Moral Humility Reduces Political Divisions

Political and intergroup conflicts are often rooted in moral differences. People claim their side to be morally superior and derogate moral outgroups. Therefore, we propose that moral humility, a domain-specific form of humility, might serve as one antidote to such morally fueled conflicts. We test this in the context of political polarization in the USA. Across 3 studies involving diverse national and student samples (N = 2766), we found higher moral humility to be linked to reduced political animosity, increased support for political compromise and pluralistic norms, greater empathy and respect for the political outgroup, greater perceptions of the political group as moral and non-threatening, amongst others. Importantly, these effects persisted after accounting for domain-general intellectual humility, moral relativism, political identity and extremity, and other controls. This research demonstrates moral humility’s relevance for understanding political polarization, and points the way for a strength-based approach to addressing conflicts