only because people may be less morally attentive and morally
aware, as argued previously, but also because a lack of moral
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humility implies an over-reliance on one’s existing moral views
and experiences. For instance, even for people who consider being
moral a central aspect of their very identity (Aquino & Reed, 2002)
and therefore strive to be ethical, a lack of moral humility can lead
to moral blind spots such that their deeply-held moral values and
beliefs are so ingrained in their worldview that they fail to consider
the possibility that there are moral considerations that they have
previously not considered.
As an example, consider these extreme cases of various
philosophical schools of thought related to normative ethics. A
strict utilitarian (e.g., Mill, 1863)—who bases ethical decisions on
the premise of “the greatest good for the greatest number of
people”—may fail to see it as morally problematic for an
emergency room doctor to intentionally kill a forgotten homeless
person and harvest his or her organs to save a greater number of
lives. A strict deontologist (e.g., Kant, 1785/1994; Kant, 1785)—
who bases ethical decisions on adherence to what they view as
universal rules (e.g., be honest)—may fail to see a compelling
moral case for lying to a Nazi guard asking whether they are
hiding some Jewish people in their attic. And the strict virtue
ethicist (e.g., Aristotle, 1893)—who bases ethical decisions on
whether an action is consistent with and contributes to them
being a good moral person of character—may fail to realize that
their self-serving biases (which we discuss in greater detail in a
later section) or inappropriate cultural norms may cloud their
judgment vis-à-vis what constitutes virtuous behavior.
While debating the merits and intricacies of these philosophical
perspectives is beyond the scope of this article, we present these
examples simply as illustrations of how adopting a strict moral
universalist position based on one’s current moral views and
experiences may ironically be the source of potential moral lapses.
And we suggest that having insufficient moral humility—and the
consequent lack of moral teachability—can increase the likelihood
of well-intentioned people being blinded by their own moral zeal.
However, it is important to note that we are not trying to imply that
people should not stick to their values, live by their beliefs, or strive
to be as moral as they can. Rather, we believe that acknowledging
one’s moral fallibility and exercising moral humility will actually
better enable people to do those things more effectively—as they
are more likely to look over their shoulder and check their moral
blind spots.
Excessive moral humility: moral permissiveness
At the other end of the spectrum, having too much, or excessive,
moral humility can similarly have deleterious effects. Person-by-
situation interactionist models (e.g., Treviño, 1986) emphasize the
important role of both personal (e.g., moral values) and situational
factors in ethical decision making, and how they often work in
conjunction. We argue that when moral humility is excessively
high, decision makers may become too morally permissive,
allowing the demands of the situation to override their personal
moral values or beliefs. Whereas having insufficient moral
humility may lead to moral blind spots, as people give too much
credence to their own moral views while failing to account for
other morally relevant aspects of a situation, having excessive
moral humility presents the opposite challenge, as people’s own
moral values and standards become secondary to situational and
contextual factors and the views of others. Having excessive moral
humility may thus lead people to be morally permissive, lacking
the proverbial backbone required to stand up for their own beliefs
and fight for what they think is right—indeed, at the extreme, they
may never think that they are right; they may suffer from moral
blindness.
Although simply using them as explanatory descriptors (as
opposed to validated constructs), we differentiate between moral
blindness and what we referred to previously as moral blind spots.
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Having moral blind spots presumes that someone has moral views
and beliefs, but that one’s moral perspective is partially blocked by
a lack of moral awareness, self-serving biases, or features of a given
context. Moral blindness, on the other hand, implies difficulty in
seeing with a clear moral perspective at all. Lacking confidence in
their own moral views or beliefs, those with too much moral
humility might approach ethical situations in one of two ways. If
they do not care about being moral (e.g., low moral motivation, low
moral identity), they will approach ethical decisions with
indifference. If they do care about being moral (e.g., high moral
motivation, high moral identity), they may approach ethical
decisions with great uncertainty and perhaps trepidation. In either
case, moral permissiveness could result, as their indifference or
uncertainty may lead to an “anything goes” approach to moral
decision making.
Excessive moral humility might also lead to moral relativism, a
view that moral beliefs are not objectively true, but products of
culture or tradition that are relative to the standards of a particular
person or group. On the positive side, moral relativism can help
promote tolerance for other people, groups, and societies (Gowans,
2018). Taken to the extreme, however, moral relativism might be
misused to justify almost any behavior (Rai & Holyoak, 2013).
Regarding behavior that violates one’s one moral values, the
phrase, “when in Rome, do as the Roman’s do,” comes to mind.
Regarding an acceptance of others’ behavior that violates one’s
own moral values, there is the phrase, “to each his own.” We expect
that having excessive moral humility can lead to extreme moral
relativism, which may manifest itself in moral permissiveness
related to the acceptance of one’s own and others’ behavior.
Ability
The second part of Moore and Gino’s (2015) model involves
whether people have the “ability” to actually enact moral
behaviors in the moment. The last decade of behavioral ethics
research has identified numerous factors that lead people to
violate their own moral values, despite their best efforts (e.g.,
Mead, Baumeister, Gino, Schweitzer, & Ariely, 2009). We argue that
people with high levels of moral humility will not only recognize
the biases and self-serving motivations that inhibit their moral
behavior, but by recognizing their own moral fallibility, they will be
more likely to develop moral habits and routines and institute
certain moral safeguards that will increase their ability to live by
their beliefs.
Optimal moral humility: moral safeguards
People with high levels of moral humility recognize their own
moral limits and thus may be more likely to proactively develop
moral safeguards to protect themselves against situations and
temptations that provide opportunities to behave unethically. For
example, time pressure has been shown to increase unethical
behavior (Shalvi et al., 2012) and decrease helping behavior (Darley
& Batson, 1973). On the other side of the same coin, Gunia et al.
(2012) demonstrate that having time to contemplate can help
people make more ethical decisions (but see Moore & Tenbrunsel,
2014). Whereas most people would probably like to think that time
pressure has little to no effect on their moral behavior, those with
moral humility are more likely to acknowledge the pitfalls
associated with time pressure and may therefore look for ways
to avoid making important ethical decisions in a hurry.
Avoiding time pressure is just one of many possible moral
safeguards that someone might employ, but the morally humble
might also be better at avoiding tempting situations in general. A
large body of research has demonstrated the difficulties people
have exhibiting self-control (Muraven & Baumeister, 2000; but see
critiques of ego-depletion theory, e.g., Hagger et al., 2016; Vadillo,
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Gold, & Osman, 2016), which can be the source of many moral
indiscretions and lead people to put themselves in tempting
situations (Mead et al., 2009). People who acknowledge their own
moral fallibility may thus be more likely to set specific rules or
boundaries for themselves. For example, to protect against
infidelity, some married couples try to avoid being alone in a
room, with a closed door, with a member of the opposite sex. Some
people avoid working in certain industries to avoid having to
compromise their standards. Some people may avoid spending
leisure time with certain individuals to avoid being tempted to
engage in questionable behavior. In short, we expect people with
optimal moral humility to be sensitive to the environments they
put themselves into, and to self-select into situations where moral
temptations are less frequent and less intense.
An additional means by which moral humility can increase a
person’s ability to enact ethical behavior is by encouraging people
to develop moral habits and moral routines. As we argued
previously, we expect people with moral humility to be more
likely to adopt an ethical learning orientation, largely due to their
moral teachability and appreciation for others’ moral strengths.
Colby and Damon (1992) found that moral exemplars were more
open to the ideas of those around them and had a unique desire for
personal growth. And people focused on moral progress, growth,
and development may be more likely to look for ways to establish
patterns and routines aimed at moral improvement. For example, a
religious person might regularly read sacred texts, attend worships
services, and participate in daily prayer. An environmentalist
might make it a habit to recycle everything and commute to work
on a bike. Others might make it a habit to write in a gratitude
journal every night, donate a specified amount to charity each year,
or perform a random act of kindness each week—often with the
goal of becoming a better person. We predict that people with
moral humility, other things equal, will be more likely to engage in
these types of moral routines, and that these habits and routines
can serve as moral safeguards—protecting against both temptation
and selfishness—helping people to better live their espoused
moral values.
