Intellectual humility is a metacognitive process characterized by recognizing the limits of one's knowledge and acknowledging one's fallibility. It involves several components, including not thinking too highly of oneself, refraining from believing one's own views are superior to others', lacking intellectual vanity, being open to new ideas, and acknowledging mistakes and shortcomings. It is positively associated with openness to new ideas, empathy, prosocial values, tolerance for diverse perspectives, and scrutiny of misinformation. Individuals with higher levels of intellectual humility experience benefits such as improved decision-making, positive social interactions, and the moderation of conflicts. There is a long history of philosophers considering the importance of intellectual humility as a 'virtue'. The modern study of this phenomenon began in the mid-2000s.

Definition

Intellectual humility is a psychological process defined as "the recognition of the limits of one’s knowledge and an awareness of one’s fallibility."

Components

Intellectual humility is "a multifaceted and multilayered virtue" which involves several key components that shape an individual's intellectual disposition. An intellectually humbler person will: *Not think too highly of themselves *Not think that one's beliefs or attitudes are better or more correct than other viewpoints *Lack intellectual vanity *Not boast or brag about their intellectual accomplishments *Not be defensive when challenged or try to explain away their intellectual shortcomings *Take complaints and criticism seriously *Acknowledge their mistakes and shortcomings *Show open-mindedness to new ideas *"Own" their intellectual limitations It is positively associated with openness to new ideas, empathy, prosocial values, tolerance for diverse people and perspectives, scrutiny of misinformation, greater openness to learning about different political views, lower affective polarization, and higher religious tolerance.

Benefits

There are a variety of benefits to individuals who have higher intellectual humility including: *Improved decision-making: "more likely to process information in ways that enhance their knowledge and understanding than people lower in intellectual humility." *Positive interactions: "more positive social interactions, especially when disagreements arise ... which leads people who are more intellectually humble to be liked better than those low in IH. *More accuracy and less overclaiming on critical thinking tasks. At a social level there are also benefits including the moderation of conflicts and may lead to greater compromise. The consequences of the reverse - i.e.

overconfidence The overconfidence effect is a well-established bias in which a person's subjective ''confidence'' in their judgments is reliably greater than the objective ''accuracy'' of those judgments, especially when confidence is relatively high. Overconfide ...

- can be problematic. As social psychologist Scott Plous wrote, "No problem in judgement and decision making is more prevalent and more potentially catastrophic than overconfidence." It has been blamed for lawsuits, strikes, wars, poor corporate acquisitions, and stock market bubbles and crashes. A comprehensive meta-analysis, encompassing 54 studies and 33,814 participants, reveals that IH correlates with reduced susceptibility to misinformation and conspiracy theories. Notably, the effects appear more pronounced in behavioral outcomes than in attitudinal measures, highlighting IH's potential as a target for interventions aimed at combating the spread of false information. A large study of nearly 50,000 participants from over 68 countries the early stage of the COVID-19 pandemic (April–May 2020) found that "open-mindedness turns out to be the strongest predictor for rejecting conspiracy beliefs" (and support for public health measures) related to COVID-19.

Potential Limitations

Some research suggests that traits such as intellectual humility might lead to response bias, potentially causing individuals to be overly cautious or skeptical when evaluating any type of information (regardless of veracity). However, a recent study found that intellectual humility was associated with improved misinformation discernment and metacognitive awareness, without leading to a significant response bias. This finding suggests that intellectually humble individuals are better at distinguishing between true and false claims, not because they are inherently more skeptical, but due to enhanced discernment abilities.

Intellectual humility measures

A number of different methods and scales to measure humility exists, the most two prominent types of which are the ''self-reported'' measures and the ''informant rating'' measures:

Self-reported measures

* Comprehensive Intellectual Humility Scale * Intelectual Humility Scale * Limitations Owning Intellectual Humility Scale * Specific Intellectual Humility Scale

Informant rating measures

* McElroy Intellectual Humility Scale * Expressed Intellectual Humility Scale

Other measures

* Dispositional Humility Scale * Humility-Arrogance Implicit Association * Facial Expression Humility Test

Acquisition

A study found that users of an online tool could experience a small- to medium-sized increase in their intellectual humility.

History

For millennia, philosophers have championed "a recognition of one's epistemic limit" and have named it an epistemic virtue. Perhaps the first recorded instance of intellectual humility is when

Socrates Socrates (; ; – 399 BC) was a Ancient Greek philosophy, Greek philosopher from Classical Athens, Athens who is credited as the founder of Western philosophy and as among the first moral philosophers of the Ethics, ethical tradition ...

(in The Apology) remarked: "Although I do not suppose that either of us knows anything really beautiful and good, I am better off than he is – for he knows nothing, and thinks he knows. I neither know nor think I know." Waclaw Bąk ''et al.'' identify Socrates as "the ideal example" of intellectual humility. Studies by

Abraham Maslow Abraham Harold Maslow ( ; April 1, 1908 – June 8, 1970) was an American psychologist who created Maslow's hierarchy of needs, a theory of psychological health predicated on fulfilling innate human needs in priority, culminating in self-actua ...

Carl Rogers Carl Ransom Rogers (January 8, 1902 – February 4, 1987) was an American psychologist who was one of the founders of humanistic psychology and was known especially for his person-centered psychotherapy. Rogers is widely considered one of the f ...

, and

Gordon Allport Gordon William Allport (November 11, 1897 – October 9, 1967) was an American psychologist. Allport was one of the first psychologists to focus on the study of the personality, and is often referred to as one of the founding figures of personali ...

discuss

humility Humility is the quality of being humble. The Oxford Dictionary, in its 1998 edition, describes humility as a low self-regard and sense of unworthiness. However, humility involves having an accurate opinion of oneself and expressing oneself mode ...

with regard to one's knowledge without using the phrase "intellectual humility. Notwithstanding this long history, attention from social and behavioural scientists is much more recent - roughly starting in the mid-2000s. One of the first focused studies of intellectual humility was conducted by Roberts and Woods in 2003.

Relation to other phenomena

Intellectual humility and intellectual arrogance are related to a number of distinct cognitive phenomena. A source of intellectual arrogance can be a number of

cognitive biases A cognitive bias is a systematic pattern of deviation from norm or rationality in judgment. Individuals create their own "subjective reality" from their perception of the input. An individual's construction of reality, not the objective input, ...

, which can manifest already in an early age. Among the cognitive biases that influence the intellectual humility one can distinguish illusions of explanatory depth, argument justification, insight, outsourced mind.

References

{{reflist Cognitive biases Memory biases Virtue Intellectualism Humility Cognition Cognitive science Decision-making