The Effect of Induced Humility on Anger and P3b Responses to Frustrating Events

Past correlational research has suggested that humility is negatively related to anger. The current experiment tested the hypothesis that a humility induction, compared to neutral and pride inductions, would reduce anger as measured by self-report and P3b to frustrating events. Participants (N = 124) were randomly assigned to undergo either humility, neutral, or pride inductions. After these inductions, participants performed a task that has been found to evoke anger and larger P3b responses to frustrating events. Self-reported anger was lower to the frustrative events after the humility induction compared to the neutral and pride inductions. P3b was larger in amplitude to frustrating events compared to other events; however, it did not differ between emotion conditions. This dissociation between self-reported (explicit) and psychophysiological (implicit) responses to frustration may have occurred because humility increased the downregulation of explicit but not implicit anger responses.