Insufficient moral humility: moral biases
When moral humility is too low, however, morally relevant
biases may be more likely to take hold of a person’s decision-
making process. In particular, a pervasive decision-making bias
that has been demonstrated time and time again is over-
confidence. For example, when Steinman, Shlipak, and McPhee
(2001) asked physicians whether they thought that promotions
from pharmaceutical sales representatives unduly influenced the
way that other physicians prescribe drugs to patients, 84%
responded, “yes.” When those same physicians were asked
whether they themselves were influenced, only 39% said, “yes.”
In a more light-hearted example, US News and World Report
conducted a survey in which they provided respondents with a list
of famous people, and asked them if the people were likely to go to
heaven. Only 19% reported that O.J. Simpson would go to heaven
(this was two years following a murder trial in which he was
acquitted), whereas 79% reported that Mother Theresa would go to
heaven (presumably due to her life-long commitment to serving
the poor in India). When survey respondents were asked about
themselves, however, a full 89% reported that “yes,” they would go
to heaven. People often have an over-confidence bias, thinking that
they are better than other people. In terms of moral over-
confidence, this general bias, which is a natural outcome of having
insufficient moral humility, can inhibit a person’s ability to behave
morally, because they may be less likely to avoid compromising
situations, and they will put less thought into taking precautions to
protect against the possibility of succumbing to selfish and self-
serving motivations at the expense of their moral values.
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7
In general, people are driven to pursue their self-interest, and
morality often serves as an important constraint on their self-
serving desires. That is not to say that all self-serving desires are
immoral, but many immoral behaviors are performed in the
pursuit of self-interest at some level. One way that good people can
do bad things (and still feel good about themselves) is by engaging
in a process of motivated moral reasoning. As people reason
through and process information, their decisions can be non-
consciously influenced by their personal motivations and prefer-
ences (Kunda, 1990). Having a self-serving motivation to arrive at a
certain conclusion (e.g., wanting to engage in behavior X, and thus
wanting to believe that behavior X is not really that bad) can bias
people’s reasoning in a way that leads them to rationalize or justify
their desired behavior. It has been well documented that people
give more weight to evidence that supports their predetermined
views or preferences (e.g., Ditto, Scepansky, Munro, Apanovitch, &
Lockhart, 1998; Norton, Vandello, & Darley, 2004), and such
motivated reasoning can happen within the moral domain,
specifically (Ditto, Pizarro, & Tanenbaum, 2009). When faced with
a temptation to behave immorally, people are motivated to
determine that the behavior in question does not violate their
personal moral values (e.g., Paharia, Vohs, & Deshpandé, 2013).
We submit that having low moral humility can increase the
likelihood that people will exhibit moral over-confidence and
motivated moral reasoning. Although over-confidence seems to be
a pervasive tendency that many people demonstrate in general
(see Moore & Healy, 2008), we argue that having too little moral
humility will exacerbate this tendency even further, with respect
to morality. First, if people fail to recognize their own moral
fallibility, they will be less likely to keep their moral confidence in
check, and less likely to question the morally relevant conclusions
they draw. Second, if people are not morally teachable, their lack of
appreciation for the moral views and strengths of others will only
increase their moral over-confidence, and they will be more likely
to discount the moral perspectives and insights of others while
seeking out information or evidence that supports their own
desired conclusions. And finally, if people struggle to have a moral
perspective that extends beyond themselves, as is implied by
having insufficient moral humility, they will be less likely to
account for the potentially harmful implications of their actions for
others. This may, in turn, increase their susceptibility to motivated
moral reasoning since their self-focused motivations bias their
ethical decision-making process. Having insufficient moral humil-
ity can thus bias a person’s moral reasoning and hinder their ability
to enact moral behaviors. Moreover, some moral biases (e.g., moral
over-confidence) likely have a reciprocal relationship with moral
humility, such that the more over confidant people become in their
moral abilities, the less likely they will be to exhibit moral humility.
A negative cycle may thus emerge, with increasing moral biases
and decreasing moral humility.
Excessive moral humility: moral indecision
Having too much moral humility can also have negative effects
on a person’s ability to be moral, leading to moral indecision. People
who place too much credence on the moral strengths of others,
while taking their own moral fallibility to heart, may begin to doubt
their own ability to make moral decisions effectively. Having a path
forward that is unclear, and trying to account for too much input, can
present a burden to decision makers, resulting in feelings of conflict
as different views push and pull them in different directions, leading
to indecisiveness (Janis & Mann, 1977). Consequently, such people
might develop weak moral courage and low moral efficacy, two
capacities theorized to underlie much of the moral motivation
required to enable people to behave ethically (Hannah, Avolio, &
May, 2011). We therefore predict that people with excessive moral
humility may experience moral indecision—something akin to
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paralysis by analysis—having a difficult time navigating competing
views and standing firm on their own moral values.
Moreover, moral indecision is likely to be accompanied by
negative emotions, and even post-decision regret (Frost & Shows,
1993). For example, Krosch, Figner, and Weber (2012) found that
people who faced more decision conflict when making hypotheti-
cal moral choices anticipated worrying about their decisions more
in the future, and experienced greater physiological arousal during
the decision-making process, as measured by skin conductance. It
therefore seems that having excessive moral humility may not only
impede a person’s ability to behave morally, but it may lead to
negative downstream consequences as well.
Aftermath
The final part of Moore and Gino’s (2015) model refers to the
“aftermath” and psychological ramifications of people’s morally
relevant behavior, although they focus primarily on how people
deal with and encode their immoral behavior. They suggest that
most people, because they desire to see themselves as ethical
(Mazar et al., 2008; Monin, 2007), are highly adept at construing
their morally questionable behavior in ways that allow them to still
feel good about themselves in the aftermath. We posit that having
low moral humility will increase the likelihood of this happening,
and that people can subsequently become entrenched in moral
rationalizations that may perpetuate their unethical behavior.
Conversely, we also extend Moore and Gino’s (2015) focus on the
aftermath of morally relevant behavior to include not only people’s
reactions to their own immoral behavior, but to their virtuous
behavior as well. We argue that because those with high moral
humility will be more open to admitting past mistakes, they will be
more likely to productively assess their moral successes in a
constructive manner that leads to further moral growth and
development. In short, we assert that moral humility can help
facilitate ethical learning.
Importantly, most behavioral ethics research focuses primarily
on understanding one-time decisions, often overlooking the
dynamic and recurring nature of moral decision-making and
how the psychological aftermath of one moral decision effects an
individual’s future decisions and behavior. Adopting a longer-term
perspective on ethical decision making, we contend that people’s
ethical and unethical actions—and their aftermath—ought to be
more fully considered in examinations of ethics and morality.
Optimal moral humility: ethical learning
We expect people with high moral humility to have a
motivation to refine their moral character (being aware of personal
moral short-comings) and to recognize opportunities to learn from
other people (as they appreciate others’ moral strengths and
capabilities). This combination of awareness, motivation, and
opportunity recognition will lead the humble to be morally
teachable—that is, open to people and experiences that can help
them grow and develop, from a moral perspective.
Furthermore, in the aftermath of an unethical decision, we
expect those with moral humility to be self-reflective. They will be
more likely to acknowledge that their choice was a mistake, rather
than seeking to justify it. And after non-defensively accepting that
there is a discrepancy between their behavior and the person they
want to become, we expect them to seek ways to learn from their
past mistakes. This ethical learning (see Chugh & Kern, 2016) will
then positively influence the way they approach future situations
(i.e., with an ethical learning orientation) and lead them to develop
further moral safeguards to help bridge the gap between their
moral values and their behavior.
Even in the aftermath of a morally virtuous behavior—such as a
random act of kindness, or a courageous display of integrity—we
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https://doi.org/10.1016/j.riob.2018.12.001
assert that having moral humility will enable people to learn more
from their experience, as they are more inclined to realize that
their exemplary behavior is only one small part of a larger whole.
