Toward an understanding of collective intellectual humility

Krumrei-Mancuso, E. J., et al. (2024).

Trends in Cognitive Sciences.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2024.09.006

Abstract

The study of intellectual humility (IH), which is gaining increasing interest among cognitive scientists, has been dominated by a focus on individuals. We propose that IH operates at the collective level as the tendency of a collective’s members to attend to each other’s intellectual limitations and the limitations of their collective cognitive efforts. Given people’s propensity to better recognize others’ limitations than their own, IH may be more readily achievable in collectives than individuals. We describe the socio-cognitive dynamics that can interfere with collective IH and offer the solution of building intellectually humbling environments that create a culture of IH that can outlast the given membership of a collective. We conclude with promising research directions.

Highlights

• Like individuals, collectives can possess intellectual humility.
• A collective’s intellectual humility is not strictly reducible to the sum of the intellectual humility of its members.
• Collective intellectual humility is the tendency of members of a collective to attend to one another’s intellectual limitations and the intellectual limitations of their collective cognitive efforts.
• Given people’s propensity to better recognize others’ limitations than their own, intellectual humility may be more achievable in collectives than in individuals.
• Social support and institutional scaffolding are crucial to promoting collective intellectual humility.

Here are some thoughts:

The research on collective intellectual humility (IH) offers valuable insights for practicing psychologists, particularly in group settings. Psychologists can focus on fostering environments that encourage collective IH by cultivating diverse perspectives within teams, establishing norms that value open criticism, transparency, and accountability, and facilitating inclusive discussions where all members feel comfortable sharing their views.

Creating intellectually humbling environments is another critical area where psychologists can contribute. This involves scaffolding critical thinking by introducing tools and frameworks that prompt groups to consider alternative viewpoints and potential weaknesses in their reasoning. Additionally, developing reward systems that recognize and reinforce intellectually humble behaviors within the group can further promote a culture of humility.

Moral Humility Reduces Political Divisions

Vallabha, S., & Brandt, M. J. (2024, April 5).

PsyArXiv

https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/5r6fw

Abstract

Political and intergroup conflicts are often rooted in moral differences. People claim their side to be morally superior and derogate moral outgroups. Therefore, we propose that moral humility, a domain-specific form of humility, might serve as one antidote to such morally fueled conflicts. We test this in the context of political polarization in the USA. Across 3 studies involving diverse national and student samples (N = 2766), we found higher moral humility to be linked to reduced political animosity, increased support for political compromise and pluralistic norms, greater empathy and respect for the political outgroup, greater perceptions of the political group as moral and non-threatening, amongst others. Importantly, these effects persisted after accounting for domain-general intellectual humility, moral relativism, political identity and extremity, and other controls. This research demonstrates moral humility’s relevance for understanding political polarization, and points the way for a strength-based approach to addressing conflicts.

Here are some thoughts:

This research explores the concept of moral humility and its potential to reduce political polarization and intergroup conflicts. The study found that individuals with higher moral humility demonstrated reduced political animosity, increased support for political compromise and pluralistic norms, greater empathy and respect for political outgroups, and improved perceptions of political outgroups as moral and non-threatening. These effects persisted even after controlling for factors like intellectual humility, moral relativism, and political identity.

This research is important to mental health professionals for several reasons. Understanding moral humility can help therapists develop strategies to address the psychological impacts of political polarization on their clients and improve interpersonal relationships. The findings suggest that cultivating moral humility could help individuals navigate conflicts more effectively in both personal and professional settings. Mental health professionals can use insights from this research to help clients develop greater empathy and respect for those with differing viewpoints, as well as recognize and mitigate their own biases and moral righteousness, leading to more balanced thinking.

Understanding moral humility can help prevent individuals from engaging in harmful behaviors justified by moral superiority. Encouraging moral humility can support clients in their journey of self-improvement and moral development. Furthermore, mental health professionals can apply these findings to develop interventions that promote constructive dialogue and reduce societal tensions. By incorporating the concept of moral humility into their practice, mental health professionals can better equip their clients to navigate the complexities of modern social and political landscapes while fostering personal growth and improved interpersonal relationships.

Effects of intellectual humility in the context of affective polarization: Approaching and avoiding others in controversial political discussions

Knöchelmann, L., & Cohrs, J. C. (2024).

Journal of personality and social psychology, 

10.1037/pspi0000462.

