Meditation and cultural humility
Research has shown that some activities or exercises may foster cultural humility as well. To illustrate, as Or et al. (2024) revealed, one mental activity, called loving-kindness meditation, seems to promote cultural humility.
Benefits of loving-kindness meditation
To undertake loving-kindness meditation, individuals sit quietly, usually with their eyes closed, and direct their attention towards their breath for several minutes. Next, they direct this attention towards their heart for a while, before visualising someone they love unconditionally, perhaps a child. Then, these individuals attempt to cultivate the feelings they usually experience towards this person—perhaps feelings of warmth, tenderness, and hope, for example. Next, they learn to direct these feelings and thoughts towards themselves—that is, they feel warmth, tenderness, kindness, and so forth towards themselves. Subsequently, they attempt to extend the same feelings to an increasing breadth of individuals: their friends, their acquaintances, their managers, their rivals, or even strangers. Several other variants of this practice have been developed as well (Hutcherson, Seppala, & Gross, 2008).
Several studies have established the benefits of loving-kindness meditation. In a study that Fredrickson et al. (2008) conducted, individuals participated in six workshops, each lasting approximately one hour, in which they learnt this practice. Initially, these participants learnt how to direct love and compassion towards themselves. Subsequently, they learnt how to direct these feelings towards other individuals. During each hour, 15 to 20 minutes of the session was devoted to meditation, 20 minutes to discuss the progress of participants, and 20 minutes to information about meditation, such as how to integrate this practice with daily life.
Over the next 9 weeks, beginning with the first training session, participants completed daily reports, designed to assess mindfulness, hope, optimism, resilience, wellbeing, emotions, social relationships, illness, and sleep. Overall, loving-kindness meditation promoted more positive emotions—a benefit that was especially amplified after several weeks of meditation. These positive emotions were also correlated with many other benefits, including improvements in social relationships, purpose, hope, and health.
Even brief variants of this exercise can be helpful. In one study, conducted by Hutcherson et al. (2008), some participants were invited to close their eyes and to imagine two individuals they love unconditionally. The participants imagined receiving feelings of love and compassion from these individuals. After four minutes, participants were instructed to open their eyes and redirect these feelings towards a photograph of a stranger. In addition, participants repeated a series of phrases, all intended to wish this stranger happiness, health, and fortune. In the control condition, participants engaged in a similar exercise, but they initially formed images of acquaintances and evoked neutral emotions. The brief variant of loving-kindness meditation did improve the emotions of participants.
Furthermore, this brief variant of loving-kindness meditation improved emotions that were measured more subtly and obliquely. Specifically, after the intervention, participants were instructed to indicate whether various words, such as loyal or cruel, are positive or negative, as rapidly as possible. Before each word, a face would occasionally appear briefly. After loving-kindness meditation, individuals could respond more rapidly to positive but not negative words that followed a face. This finding implies the face was regarded more positively after the meditation.
Benefits of loving-kindness meditation to cultural humility
Loving-kindness meditation seems to foster cultural humility as well. In the study that Or et al. (2024) conducted, 58 undergraduate students in the America, listened to a script that outlined loving-kindness meditation. The participants were instructed to complete this exercise three to four times a week over a fortnight. Before and after this period, participants completed a series of questions, including the cultural humility scale (Hook et al., 2013). After completing kindness-loving meditation over two weeks, the cultural humility of participants improved significantly.
Training and cultural humility
Protocols that were specifically designed to foster cultural humility
To foster cultural humility in mentors of diverse youth, Sánchez et al. (2025) designed a comprehensive training program. The program was customised to America but could be tailored to suit other nations and regions as well. To commence this program, the mentors completed an online program that comprised three modules.
During the first online module, participants learned about key historical events in America that were relevant to racial matters and the various definitions and facets of racism. During the second online module, participants learned about their multiple identities and how these identities could shape the mentoring relationship. For example, they were exposed to social identity theory and learned how to demonstrate courage and bravery during conversations, called colour brave, rather than to shun references to ethnic and racial identity. During the final online module, participants learned about how membership of various social demographics can affect the experiences of people as well as their relationships. They considered how privileges and oppression can significantly affect the perceptions, attitudes, expectations, and lives of people—and how these dynamics could affect mentors and diverse youth differently.