Considering the positive potential outcomes of behaving virtuous-
ly (Haidt & Kesebir, 2010)—e.g., praise from others, feelings of
social worth, positive emotions—those with optimal moral
humility may be more likely to realize that future self-interest
might inhibit such virtuous behavior in the future (and the
attendant positive outcomes), resulting in a motivation to learn
how to institutionalize moral goodness in one’s life. In sum, we
argue that following a morally virtuous behavior, instead of feeling
licensed to subsequently behave unethically (Monin & Miller,
2001; Kouchaki & Jami, 2018), those with high moral humility
might be more self-reflective and morally teachable, which can
enhance their ethical learning and moral development.
Insufficient moral humility: moral disengagement
As alluded to previously, people with too little moral humility
are more likely to defensively seek ways to justify and rationalize
their immoral actions. For instance, in the aftermath of a morally
questionable behavior, a person with insufficient moral humility
might be more likely to morally disengage (Bandura, 2016). Moral
disengagement refers to a cognitive process by which people
decouple their morally questionable behaviors from their moral
values in a way that helps them avoid self-censure. Bandura et al.
(1996) outlined a number of specific mechanisms of moral
disengagement, including, blaming the victim (e.g., it’s their
own fault; they had it coming to them), diffusion of responsibility
(e.g., everybody else does it), displacement of responsibility (e.g.,
my boss told me to do it), moral justifications (e.g., it’s for the
greater good), and advantageous comparisons (e.g., it’s not as bad
as what others are doing). Through a process of motivated moral
reasoning, discussed earlier, we expect that people who lack the
moral humility required to non-defensively acknowledge their
moral indiscretions will be more likely to use such mental
gymnastics to justify their behavior.
Similarly, research has demonstrated that a desire to maintain
positive moral self-views can even lead people to strategically forget
moral rules that govern their behavior. Shu, Gino, and Bazerman
(2012), for example, demonstrated a case of motivated forgetting, in
which a sample composed mostly of university students was asked to
participate in a laboratory experiment containing both a compre-
hension task and a problem-solving task. They were asked to read an
academic honor code, followed by a performance task in which they
could earn extra money by cheating. Participants who cheated were
able to remember fewer rules from the academic honor code.
Moreover, Kouchaki and Gino (2016) found that people recall their
past unethical behaviors (versus past ethical, positive, or negative
behaviors) with less vividness and clarity, increasing the likelihood
that they take similar unethical actions in the future. They called this
phenomenon unethical amnesia, wherein people tend to forget their
unethical actions, or remember them with less clarity over time
compared to other types of behaviors.
Whereas people with high levels of moral humility are more
likely to recognize their moral shortcomings and seek to rectify
them, we expect those with insufficient moral humility to be more
susceptible to moral disengagement, motivated forgetting, and
unethical amnesia—as they try to distance themselves from
potential feelings of wrongdoing or regret, so as to resist having
to acknowledge that they have violated their own values. As a
consequence, over time, in the aftermath of behaving unethically,
such people may even be more likely to cognitively encode entire
classes of morally questionable behavior as acceptable, as repeated
rationalizations and justifications become ingrained in their moral
world view—a world view about which they are over-confident and
motivated to maintain.
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Excessive moral humility: moral apathy
Too much moral humility, on the other hand, can ultimately result
in apathy, as people become confused and then discouraged by their
lack of strong moral convictions. After approaching moral situations
with an extreme openness to competing moral views—and the
consequent lack of moral courage and moral efficacy—those with
excessive moral humility may look back on the aftermath of their
morally relevant behaviors with a very low sense of certainty about
the appropriateness, or inappropriateness, of their actions. This can
lead to moral confusion, a state of ambiguity related to what is right
or wrong, in general. As finding a clear path to making correct moral
decisions remains difficult over time, people with excessive moral
humility may become discouraged, as they continually vacillate
between alternative moral world views. As a consequence, moral
apathy may be the result, as moral confusion and moral discourage-
ment lead people to lose their energy, enthusiasm, and even interest
in moral concerns. In the aftermath of moral behavior, therefore, we
argue that moral humility is critical to continued moral development
and ethical learning. But having too little moral humility can result in
moral disengagement, and having too much can result in
moral apathy.
Summary
At the individual level, we have argued that people with high
moral humility will be more likely to approach morally relevant
decisions and situations with moral awareness and moral
attentiveness. We expect that they will also be more likely to
approach moral issues with an ethical learning orientation,
demonstrating an openness to refining their own character. Those
with low moral humility, however, may approach moral situations
with moral blind spots, failing to recognize the ethical implications
of a given decision (e.g., bounded ethicality), or refusing to
acknowledge the potentially legitimate moral views of others (e.g.,
extreme moral universalism). In contrast, those with extremely
high levels of moral humility might approach ethical decisions
with an undue sense of moral permissiveness, struggling to
maintain a clear moral perspective (e.g., moral blindness), being
too accepting of potentially unethical behavior (e.g., extreme moral
relativism).
We have also argued that people with optimal moral humility
will have an enhanced ability to enact their moral judgements,
being more likely to establish moral safeguards, develop moral
habits and routines, and avoid tempting situations in general.
Conversely, we argued that the ability of those with low moral
humility to make and enact moral judgments may be limited by an
increased susceptibility to moral biases, motivated moral reason-
ing, and moral overconfidence. On the other end of the spectrum,
we asserted that those with excessive moral humility might suffer
from moral indecision, with lower levels of moral courage and
moral efficacy.
Finally, in the aftermath following morally relevant decisions
and behavior, we have argued that those with high moral humility
will be more likely to engage in ethical learning, being more apt to
self-reflect with an attitude of moral teachability; whereas, those
with extremely low moral humility will be more likely to morally
disengage and rationalize potentially questionable behavior.
Moreover, we have argued that those with excessively high moral
humility will be more likely to develop moral apathy, as they
become confused and then discouraged by their lack of strong
moral convictions following important ethical decisions. Overall,
considering the potentially far-reaching consequences of moral
humility—on a person’s approach to ethically relevant situations,
their ability to enact moral judgments, and the way they respond in
the aftermath—we suggest that further exploration of moral
humility will increase our understanding of moral functioning and
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https://doi.org/10.1016/j.riob.2018.12.001
9
ethical decision making in important, and perhaps novel, ways. We
now turn to a discussion of the implications of moral humility at
the interpersonal level.
Moral humility at the interpersonal level
In addition to all of the intra-individual effects of moral
humility on a person’s ethical decision-making process, moral
humility is important at the interpersonal level as well. In this
section, we specifically focus on several interpersonal outcomes
that serve as examples of how moral humility affects the way we
are perceived, how we perceive and treat others, and whether we
rely on others to help us with our own moral growth and learning.
Again, our treatment of these topics and the list of interpersonal
outcomes we focus on are not exhaustive; our purpose is to prime
the pump and help spark empirical research on these and similar
ideas.
Optimal moral humility
There are many interpersonal benefits to having a high level of
moral humility. Focusing on just three, we argue that those with
high levels of moral humility will be more likely to (1) be perceived
as having high moral character and integrity, (2) learn from and
seek moral feedback from others, and (3), treat others with moral
regard and positively influence others’ ethical behavior.
Perceptions of integrity and high moral character
We assert that people with high moral humility will be
perceived by others as having high moral character and integrity. It
may seem slightly paradoxical that someone who openly admits
their moral mistakes would be viewed by others as having
integrity, but we expect the very fact that morally humble people
acknowledge their moral fallibility—and the attendant outcomes
associated with doing so—will actually increase others’ evaluations
of their character and integrity. Indeed, Peterson and Seligman
(2004) called humility a morally valued trait—that is, people
recognize and value humility as a character strength in others.
People tend to encode observations of others in ways that are
evaluative of broad traits, such as competence, warmth, and
morality (e.g. Fiske, Cuddy, & Glick, 2007; Goodwin, Piazza, &
Rozin, 2014). Recent research has demonstrated that people often
view morality, as a dimension, differently than competence and
warmth (Goodwin, Piazza, & Rozin, 2014; Leach, Ellemers, &
Barreto, 2007). And perceptions and evaluations of moral character
and integrity play a critical role in interpersonal and intergroup
relations. For example, Brambilla, Sacchi, Rusconi, Cherubini, and
Yzerbyt (2012) showed that global impressions of other people
were more affected by their supposed morality than by their
sociability or competence, because social judgments are closely
linked to perceptions of whether other people have beneficial or
harmful intentions. Moreover, within a person’s ingroup, Leach
et al. (2007) found people were prouder of their group when
information was shared about their group’s morality, versus their
group’s sociability or competence.
