Intellectual humility and eudaimonic well-being among emerging religious/spiritual leaders

Abstract

Religious/spiritual leaders remain an understudied at-risk population for lower eudaimonic well-being. We explored the potential for intellectual humility to promote greater eudaimonia with divine struggles as a mediator. We used a diverse sample of leaders obtaining graduate theological education (N = 294; Mage = 35.79; 53% female; 71% White; 67% Christian; 62% heterosexual). We used the general cross-lagged panel model to explore longitudinal associations among intellectual humility, divine struggles, and eudaimonia, which also involved modeling residuals as random impulses leading to long-run effects. Long-run effects can identify places where an actual ‘real-world’ intervention may be effective in promoting eudaimonia. Results suggested that greater intellectual humility, defined as perspective-taking grounded in self-fallibility, predicted greater eudaimonia, defined by psychological well-being, through lower divine struggles. Results also suggested that a future planned struggles intervention may hold potential to promote eudaimonia, which can be enhanced through an intellectual humility intervention designed to lower struggles.