Don Davis

Georgia State University | GSU · Department of Counseling and Psychological Services

A body of research has been dedicated to demonstrating the relationship of perfectionism with a range of mental health indicators. Self-critical perfectionism, a component of perfectionism, has been framed primarily in a negative light within the mental health context. Given that research informs educational and clinical practices, it is important...

Research on intellectual humility has accumulated rapidly. In this content analysis, we review existing published empirical work. We conducted searches using Google Scholar, ProQuest, and PsycInfo and found 59 articles with 134 samples. Most studies have focused on convenience samples and used similar measurement approaches – self-reports of intell...

Recent studies have suggested that intellectual humility (IH) might facilitate (a) better learning outcomes, (b) more scientific mindedness, and (c) better peer and professional relationships. However, recent philosophical work has raised concerns that too much IH might lead to intellectual servility (IS), and thus might be vicious (albeit not blam...

The multicultural orientation framework (MCO), which has shown empirical promise as a pragmatic way to enhance cultural understandings in psychotherapy, appears equally important for psychotherapy supervision: Emerging conceptual/practical work and a bourgeoning base of empirical studies support MCO’s contribution to supervision processes and outco...

Exploring ways to foster cooperation amidst diversity in this politically turbulent era seems crucial. The present study explored the relationships among political humility, empathy, and forgiveness. Participants in the present study (N = 201) were from a large Christian university who recalled a time when they were offended due to a political disa...

As scholars who have been engaged in interdisciplinary emic measure development, we provide our reflections on the prospects and perils of this kind of engagement. We contrast the approach we have in mind with other interdisciplinary activities; we commend engaging social scientists, philosophers, and theologians in collaboration across all of the...

Cultural humility, first introduced a quarter century ago, has increasingly emerged over the last decade as a concept of considerable importance: it has been touted as playing a crucial role in potentially enhancing the relationship in both psychotherapy and supervision, its practice being heartily embraced and roundly recommended. But are those re...

As scholars who have been engaged in interdisciplinary emic measure development, we provide our reflections on the prospects and perils of this kind of engagement. We contrast the approach we have in mind with other interdisciplinary activities; we commend engaging social scientists, philosophers, and theologians in collaboration across all of the...

We investigated the relationship between self-reported multicultural competence and social issues awareness among school counselors and raters’ assessment of multicultural orientation skills (cultural humility and cultural comfort) using a recorded mock counseling session. Results revealed a positive correlation between multicultural competence and...

Research on intellectual humility has grown, but little work has explored its role in moral decisions. Building on recent work on the Veil of Ignorance, we randomly assigned some participants to imagine being part of an existentially-threatening situation that could possibly lead to the greater good for society (i.e. The Human Challenge Experiments...

Research has accumulated over the years to support the adage that ‘money can’t buy happiness.’ As an alternative to the high-consumption lifestyle often found in Western cultures, voluntary simplicity (also referred to as minimalism), involves a lifestyle that is focused on reducing consumption and the excess in one’s life so that individuals can f...

In Ghana, collectivism holds people together in marital relationships, even if partners are religiously different. Married partners still hurt, betray, or offend each other and might develop avoidance or vengeful (i.e., unforgiving) motives. We investigated whether religious homogamy moderated connections of personality and marriage variables to un...

Extant research suggests perfectionism is a risk factor for developing disordered eating among women, and that self-compassion may mitigate risk factors in their associations with disordered eating pathology. However, less is known about these relations among women of color (WOC). The current study examined the moderating role of self-compassion in...

Until recently, psychologists have conceptualised and studied trust in God (TIG) largely in isolation from contemporary work in theology, philosophy, history, and biblical studies that has examined the topic with increasing clarity. In this article, we first review the primary ways that psychologists have conceptualised and measured TIG. Then, we d...