Given the important evaluative, social function of determining
whether others are moral or not (i.e., will relations with them be
harmful or helpful), people are particularly attuned to moral cues
and information suggestive of others’ morality (Goodwin et al.,
2014). We propose that moral humility can thus increase
perceptions of moral character and integrity, because, as we have
argued previously, those with optimal moral humility will be more
morally aware, put up more moral safeguards, and engage in moral
learning. We expect these things to lead to subtle (and sometimes
not so subtle) comments, behaviors, and actions that other people
will perceive as reflective of moral character and integrity.
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Learning from others by seeking moral feedback
At the interpersonal level, considering the influence of moral
humility on moral learning that we discussed earlier, we posit that
having optimal moral humility will increase the likelihood that a
person seeks moral feedback from others. Feedback is generally
seen as a key mechanism by which environments enable individual
development and learning, and, interpersonally, feedback often
involves information about how others perceive and evaluate an
individual’s behavior. Proactive feedback seeking is thus an
important individual resource for individuals to obtain valuable
information (Ashford & Cummings, 1983).
When it comes to morality, because people fall prey to moral
lapses and, at times, behave contrary to their own moral values,
they are especially in need of feedback in the moral domain.
Unfortunately, we know very little about moral feedback,
specifically. But in general, research on feedback-seeking behavior
has proposed two ways individuals gather information relevant to
one’s own behavior: directly asking colleagues for feedback
(feedback inquiry) and observing and inferring feedback informa-
tion from the environment (feedback monitoring) (Ashford &
Cummings, 1983). A cost-value framework (Ashford, 1986;
VandeWalle, Ganesan, Challagalla, & Brown, 2000) has been used
to explain feedback seeking behaviors, suggesting that individuals
consider the perceived value and costs of feedback to help them
determine whether or not to seek it. We argue that having high
moral humility increases the perceived value of feedback seeking
as the moral strengths and values of others are more greatly
appreciated. Likewise, moral humility can decrease the perceived
cost of feedback seeking, since one of the major psychological costs
to receiving negative moral feedback is the moral threat it presents
to a person’s moral self-views. However, by having a less inflated
view of one’s moral capacities (i.e., moral humility), we argue that
moral feedback will be less threatening. Therefore, we expect that
by increasing some of the perceived value and decreasing some of
the perceived costs of obtaining moral feedback, moral humility
will increase moral feedback-seeking.
This argument is consistent with the notion of having an ethical
learning orientation. Indeed, VandeWalle et al. (2000) found that
having a learning goal orientation positively predicted the
perceived value of and negatively predicted the perceived costs
of seeking feedback, resulting in more feedback seeking at work.
We argue that having an ethical learning orientation will have a
similar effect on moral feedback-seeking. In the workplace, moral
feedback seeking might include initiating moral conversations that
allow people to think out loud (Gunia et al., 2012). Conversations
allow individuals to make sense of situations and to compare their
interpretations with others’.
Treating others with moral regard
Because humility often increases a person’s focus on others, it is
often associated with interpersonal qualities, such as respect, care,
empathy, and a commitment towards others (Davis et al., 2011;
Tangney, 2000, 2002; Peterson & Seligman, 2004)—qualities that
promote prosocial behavior (e.g., Batson, Ahmad, Lishner, & Tsang,
2002). We have conceptualized moral humility as involving a moral
perspective that transcends the self, and one way to think about the
effect of moral humility at the interpersonal level is to think about a
person’s moral expansiveness (Crimston, Bain, Hornsey, & Bastian,
2016), or the breadth of their circle of moral regard (Reed & Aquino,
2003; Smith, Aquino, Koleva, & Graham, 2014). Philosophers (e.g.,
Singer, 2011) and psychologists (e.g., Reed & Aquino, 2003) have used
the metaphor of expanding concentric circle to help visualize the
psychological boundaries that someone might draw around the
groups, people, or even things that they deem worthy of moral
consideration. The broader the circle, the more inclusive and
expansive one’s circle of moral regard.
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https://doi.org/10.1016/j.riob.2018.12.001
We submit that having optimal moral humility may increase
the breadth of a person’s circle of moral regard, because their sense
of personal moral fallibility combined with their acknowledge-
ment that they are not alone in or at the center of the moral
universe will make it less likely that they elevate their own moral
importance above that of others. Moreover, appreciating the moral
strengths and values of other people is likely to increase the
likelihood of deeming them worthy of moral concern—and we are
more likely to treat others well when we deem them worthy of
moral consideration.
Not only can moral humility lead people to treat others with
more moral concern, but having a high level of moral humility can
help people influence others to behave morally as well. For
example, in one of the rare empirical studies on moral humility,
specifically, Owens et al. (2018) found that leaders who behave in
ways that exemplify moral humility (e.g., show they are open to the
ideas of others in solving ethical issues; show appreciation for the
moral strengths of others; admit when they don’t know how to
solve an ethical issue) help to increase the moral efficacy (i.e., the
confidence in their ability to perform in moral situations) of their
followers. They argued that expressions of leader humility led to
follower moral efficacy as leaders exemplified how to approach
moral situations with care and deliberation, gave followers
opportunities to practice engaging in morally challenging sit-
uations by inviting them into the decision-making process, and by
validating followers’ moral strengths and abilities. There is thus
initial evidence that having moral humility can help others be
more moral as well.
Insufficient moral humility
Similar to the individual level, we expect that having low levels
of moral humility will lead to some deleterious outcomes at the
interpersonal level as well. As a few examples to discuss, we assert
that having insufficient moral humility can lead others to perceive
a person as self-righteous, can lead a person to be intolerant of
others, and can even lead people to unintentionally harm others.
Perceived as self-righteous
People often exhibit an inflated sense of their own morality,
believing they are more moral and generous than others—what some
call the “holier than thou” phenomenon (Epley & Dunning, 2000).
These self-serving assessments are not unique to morality (Taylor &
Brown, 1988), but most people erroneously believe they are more
ethical than their peers (Tenbrunsel,1998). We assert that those with
insufficient moral humility will be especially prone to exhibiting
behaviors reflective of this “holier than thou” attitude, leading others
to perceive them as self-righteous. As people refuse to acknowledge
their own moral shortcomings and fail to recognize the moral
strengths, values, and capabilities of others, they will display an air of
moral superiority that others judge as self-righteous, giving others
feelings of moral reproach—or a belief that someone is looking down
on their values and does not consider them morally equal.
Moral reproach can lead to strong negative responses (Minson
& Monin, 2012), because people care about their morality and are
particularly sensitive to criticism about their moral standing
(Aquino & Reed, 2002; Dunning, 2007; Monin & Jordan, 2009). For
example, there is evidence that too much ethical leadership can
actually lead to less follower citizenship behavior, due to followers’
perceptions of moral reproach from their leaders (Stouten, van
Dijke, Mayer, De Cremer, & Euwema, 2013), which breeds
resentment as they feel that their leader is looking down on them.
Intolerant of others
Having insufficient moral humility can also lead a person to be
intolerant of other people. We argue that people with too little
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moral humility, who do not acknowledge their own weaknesses,
and who undervalue the moral strengths of others, are more likely
to view their own moral fortitude and moral judgments as
infallible and judge the moral indiscretions of others more harshly
and less forgivingly. When such people observe the moral lapses of
others, their first instinct will likely be to question others’ overall
integrity, failing to recognize that they too might have acted
similarly in a similar circumstance. Simply put, there is a disparity
in the way people evaluate their own versus others’ behaviors. One
reason for such a disparity is that people are fairly confident about
their own values and beliefs, but they have limited access to the
values and beliefs of others (Pronin, 2008). Moreover, people are
more aware of the external factors and extenuating circumstances
affecting their own versus others’ behaviors (Jones & Nisbett,
1972). As a result, people tend to be less tolerant of others and
punish others more harshly for their moral shortcomings, and we
expect this intolerance to be amplified for those with low moral
humility who will be less likely to see how they themselves might
be susceptible to engaging in the same type of behaviors.
