As Michel Barnier suggests for his ministers, is it in our interest to cultivate humility?

Michel Barnier called this week on the ministers of the new government to humility. However, according to science, humble people learn better and have better social relationships.

Michel Barnier set out a line of conduct before his government meeting at Matignon on Monday 23 September. The new Prime Minister insisted on the duty of humility. So, theWould ministers have every interest in truly cultivating their humility? At least that is what science says. In an article in Washington Post published a few days ago, scientists, professors of psychology, extol the virtues of humility. The researchers cite in particular a 2019 study of 1,189 subjects, which shows that intellectually humble people have more general knowledge and are less likely to claim that they knew something that does not exist. People who are more intellectually humble are also more likely to acquire new skills of reflection, curiosity and open-mindedness.

Also according to science, humble people often have more general knowledge, even if they tend to underestimate their abilities, and even if it is not always easy. Because, as Tenelle Porter, assistant professor of psychology at Rowan University, explains, “Intellectual humility is difficult because we want to be right and we think we are right.“.

But wanting to be right at all costs is the assurance of locking oneself into a categorical thought and not making many friends. While humility allows one to have better relationships with others. Indeed, according to the scientists cited by the Washington Postit seems that humble people know that their way of thinking is not perfect and are, at the same time, more capable of overcoming their problems, of correcting their ways of thinking. They would also develop more empathy than others, a greater capacity for listening, a real will to “hear“with others, in every sense of the word.

So here is our advice to all of you, ministers or not: if you want to develop your humility, try to get out of yourself, slip into the shoes of others. Try to focus on our “common humanity“. But be careful, being humble does not mean that everything is good to take. Humility does not prevent one from being courageous, nor from affirming truths, when one has enough evidence to support them.