Marketing Scoops: intellectualhumility

The classroom is where habits are created, mentalities are formed, and lessons are taught. Classrooms are spaces to encourage students to learn as much as they can but also to recognize what they do not yet know. This skill is part of what researchers call intellectual humility, the ability to accept that our beliefs and what we think may not always be correct……Continue reading…..

By Emily Brower

Source: Greater Good magazine

Critics:

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.

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

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 (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, Carl Rogers, and Gordon Allport discuss humility 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

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The Online Educational Program ‘Perspectives’ Improves Affective Polarization, Intellectual Humility, and Conflict Management”

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Is intellectual humility related to more accuracy and less overconfidence?”.

Who makes acquisitions? CEO overconfidence and the market’s reaction”.

Board overconfidence in mergers and acquisitions”.

Intellectual humility and misinformation receptivity: A meta-analytic review”.

Open-mindedness predicts support for public health measures and disbelief in conspiracy theories during the COVID-19 pandemic”.

A Signal Detection Approach to Understanding the Identification of Fake News”.

Gamified inoculation interventions do not improve discrimination between true and fake news: Reanalyzing existing research with receiver operating characteristic analysis”.

Intellectual humility is associated with greater misinformation discernment and metacognitive insight but not response bias”.