Furthermore, there is evidence that seeing one’s own capability
for similar misdeeds is a predictor of forgiveness (Exline,
Baumeister, Zell, Kraft, & Witvliet, 2008). Therefore, as failing to
admit one’s own moral fallibility decreases empathic understand-
ing and forgiveness, we expect intolerance to increase as well.
Unintentionally harm others
Finally, people with insufficient moral humility may even be
more likely to unintentionally harm other people. Harm and
perceptions of harm often play a central role in discussions of
morality. Gray, Young, and Waytz (2012) go so far as to argue that
harm and perceptions of harm are the very essence of morality.
They assert that a behavior is considered to be immoral when an
acting agent behaves in a way that harms a victim. The victim need
not be another person, however, but could be the environment, an
animal, or even Deity. We have previously argued that people with
low moral humility will be less morally aware, and more likely to
suffer from cognitive biases and motivated moral reasoning that
can result in unintentional unethical behaviors and subsequent
moral disengagement related to those behaviors. Much, if not all, of
this unintentional immorality involves the harming of some third-
party. For example, failing to see the moral implications of a
particular business decision could result in unintentional harm to
employees, long-term investors, or the environment. Having
insufficient moral humility, therefore, may not only lead someone
to violate their own moral values, it can lead them to inadvertently
harm other people as well.
Excessive moral humility
Similarly, having excessively high moral humility might lead to
negative interpersonal consequences. We argue that not only are
those with excessive moral humility perceived to be morally weak,
they will be more swayed by the moral opinions of others and more
likely to succumb to external pressures to be unethical. Moreover,
we expect them to be less likely to intervene to protect victims of
the immorality of others.
Perceived as morally weak
In general, people sometimes have negative associations with
the concept of humility (Tangney, 2000) such that humble people
can be seen as passive and lacking self-respect and confidence
(Peterson & Seligman, 2004). Indeed, Walker and Frimer (2007)
found that a pronounced difference between moral exemplars and
ordinary individuals is that moral exemplars exhibited greater
strength, mastery, control, autonomy, and independence. If moral
humility is excessive, therefore, people might be perceived by
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11
others as having no moral backbone, as being morally weak. If
people are all too aware of their own moral inabilities, their lack of
moral efficacy and moral courage will negatively influence
perceptions of their moral competence and capabilities (Hannah
et al., 2011). Additionally, perceptions of moral weakness are likely
to be compounded even further if they demonstrate too great of an
appreciation for the moral strength of others and give too much
deference to others’ moral opinions. Moreover, the perception that
those with excessive moral humility are morally weak may actually
be rooted in reality, as they lack the moral fortitude to stand up for
their principles—which we address next.
Unduly influenced by others
When facing important moral issues, employees are often
exposed to social influences, and we argue that those with
excessive moral humility are more likely to succumb to those
influences. Whereas high levels of humility are often associated
with a secure and affirmed self-concept (Chancellor & Lyubomir-
sky, 2013; Tangney, 2000, 2002), we assert that excessive moral
humility is reflective of a person’s insecurity and an extreme open-
minded acceptance of outside influences. In addition, humility, in
excess, can relate to low self-esteem and self-efficacy, and people
with low self-esteem are more susceptible to social influences
(Nisbett & Gordon, 1967). Therefore, we posit that those with too
much moral humility will be unduly influenced by other people.
The lower levels of moral self-efficacy and moral courage
associated with having excessive moral humility may present a
challenge when facing morally relevant pressure from others.
Such pressure might take the form of direct requests to engage in
unethical behavior, or perhaps, more innocently, persuasive
attempts to convince them to see a situation from a moral
viewpoint that is different from their own. In either case, we
expect people with too much moral humility to be more likely to
comply with an unethical request or cede a moral point. They may
be more likely to succumb to peer pressure and violate their own
moral values, and they might be more easily convinced that their
own moral perspective is incorrect. Additionally, while those with
extreme humility are commendably less self-focused (Davis et al.,
2011; Kesebir, 2014; Tangney, 2000; Peterson & Seligman, 2004)
and direct less attention to themselves and their own personal
preferences, we would expect them to be less likely to act upon
their own desires and thus be more influenced by (un)ethical
social influences (Pitesa & Thau, 2013). Thus, excessive moral
humility may serve as a roadblock to standing one’s ground and
living one’s values.
Finally, the moral ambiguity that results from having too much
moral humility is also likely to increase one’s susceptibility to the
influence of others. Social influences and norms tend to have a
stronger effect when individuals are uncertain about what they
should do (Cialdini & Goldstein, 2004). The moral uncertainty and
ambiguity that results from having excessive moral humility thus
makes it more likely that such a person would be affected by the
influence of others and social norms.
Failing to help or protect others
In addition to preventing people from standing up for their
moral beliefs, having excessive moral humility might also prevent
people from intervening to protect the moral rights of others. The
extreme moral relativism of those with too much moral humility,
and the resulting moral permissiveness, may decrease the
likelihood of an individual to speak up or stand up in defense of
the victims of unethical behavior. Indeed, the moral permissive-
ness and moral apathy associated with excessive moral humility
may allow moral concern for minority groups to wane, leading to
the acceptance of such practices as institutionalized racism and
slavery.
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Even a person’s complicity in atrocities as dark as genocide
might be partially a function of having too much (or too little)
moral humility. Too much, and one may be easily swayed or feel
pressured into participating (or at least look the other way); too
little, and one may be more likely to rationalize and accept moral
justifications, such as ethnic cleansing. In a work context, similar
although much less severe dynamics might play out when a boss
tries to persuade a subordinate to intentionally misreport certain
financial indicators to make the company appear better than it
really is—for the sake of the company, its investors, and the
employees. Excessive humility may also lead to a lack of self-
importance, wherein a single individual feels not only incapable of
intervening, but perhaps that it would even be inappropriate to do
so. “Who am I to get involved?” they may ask about inserting
themselves in a moral situation that extends beyond themselves
personally.
Summary
Interpersonally, we have argued that those with a high level
of moral humility will be more likely to be perceived as having
integrity. They will be more likely to seek moral feedback from
others, and they will treat a broader set of people with moral
regard. In contrast, we have suggested that those with
insufficient moral humility will be more likely to be perceived
as self-righteous. They will be less tolerant of others, and they
may even unintentionally harm other people. And lastly, we
have argued that people with excessive moral humility will be
more likely to be perceived as morally weak, or feckless. They
will be more susceptible to the undue influence of others, and
they may fail to protect others from harm when the occasion
requires it.
Moral humility thus seems to play a critical role at the
interpersonal level, shaping individuals’ perceptions and treat-
ment of others, as well as influencing how those individuals
themselves are perceived. Given the social nature of morality
(Haidt & Kesebir, 2010; Moore & Gino, 2013), we argue that further
scholarly focus on these interpersonal outcomes and effects is
warranted.
Moral humility in organizations
The individual and interpersonal outcomes associated with moral
humility that we have discussed thus far have implications for
organizations, and in this section, we make a case for the value of
moral humility in organizational life. We discuss how moral humility
can influence organizational outcomes directly, by affecting top
management teams and key decision-makers, as well as indirectly,
through an organization’s culture, as an aggregate construct
composed of the moral humility of all of a group’s or organization’s
members. However, it is beyond the scope of this article to
anthropomorphize organizations and examine how their behaviors
are or are not reflective of moral humility. That said, we argue that the
moral humility (or lack thereof) found within the boundaries of an
organization has a meaningful effect on organizational outcomes
that people care about, specifically related to the promotion (or
undermining) of ethics.
Optimal moral humility
We propose that high levels of moral humility within an
organization may help foster an ethical culture and help employees
develop a sense of psychological safety, particularly with regard to
morally relevant situations. As a whole, we expect unethical
workplace behavior to decrease when both leaders and followers
exhibit moral humility.