More than twenty different models of how forgiveness occurs have been proposed within forgiveness literature. One idea highlighted in many of these models was that forgiveness entails, at some point, a decision to forgive the offender. The Decision to Forgive Scale (DTFS) is a 5-item measure that allows the assessment of this construct. The aim of...

Across the globe, COVID‐19 has disproportionately affected the physical and mental health of several vulnerable groups. In a series of two cross‐sectional studies conducted April to July 2020, we examined its acute mental health effects on two vulnerable U.S. community samples—home‐bound older adults who were at or below the poverty line (Study 1,...

The COVID-19 pandemic continues to affect countless individuals. Traumatic events like COVID-19 can often lead to significant resource loss and negatively affect mental health. As a result, people often go through various types of struggles, including those that are religious or spiritual (e.g., existential doubt). Also, in the wake of trauma, peop...

Prior research has linked victimization to mental health outcomes, but more work is needed to understand factors that may serve a protective role. In the present study, in a sample of 290 undergraduates who had experienced bullying, we examined a moderated-mediator model in which self-esteem mediates the relationship between victimization and depre...

Traumatic events, such as natural disasters, often lead to significant resource loss for survivors, which can negatively affect emotional well-being. In these situations, it is common for people to draw on their religious or spiritual faith to cope with their pain and struggle. One construct that has received increased attention within the field of...

Objective: This prospective longitudinal study examined whether coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has led to changes in psychological and spiritual outcomes among adults with chronic disease. Method: Participants (N = 302) were a stratified, nonrandom sample of adults (Mage = 64.46, SD = 10.86, 45.7% female). The sample was representative of t...

Scholars and practitioners have increasingly called for the development of social justice commitment, intercultural competence, and appreciation of diversity among ministers and helping professionals. In religious contexts, individual factors may contribute to differences in the degree to which spiritual leaders emphasize intercultural and social j...

Natural disasters can disrupt and challenge survivors’ core belief systems, leading to negative health consequences. People often rely on religion/spirituality to help them cope and make meaning, but to date very few studies have specifically focused on exploring spiritually oriented expressive writing interventions with natural disaster survivors....

Previous research finds an association between spirituality and subjective well-being. However, the widespread use of poorly defined concepts of spirituality, tautological spirituality scales, and heavy reliance on cross-sectional samples cast doubts on prior findings. Here, we leverage ten waves of panel data from a nationally diverse longitudinal...

In recent years, an upsurge of polarization has been a salient feature of political discourse in America. A small but growing body of research has examined the potential relevance of intellectual humility (IH) to political polarization. In the present investigation, we extend this work to political myside bias, testing the hypothesis that IH is ass...

Demonstrations led by right-wing extremist groups and racially motivated hate crimes have increased significantly since the 2016 election of Donald Trump (Edwards and Rushin in The effect of Trump’s election on hate crimes. Retrieved from: https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3102652, 2018). However, few studies have examined racially marginalized (RM) per...

In recent years, an upsurge of polarization has been a salient feature of political discourse in America. A small but growing body of research has examined the potential relevance of intellectual humility (IH) to political polarization. In the present investigation, we extend this work to political myside bias, testing the hypothesis that IH is ass...

Objective: This paper reviewed the empirical research on inquiry-based stress reduction (IBSR; also called "The Work"), which has similarities to third-wave cognitive behavioral approaches such as Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT). Widely used as a self-help intervention, IBSR has only recently been subjected to empirical research. Method:...

Positive psychologists have used science to understand many virtues but have only just started to study grace, recently defined as ‘ … the gift of acceptance given unconditionally and voluntarily to an undeserving person by an unobligated giver’. The purpose of the current article is to provide a systematic review of all empirical studies (publishe...

The Enneagram is a typology that many clients use to understand their personality and interpersonal patterns, despite some concerns about its validity. Thus, the purpose of this review is to provide a comprehensive and clinician‐friendly review of the extant empirical work on the Enneagram. After reviewing 104 independent samples, we found mixed ev...

