Intellectual humility

History

Philosophers have long 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.

Components

Intellectual humility is "a multifaceted and multilayered virtue" which involves several key components that shape an individual's intellectual disposition.

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 - 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 exist.

Acquisition

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

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, 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.