Please cite this article in press as: I.H. Smith, M. Kouchaki, Moral humility: In life and at work, Research in Organizational Behavior (2018),
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.riob.2018.12.001
Ethical culture
Many organizations invest considerable resources into
developing ethics training programs and/or enforcing formal
codes of conduct. However, these have not proven to be
particularly successful in reducing the prevalence of ethical
violations that seem to occur regularly in businesses throughout
the world. What is needed may be a fundamental change in the
culture of some organizations and industries—i.e., the
development of an ethical culture. In addition to strong external
and internal controls, it is important to develop an overall culture
of ethics that encourages and even rewards individuals for doing
the right thing when faced with an ethical challenge. According to
Schein (1985), culture is, “a set of basic assumptions and beliefs
that are shared by members of an organization.” Culture helps
“define in a basic ‘taken-for-granted’ fashion an organization’s
view of itself and its environment” (pp. 5–6). An ethical culture is
“a subset of organizational culture” that “represents the interplay
among the ethics-related formal (e.g., rules and policies,
performance management systems) and informal (e.g., norms,
language, rituals) organizational systems that influence employee
ethical and unethical behavior” (Treviño, Den Nieuwenboer, &
Kish-Gephart, 2014, p. 641).
We argue that optimal moral humility among leaders and upper
management teams can help organizations develop stronger
ethical cultures. As leaders and managers exhibit sufficient moral
humility, their increased moral awareness, their ethical learning
orientation, and the moral safeguards they put in place will
increase the likelihood that they demonstrate ethical leadership
(Brown, Treviño, & Harrison, 2005) and help create a tone at the top
(Schwartz, Dunfee, & Kline, 2005) that highlights the importance
of ethical considerations at work. According to social learning
theory (Bandura, 1986), ethical leaders serve as role models of
ethical conduct that their followers often emulate, and social
exchange theory (Blau, 1964) suggests that as leaders treat their
followers with moral consideration (e.g., with trust, fairness), their
followers will reciprocate, resulting in positive moral norms.
Furthermore, to the extent that followers exhibit optimal moral
humility, they will be more likely to adopt and engage in the
development of an ethical culture, as their teachability makes
them open to broader moral influences. Therefore, to the extent
that employees collectively exhibit moral humility in the aggre-
gate, we believe that an ethical culture will be more likely to
emerge as a result of ethical leadership.
Psychological safety
We also expect moral humility to be positively associated with
psychological safety. Psychological safety is typically defined as a
commonly shared belief, within a group or organization, that it is
safe to take interpersonal risks in the workplace (Edmondson & Lei,
2014). This sense of safety then leads people to freely express their
feelings, respect each other’s competence and points of view, and
have positive intentions toward each other (Edmonson, 1999).
Psychological safety has been shown to positively influence both
learning and performance (Edmondson & Lei, 2014). We posit that
the appreciation of others’ moral strengths and the self-transcen-
dent focus associated with moral humility will lead people to be
more open and tolerant, and less judgmental and condemning,
when it comes to confronting views that conflict with their own.
Certainly, we would expect this openness to be most pronounced
related specifically to moral issues, but given the prominence of
morality and character judgments (Goodwin et al., 2014) in our
assessments and evaluations of other people and their views, we
would also expect a spillover effect, such that those with optimal
moral humility would reinforce a sense of psychological safety
within a group, even about potentially amoral topics. And again, to
the extent that a high level of moral humility is widely distributed
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throughout a group or organization, we contend that there will be a
greater likelihood that an environment of psychological safety will
develop.
Moral workplace behavior
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, we predict that high
levels of moral humility—in both leaders and followers—will not
only affect the culture and general sense of psychological safety
within an organization, but we expect it to lead to an actual
increase in moral behavior at work as well. Certainly, a direct result
of ethical leadership and a strong ethical culture would likely be
less unethical behavior across the board at work, but we expect
high moral humility to influence workplace ethics at the level of
decision-making. As argued earlier, we expect those with optimal
moral humility to have a more expansive circle of moral regard for
other people. Applied to an organizational context, integrating the
notion of moral expansiveness with a stakeholder perspective
might then suggest that those with moral humility are more likely
to consider a broader set of stakeholders as worthy of moral
concern, thereby increasing the likelihood of those stakeholders
being treated ethically. An organization’s stakeholders include, but
are not necessarily limited to, investors, employees, customers,
suppliers, the local community, and even the environment. We
argue that organizational leaders and key decision-makers with
high levels of moral humility will be more likely to feel a
responsibility to treat a given stakeholder group with moral
concern. Moreover, at the individual employee level, we similarly
expect broader circles of moral regard to influence the way
employees treat each other, their customers, their rival work
groups, etc.
Insufficient moral humility
With insufficient moral humility, the moral blind spots of both
leaders and their followers can lead to an increase in unethical
behavior at work. Moreover, there can even be negative outcomes
from having a leader who openly champions ethical issues at work,
if done without enough moral humility. Under such conditions,
followers may experience psychological reactance, wherein they
feel like their autonomy is being threatened, or the pervasive use of
a dominant moral justification can lead to widespread moral
disengagement.
Inadequate structural fixes
Zhang, Gino, and Bazerman (2014) present two categories of
ethical fixes that organizations try to employ to combat unethical
workplace behavior: values-oriented approaches (i.e., trying to
appeal to people’s desires to be moral) and structure-oriented
approaches (i.e. trying to redesign tasks, incentives, and decision
processes such that unethical behavior is less of a temptation).
They discuss the advantages and disadvantages of both
approaches, suggesting that integrating both approaches will lead
to the most ethical organizational outcomes.
We argue that organizations with leaders who have too little
moral humility may rely too heavily on the good intentions of
employees, and fail to recognize the general moral fallibility of
humanity. In so doing, they may not institute proper organizational
moral safeguards, reduce conflicts of interest, or take other
necessary steps to counteract their own and their employees’
moral blind spots and biases. While it is difficult for individuals to
overcome their own biases themselves, there is evidence that
organizations that make structural changes to help debias
decision-making processes can be more effective (Kahneman,
Lovallo, & Sibony, 2011). However, we expect that organizations led
by people with insufficient moral humility will be less likely to
implement such structural ethical fixes.
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13
Psychological reactance
It has been argued that autonomy is a fundamental psychologi-
cal need (Deci & Ryan, 1985), such that people have a strong desire
to feel free to choose how to behave. When this freedom to choose
is somehow threatened, people can experience what has been
termed psychological reactance (Brehm, 1966), wherein a person
feels driven to reclaim or maintain their sense of autonomy and
control. In a classic field experiment, Pennebaker and Sanders
(1976) posted signs on toilet stall walls in restrooms of a university
library building that instructed patrons to refrain from drawing
graffiti. The stalls with the signs ended up getting the most graffiti.
When ethical leaders have insufficient moral humility, their
attempts to influence followers to be ethical may not only fall flat,
but they may come across as heavy handed, leading followers to
experience psychological reactance with respect to their leader’s
influence attempts. Followers may feel that their own moral
perspectives are underappreciated and that they are being forced
to comply with their leader’s vision of virtue in the world.
Attempting to reassert their autonomy, followers may even engage
in unethical behavior for the specific purpose of doing the opposite
of what their leader is trying to get them to do, what has been
called a boomerang effect (Brehm & Brehm, 1981). We propose that
leaders striving to promote ethics within their organizations, but
who have too little moral humility, will be more likely to elicit
psychological reactance within their followers.
Unethical workplace behavior
First, insufficient humility at the top of an organization can lead
to an unintentional unethical tone. An organization with leaders
who have too little moral humility may unintentionally overlook
company policies and practices that violate even the company’s
own stated values. Practices related to paying bribes, potentially
discriminatory hiring, or unnecessary lay-offs, that may or may not
be unethical but that deserve careful moral consideration, may sit
in decision-makers’ moral blind spots. As such practices become
institutionalized throughout the organization, an unethical tone at
the top (see Schwartz, Dunfee, & Kline, 2005) may emerge that
leads good employees to leave, and other employees to take their
cues from their leaders, leading to normalized practices through-
out the organization that may be deemed unethical upon deeper
reflection.
Moreover, an organization where employees collectively
exhibit insufficient moral humility is at risk of rationalizing,
justifying, and morally disengaging in ways that facilitate unethical
behaviors at work. A particularly pernicious moral disengagement
tactic that has led many companies astray (from an ethical
standpoint) is making moral justifications. Specifically, the true but
sometimes misleading argument that an organization’s leaders
have a fiduciary responsibility to investors and shareholders can be
used as a moral justification for any morally questionable behavior
that happens to increase the bottom line without presenting
obvious repercussions.