Multiculturalism, social justice, and peace are important aspects of the Christian faith. However, scholars in the literature seeking to integrate psychology and Christian theology have underrepresented them. In this present article, we review barriers to including them in our psychology–theology integration literature. Thereafter, we provide a tri...

Identifying as nonreligious is increasingly more common in the United States. However, up until recently the field has been slow to understand differences in experience among those who have never been religious and those who have deidentified from religion. In addressing this gap, we sought to first identify differing motivations for deidentifying...

Identifying as nonreligious is increasingly more common in the United States. However, up until recently the field has been slow to understand differences in experience among those who have never been religious and those who have deidentified from religion. In addressing this gap, we sought to first identify differing motivations for deidentifying...

There is vast support in the racial-ethnic identity literature that there is a positive association between racial-ethnic identity and psychological well-being. The current study calls attention to the possibility that there may actually be heterogeneity among racial-ethnic minority group members regarding this link whereby the pathway to psycholog...

This study explores the use of a new retrospective method of forgiveness to study forgiveness trends in religious individuals. This article tries to establish an initial “proof of concept” for this new method. Also, the growth trends in emotional forgiveness and how decisional forgiveness as well as religious commitment affect these patterns are ex...

As the current political environment in the United States and around the world becomes more polarized, it is important to better understand the intrapersonal and interpersonal effects of engaging political discourse with political humility. Across two studies, we explored the predictors of political humility (Study 1), and how political humility mi...

The political climate in the United States is turbulent. The current study examined how (a) one’s own political humility and (b) one’s perceptions of the political humility of another person affect one’s willingness to forgive another person for a political hurt or offense. Participants (N = 494) reported a recent political conflict and reported th...

Disasters are a considerable threat to meaning. People often turn toward religion and spirituality in times of adversity as a way to make sense of their situation, maintain a sense of significance, and discover a sense of purpose. Thus, in this chapter, we review how religion/spirituality (R/S) serves as a potential source of meaning in the wake of...

In two studies (N’s = 515 and 359), we examine the utility of the Dual-Process Model of Self-Forgiveness for conceptualizing and measuring trait self-forgiveness with South African and American adults. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses of the trait-adapted Dual-Process Self-Forgiveness Scale supported an eight-item, two-factor structure...

Researchers have increasingly called for the examination of both mental health symptoms and well-being when providing and evaluating psychotherapy, and although symptoms and well-being are typically inversely related, these appear to be distinct constructs that may require distinct intervention strategies. Positive psychology interventions, virtue-...

For over two decades, psychological scientists have conducted empirical research on self-regulation and self-control. Our chapter reviews the current empirical research surrounding self-regulation and free will as it relates to religion and spirituality. First, we review the influence of religion/spirituality on free will belief. Research suggests...

Objective: Religious/spiritual (R/S) growth is a core domain of posttraumatic growth (PTG). However, research on R/S growth following disasters has over-relied on retrospective self-reports of growth. We therefore examined longitudinal change in religiousness/spirituality following two disasters. Method: Religious survivors of Hurricanes Harvey...

In this chapter, we describe a relational humility model that examines how perceptions of humility impact relationships, and we review research that supports the model. First, we describe the development of a relational humility framework in the field of psychology that addressed many conceptual and methodological issues in studying humility. Secon...

In this response to the target article, we anticipate some challenges that joy researchers will face in attempting to cultivate a research program on a revived and more robust understanding of joy. Every psychological literature has a measurement phase. We name three pitfalls to avoid during this phase, including becoming too preoccupied with conce...

We contend that supervisor humility, a critical variable for effective supervisory practice, has a particular impact on the rupture repair process and its implementation; it may well be preeminent in determining whether any supervisor repair effort meets with success or failure. Building on our earlier supervisor humility/rupture repair proposals,...

Although recognized as highly crucial to supervision practice (e.g., Tummala-Narra, 2004), culture has been addressed minimally in the psychoanalytic supervision literature. Calls to remedy that limitation have been made and making culture matter has been identified as a most pressing need for psychoanalytic supervision. But how then do we as super...

