Lisa Legault, an associate professor of psychology at Clarkson University, and three of her undergraduate students – Maria Nefeli Scaltsas ‘20, Deonna Coleman ‘16, and Kayla Jurchak ’18 recently published an article in the journal Self and Identity that asks the question: Does reflecting on the positive qualities of others produce more favorable intergroup attitudes than reflecting positively on the self?
Legault’s team performed three studies. The first had the participants reflect on a positive personal trait and a positive trait of someone they know. They expected that turning attention to the strengths of others would produce less outgroup bias than focusing on one’s own strengths. They found that when people focus on the strengths of others, they show less implicit bias than when they focus on their own strengths, even when controlling for changes in affect.
In Study 2 they validated and extended results of Study 1 by showing that those who reflected on outgroup strengths showed less racism than those who reflected on ingroup strengths and those in a control group.
Study 3 worked to validate the findings in the first two studies, and examine a key aspect of personality: humility. Studies suggest that humble people have a balanced and objective view of the self and they also lack arrogance and appreciate others’ worth. Legault and her team expected humility to show diametrically opposing links to self-versus other-enhancement tendencies – positively linking to other-enhancement, but negatively linking to self-enhancement. In turn, they expected other-enhancement, but not self-enhancement, to be a protective factor against both racism and sexism. They found that humility is a key trait associated with less self-enhancement and greater other-enhancement and that humility protects against racism and sexism – both directly as well as indirectly through other-enhancement.
Click here to read the article in its entirety: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/15298868.2021.1965016?journalCode=psai20