Next, the participants completed synchronous online training, lasting about two hours. The training revolved around how to embed principles of justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion into their mentoring. For example, they learned about how to inspire diverse youth to develop a positive identity as well as how to apply the principles of active listening to learn more about racism and culture. The participants then practiced these principles with one another online in breakout rooms.
Participants received monthly emails to reinforce some of these principles. Finally, case managers offered additional support to these mentors, helping these individuals apply the principles they learned to their mentoring sessions. At the time this protocol was published, the researchers had yet to evaluate the efficacy of this intervention quantitatively.
Multicultural training
When students complete training in counselling, psychology, or similar professions, they often attend multicultural training workshops. Although these experiences may vary widely, this training tends to encompass discussions about
- awareness of how personal biases and experiences might shape misleading assumptions about diverse communities,
- the lived experiences, perspectives, norms, and values of individuals from diverse communities,
- practical skills on how to adapt communication, assessments, and interventions to accommodate individuals from diverse communities.
However, whether such multicultural training fosters cultural humility warrants investigation. During multicultural training, individuals might learn to appreciate that culture is multifaceted, dynamic, and nuanced, encouraging a motivation to learn and fostering cultural humility. Alternatively, after they attend workshops or similar events, individuals may overestimate their knowledge about culture, promoting cultural arrogance rather than humility.
To assess these possibilities, Kondili et al. (2022) investigated the association between multicultural training and cultural humility. The sample comprised 131 participants who were enrolled in counselling courses at a Master level and who completed an online questionnaire. The questionnaire included
- a question about the number of multicultural training courses the individuals had previously attended,
- the Multidimensional Cultural Humility Scale (Gonzalez et al., 2020)—a measure of cultural humility that assesses five distinct facets, such as openness and self-reflection,
- the Comprehensive Intellectual Humility Scale to gauge four facets of intellectual humility, such as respect towards diverse perspectives and openness to revise beliefs,
- the Quiet Ego Scale—a measure that assesses the tendency of individuals to consider the perspectives of other people while pursuing their personal needs.
As a hierarchical regression analysis revealed, the number of multicultural training courses that counselling students attended was positively associated with cultural humility—even after controlling intellectual humility and quiet ego. These finding imply that multicultural training tends to foster cultural humility rather than cultural arrogance. Future research, however, is warranted to explore the direction of causality, because cultural humility might inspire people to attend multicultural training rather than vice versa.
The effect of other variants of humility
Researchers tend to regard cultural humility as distinct from other variants of humility, such as intellectual humility. However, as Kondili et al. (2022) revealed, some of these other variants of humility may facilitate or foster cultural humility.
In this study, 131 participants, all of whom were enrolled in counselling courses, completed an online questionnaire. This questionnaire entailed the Multidimensional Cultural Humility Scale—a measure of cultural humility that assesses five distinct facets, such as openness, self-awareness, and self-reflection. The questionnaire also entailed the Comprehensive Intellectual Humility Scale to gauge four facets of intellectual humility, such as limited overconfidence in beliefs, openness to revise beliefs, and respect towards diverse perspectives. Finally, this questionnaire also included the Quiet Ego Scale—a measure that comprises four distinct facets:
- detached awareness, similar to mindfulness,
- inclusive identity or the degree to which individuals feel a connection to other people and the environment,
- perspective taking, typified by items like “Before criticising somebody, I try to imagine how I would feel if I were in their place”, and
- personal growth, typified by items like “For me, life has been a continuous process of learning, changing, and growth”.
As the findings revealed, when the researchers examined only the overall measures, a quiet ego, but not intellectual humility, was positively related to cultural humility. However, when the researchers examined the facets of these scales, other relationships surfaced. To illustrate
- two facets of intellectual humility—respect towards diverse perspectives and limited overconfidence—were positively related to one facet of cultural humility: self-awareness or the inclination of individuals to seek feedback or information about their strengths and limitations,
- likewise, two facets of intellectual humility—the willing to revise beliefs and respect towards diverse perspectives—coupled with one facet of a quiet ego—personal growth—were positively associated with self-reflection or the tendency of individuals to question personal biases.
Accordingly, some facets of intellectual humility and a quiet ego may foster cultural humility. For example, when individuals recognise their beliefs may be biased, feel motivated to expand their knowledge to overcome these biases, and thus respect diverse perspectives, cultural humility may be more natural and effortless.