Advance online publication.

https://doi.org/10.1037/pspi0000462

Abstract

Affective polarization, the extent to which political actors treat each other as disliked outgroups, is challenging political exchange and deliberation, for example, via mistrust of the "political enemy" and unwillingness to discuss political topics with them. The present experiments address this problem and study what makes people approach, and not avoid, potential discussion partners in the context of polarized political topics in Germany. We hypothesized that intellectual humility, the recognition of one's intellectual limitations, would predict both less affective polarization and higher approach and lower avoidance tendencies toward contrary-minded others. Across four preregistered online-survey experiments (N = 1,668), we manipulated how intellectually humble a target person was perceived and measured participants' self-reported (topic-specific) intellectual humility. Results revealed that participants' intellectual humility was consistently negatively correlated with affective polarization. Additionally, intellectual humility of both the target person and the participants was beneficial, and sometimes even necessary, to make participants approach, and not avoid, the target person. Intellectual humility was more important than moral conviction, opinion, and opinion strength. Furthermore, the effects on approach and avoidance were mediated by more positive expectations regarding the debate, and the effects on future willingness for contact by higher target liking. Our findings suggest that intellectual humility is an important characteristic to enable political exchange as it leads to seeing political outgroups more positively and to a higher willingness to engage in intergroup contact. Implications for intergroup contact of political groups as well as ideas for future research are discussed.

A pdf of the research is here.

Here are some thoughts as to why intellectual humility is important to practicing psychologists:

Intellectual humility involves recognizing the limits of one's knowledge and being open to opposing perspectives.  This can help therapists avoid being overly dogmatic or dismissive of their clients' beliefs, even if they disagree. Maintaining an open and non-judgmental stance is crucial for building a strong therapeutic alliance.

People higher in intellectual humility tend to be more empathetic, forgiving, and valuing of others' wellbeing.  These qualities can facilitate better rapport and understanding between therapists and clients from different backgrounds or with contrasting worldviews.

Intellectual humility is associated with reduced polarization, extremism, and susceptibility to conspiracy beliefs.  Therapists exhibiting intellectual humility can model these qualities for clients struggling with rigid ideological stances that strain their relationships.

When political or controversial topics arise in therapy, intellectual humility can allow therapists to thoughtfully consider different perspectives without getting mired in unproductive debates or power struggles with clients.  An intellectually humble stance creates space for productive dialogue.

Overall, cultivating intellectual humility may help therapists navigate affective polarization and controversial topics more constructively in the therapeutic context by increasing openness, empathy, and willingness to entertain alternative viewpoints.  This can strengthen the therapeutic relationship and facilitate progress, even when working with clients holding contrasting beliefs.

A Metacognitive Blindspot in Intellectual Humility Measures

Costello, T. H., Newton, C., Lin, H., & Pennycook, G.

(2023, August 6).

https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/gux95

Abstract

Intellectual humility (IH) is commonly defined as recognizing the limits of one’s knowledge and abilities. However, most research has relied entirely on self-report measures of IH, without testing whether these instruments capture the metacognitive core of the construct. Across two studies (Ns = 898; 914), using generalized additive mixed models to detect complex non-linear interactions, we evaluated the correspondence between widely used IH self-reports and performance on calibration and resolution paradigms designed to model the awareness of one’s mental capabilities (and their fallibility). On an overconfidence paradigm (N observations per model = 2,692-2,742), none of five IH measures attenuated the Dunning-Kruger effect, whereby poor performers overestimate their abilities and high performers underestimate them. On a confidence-accuracy paradigm (Nobservation per model = 7,223 - 12,706), most IH measures were associated with inflated confidence regardless of accuracy, or were specifically related to confidence when participants were correct but not when they were incorrect. The sole exception was the “Lack of Intellectual Overconfidence” subscale of the Comprehensive Intellectual Humility Scale, which uniquely predicted lower confidence for incorrect responses. Meanwhile, measures of Actively Open-minded Thinking reliably predicted calibration and resolution. These findings reveal substantial discrepancies between IH self-reports and metacognitive abilities, suggesting most IH measures lack validity. It may not be feasible to assess IH via self-report–as indicating a great deal of humility may, itself, be a sign of a failure in humility.

