Humility and professional development
Humility is critical for professional development as well. A main venue for legal professionals to transit from novice to expert is the imitation of exemplary jurists, i.e., those legal professionals who possess and display a large share of the virtues necessary to excel at the legal practice.
Witnessing excellent others gives rise to admiration, which may trigger a process of emulation that may lead to the acquisition of the professional virtues. There are, however, several ways in which this process of emulation of admirable models may go wrong (Amaya: 2019). Humble people, I would argue, are less likely to divert from the path that leads to professional development via the imitation of admirable jurists.To begin with, witnessing excellence in others may fail to generate admiration, and thus, to put in place a process of emulation that may result in virtue development. Other emotional responses when faced with exemplary models include indifference, reluctance to admire, or an outright rejection of admiration (Zagzebski: 2017, 50-59).When experienced, exposure to exemplars will fail to deliver virtue. Inflated views of oneself or arrogance favor these kind of emotional reactions toward the excellence of others. In fact, there is psychological evidence that supports the view that an excessive self-esteem undermines inspiration by outstanding models (Lockwood and Kunda: 1999). Thus, lack of humility by excess seems to stand in the way of properly admiring someone and, thus, is an obstacle to learning by example.
Conversely, lack of humility by defect, i.e., self-abasement, or insufficient self-esteem or selfaffirmation, may distort the emotional response to excellent others by replacing admiration with awe and adoration.8 In these cases, models are perceived as idols, and the process of imitation, which is meant to involve the autonomous acquisition of admirable traits of character, degenerates into worshipping.
The critical engagement with models of virtue that imitation requires at its best gives way to an unexamined devotion and servile deference, which are the marks of fetishism. Rather than relating — as humility would require — to the model on an equal footing, those who mistake models for idols engage in processes of copycatting that attempt to replicate superficial features of the model. In contrast to admiration, which triggers a process of imitation that aims at a genuine transformation of the self, adoration moves agents to mindlessly become ‘like’ the model in ways that tend to efface, rather than develop, their own subjectivity.In addition to triggering the right emotional response to models of excellence, thereby avoiding both indifference and adoration, humility is also needed to have an appropriate motivational response to admiration. A desire to emulate is central in the motivational profile of admiration; that is to say, admiration typically motivates the agent who experiences it to emulate the model in the admired respect. However, a desire to imitate is not always the appropriate response to admiration (Archer: 2019). If there is a vast distance between the model and the person who admires it, in terms of capacities, expertise, resources, or achievements, then imitation of the exemplar might not be the best way to go.This is not to say that admiration in these cases is motivationally inert. Admiration of these truly exceptional exemplars may be inspirational, moving us to improve, and it may also motivate us to enhance their reputation, praise the values they embody, and promote them in a variety of ways. Thus, attainability of the model — which the humble person is well-positioned to assess — is a key factor that is relevant to determining what the appropriate response to admiration should be.9
On the one hand, a judgment of attainability, which involves an accurate assessment of one’s (current) capacities as compared to those of the exemplar, is critical to avoid ‘over-stretching’; that is, to attempt to imitate in ways that do not take into account one’s limitations (Kristjansson: 2018, 179).This ‘shooting for the stars’ is not merely likely to be ineffective in terms of professional improvement, but it may also be harmful as it may result in worse outcomes than those that would have been reached if one had more fitting goals in mind.
While the source of the misrepresentation of the distance that separates oneself from the model may be simply due to mistakes or ignorance, a potential cause for over-stretching may be a lack of humility by excess. Those who have a self-aggrandizing view of themselves are prone to misjudge the attainability of the model, as they fail to see the extent to which the exemplar is beyond what they may currently achieve. Moreover, insofar as a person who has an excess of self-esteem does not have her limitations in the focus of attention (Bommarito: 2013), she is likely to engage in imitation without having even considered first whether the model is within her reach.On the other hand, the path that goes from witnessing excellence in others to developing admirable traits of character may be impeded when admiration is not accompanied by a desire to emulate in cases in which such desire, given the attainability of the model, is the correct motivational response. In these cases, the person feels paralyzed, rather than energized, by witnessing excellent others, as he feels unworthy or incapable of approximating the model.10 A lack of proper self-esteem and self-affirmation may lead the person to magnify the model and perceive the distance between his own capacities and those of the model as insurmountable.The model is perceived as being so above oneself that admiration fails to propel a process of imitation, or even to motivate the agent to take steps toward professional improvement, which may allow him to eventually succeed at emulating the model.
Thus, humility is central to instilling in legal professionals the emotional and motivational dispositions necessary for learning by example. The virtue of (intellectual) humility has also been shown to be associated with attitudes that contribute to knowledge acquisition (Krumrei-Mancuso et al., 2019). Specifically, it is associated with less claiming of knowledge that one does not have, more reflective thinking, need for cognition, intellectual engagement, curiosity, open-minded thinking, and less social vigilantism, which promotes collaborative learning. Hence, humility not only facilitates learning by example, but, more generally, it is positively related to traits, motivations, and patterns of thinking and behavior that promote learning. As such, it is a virtue that importantly helps law students and early legal practitioners to acquire the knowledge, capacities, and understanding of the values embedded in the professional practice that are characteristic of experts and to actively continue learning through their professional careers.
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