While there has been widespread debate between those who
believe a company’s moral obligations should center almost
exclusively on shareholders versus a broader set of stakeholders
(Freeman, 2010; Harrison & Freeman, 1999; Friedman, 1970), the
seemingly zero-sum game that decision makers sometimes face
lead them to harm one stakeholder to benefit another. While this
may, at times, just be the reality of operating in a complex and
dynamic environment, it can be problematic when ethical
considerations cease to factor into decisions under the guise of
a moral justification that the company is obligated to protect the
interests of one particular stakeholder over all others, regardless of
the circumstances. Some might contend that this is a strawman
argument, to which we would agree if one were only talking about
decision makers with optimal moral humility. But for
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organizational leaders with insufficient moral humility, who fail to
acknowledge their own moral fallibility and suffer from ethical
blind spots, such moral justifications can lead to pervasive
unethical practices in the workplace.
Excessive moral humility
Within organizations, having too much moral humility can have
drastic consequences, even resulting in collective corruption. The
moral permissiveness, moral indecision, and moral apathy
associated with excessive levels of moral humility increase the
likelihood of unethical practices becoming normalized within a
company. This challenge is compounded even further by our
expectation that people with excessive moral humility will be less
likely to blow the proverbial whistle or raise their voice against
immoral practices. As a result, we believe excessive moral humility
will lead to an increase in unethical workplace behavior.
Collective corruption
Process models of collective corruption have focused on the
rationalization and socialization processes that lead to the
institutionalization of corruption within an organization. These
processes can involve top-down influences and rational informa-
tion processing from organization members (Brief, Buttram, &
Dukerich, 2001; Ashforth & Anand 2003), as well bottom-up
influences and boundedly rational information processing (Palmer,
2008). We expect that employees with excessive moral humility, as
they struggle to have confidence in their own moral capabilities,
will be much more susceptible to socialization and rationalization
processes they encounter at work, and thus much more likely to
accept the normalization of questionable practices that seem to be
institutionalized in their workplace.
Less whistleblowing and voice
We also predict that people with excessive moral humility will
be much less likely to engage in whistleblowing and other voice-
related activities that require taking a moral stand. According to a
growing body of research on employee voice, an important factor
that helps predict whether employees will speak up—that is,
“voice” their opinions and concerns—is if they feel a sense of
personal efficacy that their voice will actually make a difference
(Morrison, 2011). As we discussed previously, those with excessive
moral humility are likely to have low levels of moral efficacy and
moral courage, making it very difficult for them to risk sharing any
thoughts they perceive as confrontational. Moreover, those with
too much moral humility may be so morally permissive as to not
even question potentially unethical practices at work.
Unethical workplace behavior
In general, then, we expect employees and their leaders who
have excessive moral humility to be more likely to engage in
unethical workplace behavior. For example, in cases where
subordinates receive requests from their supervisor to engage in
an unethical practice, they will be more likely to defer to their
supervisor’s authority (see Milgram, 1963). And as fewer and fewer
people stand up for what is “right,” corrupt practices in an
organization are more likely to become normalized, leading to the
perpetuation of unethical behavior at work.
Summary
In organizations, we have argued that moral humility is
important, because it can help organizations develop ethical
cultures and environments of psychological safety, which can help
promote ethical workplace behavior. When organizational deci-
sion-makers have too little moral humility, we have argued, they
Please cite this article in press as: I.H. Smith, M. Kouchaki, Moral humility: In life and at work, Research in Organizational Behavior (2018),
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.riob.2018.12.001
will fail to implement necessary structural fixes to ethical
challenges in the workplace. Moreover, presumably ethical leaders
who lack sufficient moral humility will be more likely to trigger
psychological reactance in their followers. Finally, we have argued
that organizations with leaders and followers who have too much
moral humility will be more susceptible to collective corruption,
with fewer employees willing to blow the whistle and express their
voice.
Historically, research on behavioral ethics has primarily focused
on individual-level decision-making processes and the contextual
and social factors that influence such processes. However, it is
important to more fully consider the dynamic and recurring nature
of moral decision-making in the context of groups and organiza-
tions as well. By exploring moral humility within organizations, we
have sought to highlight how moral humility can play an important
role in influencing organizational outcomes both directly and
indirectly.
The beginnings of a research agenda
Up to this point, while we have not presented official
hypotheses or formal propositions, our discussion of moral
humility has included a large number of predictions, assertions,
and expectations. Again, our purpose has been to introduce initial
ideas and arguments that might spur future research on moral
humility, particularly in the workplace. In this section, we begin
with a short review of some of our key predictions that might serve
as a starting point for additional empirical work examining moral
humility at work. We then discuss some of the methodological
challenges and opportunities related to research on moral
humility, followed by a deeper discussion concerning the
importance of exploring how people develop moral humility in
both their personal and work lives.
Summary of predictions, assertions, and expectations
We have conceptualized moral humility as being on a
continuum, not as a dichotomous variable, and we expect a
curvilinear relationship between moral humility and positive
outcomes. First, we predict that very low levels of moral humility
will be associated with a susceptibility to bounded ethicality,
motivated moral reasoning, moral overconfidence, moral dis-
engagement, and motivated forgetting. Interpersonally, we expect
those with low moral humility to more likely be perceived as self-
righteous, and to be less tolerant of others. Within organizations,
we have proposed that ethical leadership can lead to follower
psychological reactance when leader moral humility is low, and
low leader moral humility can even lead to decision-making blind
spots at the highest level that can result in an unintentional
unethical tone at the top. In general, we expect organizations with
leaders who have low moral humility to have greater instances of
unethical workplace behavior than organizations with leaders who
exhibit high levels of moral humility.
Our second group of predictions relate to the other side of the
same coin—that is, the positive outcomes of having high (but not
excessive) moral humility, reflective of what Aristotle would
consider the mean level of a virtue, between deficiency and excess.
We propose that higher levels of moral humility (again, up to a
point) will be positively associated with increased moral atten-
tiveness and moral awareness, and an ethical learning orientation.
We expect those with higher moral humility to be more likely to
set moral goals and institute moral safeguards, such as avoiding
tempting situations and developing moral habits and routines.
Such people will be more likely to engage in productive self-
reflection and exhibit a moral teachability that will increase the
likelihood that they seek morally relevant feedback from others.
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They will be more likely to be seen as having high integrity and a
strong moral character, and they will have a more expansive circle
of moral regard for others. We predict that organizations with
leaders and followers who have high moral humility will be more
likely to have ethical cultures, promote psychological safety, and
have lower rates of unethical workplace behavior.
Third, we predict that there will be an inflection point in the
inverted u-shaped relationship between moral humility and
positive outcomes, such that people with excessively high levels
of moral humility (i.e., those to the right of the inflection point)
will be more morally permissive and display more extreme moral
relativism. We expect excessive moral humility to be negatively
associated with moral courage and moral efficacy, leading to
indecisiveness related to ethical issues. Such people will be more
likely to experience discouragement and confusion related to
ethical decisions, perhaps resulting in a moral apathy that borders
on indifference. We predict that they will be more likely to be
perceived as morally weak, and that they will be unduly
influenced by the moral views of others, as well as less likely to
speak up (i.e., whistleblowing, voice) when confronting morally
troubling situations. We also predict that organizations with
leaders and followers who have excessive moral humility will be
more likely to have socialization processes and institutional forces
that normalize collective corruption, leading to increases in
unethical workplace behavior.
In sum, we predict that higher moral humility will be associated
with more of the positive and less of the negative outcomes we
have outlined above, but that this seemingly monotonic relation-
ship will reverse when levels of moral humility are so high as to
become excessive, at which point increasing moral humility can
lead to more negative outcomes. Evoking Aristotle, once again, we
predict that there is a high level of moral humility that is optimal,
some mean level between deficiency and excess.