GeneralDiscussion

IH represents the ability to identify the constraints of one’s psychological, epistemic, and cultural perspective— to conduct lay phenomenology, acknowledging that the default human perspective is (literally) self-centered (Wallace, 2009) — and thereby cultivate an awareness of the limits of a single person, theory, or ideology to describe the vast and searingly complex universe. It is a process that presumably involves effortful and vigilant noticing – tallying one’s epistemic track record, and especially one’s fallibility (Ballantyne, 2021).

IH, therefore, manifests dynamically in individuals as a boundary between one’s informational environment and one’s model of reality. This portrait of IH-as-boundary appears repeatedly in philosophical and psychological treatments of IH, which frequently frame awareness of (epistemic) limitations as IH’s conceptual, metacognitive core (Leary et al., 2017; Porter, Elnakouri, et al., 2022). Yet as with a limit in mathematics, epistemic limits are appropriately defined as functions: their value is dependent on inputs (e.g., information environment, access to knowledge) that vary across contexts and individuals. Particularly, measuring IH requires identifying at least two quantities— one’s epistemic capabilities and one’s appraisal of said capabilities— from which a third, IH-qua-metacognition, can be derived as the distance between the two quantities.

Contemporary IH self-reports tend not to account for either parameter, seeming to rest instead on an auxiliary assumption: That people who are attuned to, and “own”, their epistemic limitations will generate characteristic, intellectually humble patterns of thinking and behavior. IH questionnaires then target these patterns, rather than the shared propensity for IH which the patterns ostensibly reflect.

We sought to both test and circumvent this assumption (and mono-method measurement limitation) in the present research. We did so by defining IH’s metacognitive core, functionally and statistically, in terms of calibration and resolution. We operationalized calibration as the convergence between participants’ performance on a series of epistemic tasks, on the one hand, and participants’ estimation of their own performance, on the other. Given that the relation between self-estimation and actual performance is non-linear (i.e., the Dunning-Kruger effect), there were several pathways by which IH might predict calibration: (1) decreased overestimation among low performers, (2) decreased underestimation among high performers, or (3) unilateral weakening of miscalibration among both low and high performers (for a visual representation, refer to Figure 1). Further, we operationalized epistemic resolution by assessing the relation between IH, on the one hand, individuals’ item-by-item confidence judgments for correct versus incorrect answers, on the other hand. Thus, resolution represents the capacity to distinguish between one’s correct and incorrect judgments and beliefs (a seemingly necessary prerequisite for building an accurate and calibrated model of one’s knowledge).

The research is here.

You Were Right About COVID, and Then You Weren’t

Olga Khazan

The Atlantic

Originally posted 3 MAY 22

Here are two excerpts:

Tenelle Porter, a psychologist at UC Davis, studies so-called intellectual humility, or the recognition that we have imperfect information and thus our beliefs might be wrong. Practicing intellectual humility, she says, is harder when you’re very active on the internet, or when you’re operating in a cutthroat culture. That might be why it pains me—a very online person working in the very competitive culture of journalism—to say that I was incredibly wrong about COVID at first. In late February 2020, when Smith was sounding the alarm among his co-workers, I had drinks with a colleague who asked me if I was worried about “this new coronavirus thing.”

“No!” I said. After all, I had covered swine flu, which blew over quickly and wasn’t very deadly.

A few days later, my mom called and asked me the same question. “People in Italy are staying inside their houses,” she pointed out.

“Yeah,” I said. “But SARS and MERS both stayed pretty localized to the regions they originally struck.”

Then, a few weeks later, when we were already working from home and buying dried beans, a friend asked me if she should be worried about her wedding, which was scheduled for October 2020.

“Are you kidding?” I said. “They will have figured out a vaccine or something by then.” Her wedding finally took place this month.

(cut)

Thinking like a scientist, or a scout, means “recognizing that every single one of your opinions is a hypothesis waiting to be tested. And every decision you make is an experiment where you forgot to have a control group,” Grant said. The best way to hold opinions or make predictions is to determine what you think given the state of the evidence—and then decide what it would take for you to change your mind. Not only are you committing to staying open-minded; you’re committing to the possibility that you might be wrong.

Because the coronavirus has proved volatile and unpredictable, we should evaluate it as a scientist would. We can’t hold so tightly to prior beliefs that we allow them to guide our behavior when the facts on the ground change. This might mean that we lose our masks one month and don them again the next, or reschedule an indoor party until after case numbers decrease. It might mean supporting strict lockdowns in the spring of 2020 but not in the spring of 2022. It might even mean closing schools again, if a new variant seems to attack children. We should think of masks and other COVID precautions not as shibboleths but like rain boots and umbrellas, as Ashish Jha, the White House coronavirus-response coordinator, has put it. There’s no sense in being pro- or anti-umbrella. You just take it out when it’s raining.

