Religious leaders’ well-being: Protective influences for humility and differentiation against narcissism.

Abstract

The virtue of humility and the construct of differentiation have shown protective influences against narcissism among religious leaders. Our cross-sectional study tested a moderated mediation model of these protective influences on a hypothesized negative narcissismwell-being association, and negative spiritual grandiosity-well-being association. Our sample consisted of clergy candidates (N = 75; M age = 35 years; 70% male; 90% White) receiving psychological assessment services as a part of their vocational training. Our results largely supported the proposed moderated mediation model, with evidence of protective influences for humility and differentiation. The results showed that greater humility lessened the negative influence of narcissism on well-being via differentiation and that greater humility conditioned the direct association such that greater spiritual grandiosity predicted greater well-being. Implications of the findings center on the importance of assessing character strengths and intra-and interpersonal affect regulation capacity, or differentiation, among clergy candidates, and we highlight the need for continued research on client humility.

Humble with God? How Education and Race Shape the Association between God-Mediated Control and Humility in Later Life

“…Humility lies at the heart of religion, as Christian scholars St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas have advocated, and has also been linked to several favorable outcomes, including health (Krause 2010 ; Jankowski and Sandage 2014 ), better social relationships (Davis et al 2013 ; Van Tongeren et al 2014 ) and more effective job performance and organizational leadership (Johnson et al 2011 ; Lee et al 2019 ; Howard and Van Zandt 2020 ). Given both theological and social scientific interest in humility, we sought to expand on a growing base of empirical evidence linking religion/spirituality and humility (see Davis et al 2014 , 2017 ; Jankowski et al 2021 , 2022 ; Rowatt et al 2014 ; Van Tongeren et al 2016 , 2018). In the current study, we considered how one aspect of religion/spirituality, perceptions of God-mediated control, may be an additional precursor to humility.…”

“…It may be that there are bidirectional associations between virtues and religiousness over time (Hardy et al 2019 ). It could also be that in the presence of other virtues (gratitude, forgiveness), humility might not have a significant longitudinal association with elements of religion/spirituality (e.g., Jankowski et al, 2022 ). In addition, the sample focused exclusively on individuals who are or were formerly Christian, potentially limiting the generalizability of our findings.…”

Longitudinal processes among humility, social justice activism, transcendence, and well-being

“…In contrast, self-enhancement is the anti-thesis of transcendence (Schwartz, 2012) and as such taps into conceptualizations of narcissistic grandiosity (Jankowski et al, 2022a). We see humility as resisting self-enhancement (i.e., hypo-egoicism; Banker and Leary, 2020).…”

“…Humility seems to have particular relevance to the personal and professional development for those dedicated to making positive contributions to society (Wang et al, 2021), including emerging R/S leaders (Sandage et al, 2015). In fact, greater humility has demonstrated consistent associations with lower grandiosity in samples of R/S leaders (e.g., Jankowski et al, 2019Jankowski et al, , 2022a. Resisting self-enhancement involves interpersonal openness rather than self-superiority and a better-than-others relational stance (McElroy-Heltzel et al, 2019).…”

Validación Española del Differentiation of Self Inventory for Adolescents

“…Es un concepto multidimensional ya que, por un lado, se refiere a la habilidad para distinguir lo emocional de lo cognitivo (dimensión intrapsíquica) y, por otro, a la capacidad de experimentar intimidad e independencia de los demás (dimensión interpersonal) (Bowen, 1978;Rodríguez-González & Kerr, 2011;Skowron & Friedlander, 1998). Desde la década de los 80 este constructo ha sido utilizado por los psicoterapeutas formados en la perspectiva sistémica (Calatrava et al, 2022), y decenas de investigaciones en psicología, en distintos países, asocian este constructo con el bienestar psicológico o emocional (p.ej., Duch-Ceballos et al, 2021;Jankowski et al, 2021;Hainlen et al, 2016;Ross & Murdock, 2014). Sin embargo, no existe un instrumento validado que permita evaluarlo en población española menor de 25 años.…”