Measurement concerns
Of course, essential to any empirical examination of moral
humility are issues related to measurement. In the past,
researchers have doubted the validity of people rating their own
level of general humility (Tangney, 2000), leading Tangney (2002)
to even note that perhaps humility is “one construct that is simply
not amenable to self-reports” (p. 415). Not only might social
desirability concerns influence people’s self-ratings of humility,
but the very nature of humility itself might lead people who are
insufficiently humble to report higher rates of humility than those
who are truly humble, due to a lack of modesty and inaccurate self-
evaluations. Nonetheless, past work on general humility has often
relied on self-reports. For example, the Honesty-Humility (HH)
subscale of the HEXACO–PI (Lee & Ashton, 2004) is a well-
established self-report measure. Other researchers have relied on
self-reports but have asked participants to compare themselves to
others (e.g., the average college student), using a social comparison
measurement (Rowatt, Ottenbreit, Nesselroade, & Cunningham,
2002). And in an effort to move completely away from self-reports,
Rowatt et al. (2006) developed an implicit associations test of
humility, as compared to arrogance. To our knowledge, however,
there is still not compelling evidence that this implicit measure
effectively predicts humble behaviors or perceptions of humility
from others.
A more recent and perhaps more promising approach to
measuring humility has been to focus on the relational nature of
the construct, measuring people’s perceptions of others’ expres-
sions of humility (e.g., Owens et al., 2013). Owens et al. (2013)
created a measure of expressed humility, asking people to rate the
humility of another person within the context of their specific
relationship with that person. Later, Owens et al. (2015) then
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15
adapted this measure to focus specifically on followers’ ratings of
leader humility. Finally, Owens et al. (2018) recently adapted the
measure further to focus specifically on leader moral humility.
Sample items from their 11-item measure include, “My leader
shows he or she is open to the advice of others when dealing with
ethical issues,” “My leader admits it when he or she makes
mistakes in solving ethical issues,” and “My leader takes notice of
others’ moral strengths.” To our knowledge, Owens et al.’s (2018)
examination of moral humility is the first attempt to operationalize
moral humility as a domain-specific construct, and we believe
adapting this measure to contexts beyond leader-follower relation-
ships may be the best first step to empirically examine the many
relationships we have proposed in this article. However, as we
noted earlier, while our definition of moral humility is informed by
and closely related to Owens et al.’s (2018) operationalization, our
definition is slightly broader, including not only the interpersonal
aspects of humility that they address (i.e., behavioral manifes-
tations of humility that emerge in interpersonal contexts), but also
the intrapersonal aspects of humility (related to the thoughts,
reactions, and mental processing that occurs in the head of the
individual). Perhaps a combination of self- and other-reports of
moral humility could be employed in a single study to measure
both the psychological and interpersonal aspects of humility.
In addition, researchers might think of psychological manifes-
tations of humility that can be captured in behavioral tasks. For
example, by observing an individuals’ behavioral information-
seeking tendencies about oneself, it might be possible to infer a
person’s self-assessment of their own moral fallibility. We hope
that creative and psychometrically talented scholars will continue
to find innovative ways to more objectively measure moral
humility.
Another fundamental question is whether or not moral
humility can be manipulated in the short term, allowing
researchers to conduct laboratory experiments with the goal of
establishing causal links between moral humility and the many
outcomes we have presented here. A starting point would be to
target the component parts of our definition of moral humility,
such as using a behavioral task or a recall prompt to increase the
salience of a person’s sense of their own moral fallibility. Or
perhaps having people read a persuasive article or story that
outlines or highlights the benefits of relying on the moral strengths
of others. The difficulty will be in trying to isolate manipulations
that influence moral humility but not other closely-related
constructs.
Finally, at the organizational level, a potential measurement
strategy might be to assess an organization’s climate for moral
humility. Developing survey measures with the intention of
aggregating responses at the group or organizational levels and
then conducting analysis with multilevel modeling might be an
initial step in this direction. That said, it should not be assumed
that moral humility, as a construct, will maintain theoretical
equivalence across different levels of analysis (Rousseau, 1985), so
a test of homology might thus be in order—that is, a test designed
to examine whether the “processes and relationships among
variables at one level (e.g., the individual) are consistent with
analogous processes and relationships at another level (e.g., the
team or organization)” (Chen, Bliese, Matheiu, 2005, p. 376).
Additional avenues for future research
Determining an “optimal” level
A first major test of the fundamental premise of our assertions
relates to the curvilinearity of the relationship we propose
between moral humility and moral outcomes. Empirically, a
necessary first step is to test for a non-monotonic (i.e., curvilinear)
relationship between moral humility and the many outcomes we
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have proposed. Next, the inflection point where the outcomes of
increasing moral humility change from positive to negative might
be meaningfully identified, taking into consideration the nuances
of the sample, context, industry, organization, and even outcome of
interest—indeed, the optimal level of moral humility may be
different for different positive outcomes. In addition to testing our
basic assertions, such empirical examinations will also help
translate our broad proposed relationships into more meaningful
and actionable implications, helping to clarify what “optimal”
moral humility means in practice.
Moral learning
One of the important aspects of moral humility that we believe
deserves particular attention is the notion of moral teachability,
which facilitates moral learning. In contrast to much of the
management and organizations literature, in which the moral
views and beliefs of organization members are often viewed—or at
least examined—as relatively static and unchanging, we argue that
the moral views of workers and employees are greatly influenced
by their experiences at work, across jobs, over a lifetime. In other
words, people are continually engaging in moral learning, for
better or worse, and we propose that a person’s moral humility
plays a crucial role in determining the path that such moral
learning (or the lack thereof) will take. Future research might
therefore investigate the barriers and facilitators of moral learning
and development at work, and examine the influence that moral
humility has on the learning process.
Additionally, research might examine the utility of having
employees who are moral learners and who have an ethical
learning orientation. Certainly, such employees might be expected
to behave more ethically and better internalize company codes of
conduct, but are there any spillover effects on an employee’s
performance at work, or on other organizationally relevant
outcomes? And, are there specific jobs, organizations, or industries
that would particularly benefit from people who are good moral
learners? For example, moral humility and moral learning may be
especially critical for employees who regularly encounter issues
and situations related to conflicts of interest, vulnerable popula-
tions, moral ambiguity, bribery, and sensitive negotiations.
Fostering moral humility
While the primary focus of this article has been to explore the
potential outcomes and effects of moral humility, if the potential
benefits of having moral humility are anywhere close to what we
have described, an obvious and important question emerges: how
can moral humility be fostered and strengthened? Peterson and
Seligman (2004) may provide some hints in their recommendations
for promoting general humility: develop an accurate view of the self;
seek out experiences of awe, transcendence, or inspiration;
intentionally perform menial tasks; seek forgiveness for past
transgressions; keep a gratitude journal; and intentionally make
sacrifices in your relationships. Applied to the moral domain,
perhaps being exposed to an inspiring moral exemplar, or sacrificing
for a loved one can lead to self-transcendent moral views
characteristic of moral humility. Or maybe seeking to rectify past
moral wrongs can help facilitate moral humility. Overall, we believe
there are many opportunities for fruitful research on both the causes
and consequences of moral humility, particularly at work.
Conclusion
In this article, we have presented moral humility as a domain-
specific virtue that can have tremendous influence on a person’s
morality and ethical decision making. Largely relying on Aristotle’s
notion of the “mean” of a virtue—that point between deficiency
and excess—we have argued that the relationship between moral
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humility and positive moral outcomes is curvilinear: too little leads
to moral blind spots; too much leads to moral permissiveness;
while the right amount leads to a moral awareness and moral
learning that helps people live up to the values they espouse.
Organizationally, a strong sense of moral humility among leaders
and followers might help promote an ethical culture and foster
psychological safety. Virtues such as moral humility are thus
important for both individuals and organizations to consider.
Exploring moral humility at different levels of analysis (i.e.,
individual, interpersonal, and organizational) has led us to a
number of potential propositions. Knowledge of one's own moral
fallibility might help reduce moral biases and moral disengage-
ment. Embracing the moral strengths of others might help
facilitate moral learning and moral feedback seeking. Looking
beyond one’s self-interest and having a broader perspective may
increase the size of one’s circle of moral regard. Lastly, we
acknowledge that in covering such a wide range of theoretical
ground, we have run the risk of sacrificing depth for breadth. Yet it
is our hope that our broad discussion and many assertions related
to moral humility, at work and in people’s lives, will help open
the door to future research on this important but underexamined
virtue.
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