The info is here.

The Benefits of Admitting When You Don’t Know

Tenelle Porter
Behavioral Scientist
Originally published April 30, 2018

Here is an excerpt:

We found that the more intellectually humble students were more motivated to learn and more likely to use effective metacognitive strategies, like quizzing themselves to check their own understanding. They also ended the year with higher grades in math. We also found that the teachers, who hadn’t seen students’ intellectual humility questionnaires, rated the more intellectually humble students as more engaged in learning.

Next, we moved into the lab. Could temporarily boosting intellectual humility make people more willing to seek help in an area of intellectual weakness? We induced intellectual humility in half of our participants by having them read a brief article that described the benefits of admitting what you do not know. The other half read an article about the benefits of being very certain of what you know. We then measured their intellectual humility.

Those who read the benefits-of-humility article self-reported higher intellectual humility than those in the other group. What’s more, in a follow-up exercise 85 percent of these same participants sought extra help for an area of intellectual weakness. By contrast, only 65 percent of the participants who read about the benefits of being certain sought the extra help that they needed. This experiment provided evidence that enhancing intellectual humility has the potential to affect students’ actual learning behavior.

Together, our findings illustrate that intellectual humility is associated with a host of outcomes that we think are important for learning in school, and they suggest that boosting intellectual humility may have benefits for learning.

The article is here.

Teaching Humility in an Age of Arrogance

Michael Patrick Lynch
The Chronicle of Higher Education
Originally published June 5, 2017

Here is an excerpt:

Our cultural embrace of epistemic or intellectual arrogance is the result of a toxic mix of technology, psychology, and ideology. To combat it, we have to reconnect with some basic values, including ones that philosophers have long thought were essential both to serious intellectual endeavors and to politics.

One of those ideas, as I just noted, is belief in objective truth. But another, less-noted concept is intellectual humility. By intellectual humility, I refer to a cluster of attitudes that we can take toward ourselves — recognizing your own fallibility, realizing that you don’t really know as much as you think, and owning your limitations and biases.

But being intellectually humble also means taking an active stance. It means seeing your worldview as open to improvement by the evidence and experience of other people. Being open to improvement is more than just being open to change. And it isn’t just a matter of self-improvement — using your genius to know even more. It is a matter of seeing your view as capable of improvement because of what others contribute.

Intellectual humility is not the same as skepticism. Improving your knowledge must start from a basis of rational conviction. That conviction allows you to know when to stop inquiring, when to realize that you know enough — that the earth really is round, the climate is warming, the Holocaust happened, and so on. That, of course, is tricky, and many a mistake in science and politics have been made because someone stopped inquiring before they should have. Hence the emphasis on evidence; being intellectually humble requires being responsive to the actual evidence, not to flights of fancy or conspiracy theories.

The article is here.

How ‘Intellectual Humility’ Can Make You a Better Person

Cindy Lamothe
The Science of Us
Originally posted February 3, 2017

There’s a well-known Indian parable about six blind men who argue at length about what an elephant feels like. Each has a different idea, and each holds fast to his own view. “It’s like a rope,” says the man who touched the tail. “Oh no, it’s more like the solid branch of a tree,” contends the one who touched the trunk. And so on and so forth, and round and round they go.

The moral of the story: We all have a tendency to overestimate how much we know — which, in turn, means that we often cling stubbornly to our beliefs while tuning out opinions different from our own. We generally believe we’re better or more correct than everyone else, or at least better than most people — a psychological quirk that’s as true for politics and religion as it is for things like fashion and lifestyles. And in a time when it seems like we’re all more convinced than ever of our own rightness, social scientists have begun to look more closely at an antidote: a concept called intellectual humility.

Unlike general humility — which is defined by traits like sincerity, honesty, and unselfishness — intellectual humility has to do with understanding the limits of one’s knowledge. It’s a state of openness to new ideas, a willingness to be receptive to new sources of evidence, and it comes with significant benefits: People with intellectual humility are both better learners and better able to engage in civil discourse. Google’s VP in charge of hiring, Laszlo Bock, has claimed it as one of the top qualities he looks for in a candidate: Without intellectual humility, he has said, “you are unable to learn.”

The article is here.