As a complement to multicultural competence, the multicultural orientation (MCO) perspective has been proposed as a pragmatic way to enhance cultural understandings about psychotherapeutic dynamics, processes, and outcomes. Consisting of three core components—cultural humility, cultural comfort, and cultural opportunities—the MCO is considered rele...

The goal of this longitudinal qualitative study was to develop a grounded theory of religious meaning making and attachment in a disaster context. At 1-month (T1; n = 36) and 6-months postdisaster (T2; n = 29), we conducted in-depth interviews with a highly religious sample of adult survivors of the 2016 Louisiana flood, using a disaster-adapted ve...

We review humility, a trait characterized by (a) an ability to accurately acknowledge one’s limitations and abilities and (b) an interpersonal stance that is other-oriented rather than self-focused. We explore two key contexts of humility, intellectual and cultural; explain why humility is important; and identify open questions for future research.

We conclude the special issue by addressing some ongoing limitations within scholarship on humility and cultural humility that ought to temper our reading of the extant literature. We also discuss four critiques of initial scholarship in this area. We end with some suggestions for future research on cultural humility.

Some religious or spiritual (R/S) clients seek psychotherapy that integrates R/S values, while others may be reticent to disclose R/S-related aspects of struggles in a presumably secular setting. The authors meta-analyzed 97 outcome studies ( N = 7,181) examining the efficacy of tailoring treatment to patients’ R/S beliefs and values. They compared...

The role of religion/spirituality (R/S) in the lives of incarcerated individuals is complex. Inmates may draw on R/S as a coping strategy, as a way to place responsibility, or as an approach to creating meaning. The importance of using R/S as a coping strategy can be amplified in the context of a correctional setting. While some attention has focus...

Over the past several decades, scholarly interest in God representations has grown steadily, but conceptual and measurement challenges have persisted. Consequently, in this article, we build upon a dual-process conceptualization of God representations, which is organized along 2 dimensions: (a) doctrinal representations (i.e., affect-light, "head k...

Cultural humility has been shown to enhance cross-cultural relationships, but little research has explored how individuals perceive the cultural humility of a salient group. In the current study, we examined how perceptions of the cultural humility of a religious community affect the well-being of sexual minorities, who frequently experience discri...

Debates about immigration policy have sparked increasingly negative attitudes toward refugees, particularly those of Muslim identification. Research to date has found that post-immigration prejudice and discrimination, often reinforced at a systemic level, pose an additional psychological burden to refugees. The present study explored associations...

This study explores the role cultural humility plays in attitudes and discrimination towards people identifying as gay or lesbian among religious individuals. Specifically, we explore cultural humility as a possible predictor of less discriminatory attitudes towards lesbians and gay men above and beyond the effects of conservatism and religious ori...

Cultural humility, as part of a therapist’s multicultural orientation, can help facilitate a strong working alliance with clients across diverse cultural backgrounds. Given that little research has attended to how the intersections of race/ethnicity, gender, and religion/spirituality (R/S) influence counseling dyads, we tested the factor structure...

As a complement to multicultural competence, the multicultural orientation (MCO) perspective has been proposed as a pragmatic way to enhance cultural understandings about psychotherapeutic dynamics, processes, and outcomes. Consisting of three core components-cultural humility, cultural comfort, and cultural opportunities-the MCO is considered rele...

This issue of the Journal of Psychology and Theology focuses on cultural humility. Cultural humility is an important domain of general humility that focuses on cultural differences. In this introduction to the special issue, we first define cultural humility, and briefly share some history for how the construct has developed over time. Then, we pre...

This article examines the social buffering hypothesis of cultural humility in the context of religious offenses. In this study, participants (N = 244) rated their cultural humility in terms of differing religious values and beliefs as well as their moral foundations in determining what is right or wrong. They then recalled an offense or hurt attrib...