Misunderstandings of Intellectual Humility

Some psychological topics become popular to the point of boredom, such as intellectual humility. "Be humble, and proudly" say psychologists in The New York Times. Get "a lesson in intellectual humility" in The Atlantic. And of course, there's a TED Talk on "the power of intellectual humility." All of this gives the illusion that we know intellectual humility well. But ironically (in the vein of Alanis Morissette), we know less than we think.

A Careful Examination of Intellectual Humility

Imagine you're at a dinner party, and the conversation turns to a passionate topic of yours: bodybuilding with resistance bands, not dumbbells or barbells. You're ready to jump in with well-reasoned arguments, but then you pause. You realize there's a chance you could be wrong. That pause, that moment of self-awareness, is the essence of intellectual humility (IH).

It's not just admitting that you might be wrong. It's recognizing the vast expanse of what you don't know, and appreciating the intellectual prowess of others.

If you're the dinner guest, you probably recognize this is a desirable quality that draws people in. If you're at the party, you probably find this quality to be far more attractive than the narcissistic bragging that is all-too-common at social gatherings. We tend to think of IH as a personality trait, even a character strength—something that lives inside a person, like a little humility homunculus pulling the strings.

The Core

Think of IH as the quiet, thoughtful scholar in the corner of a bustling library. It's not about doubting yourself or lacking confidence; it's about holding beliefs lightly, ready to revise them when new evidence comes along. It's about understanding that your perspective is just one lens through which to view the world—a lens that might be smudged or even cracked.

Now, you might be thinking, "Isn't this just humility?" Well, not quite. Imagine humility as a tree, with many branches representing different aspects. IH is one branch. While general humility involves a broader view of oneself in relation to others and the world, IH is specifically about our beliefs and attitudes. It's about being humble in our intellectual pursuits, and recognizing that our knowledge has limits. It's about a desire to gain knowledge, not conviction. A desire to seek out safeguards against mental errors and biases.

IH can be a fleeting state, like a brief pause in a heated debate, or it can be a more stable trait, like a consistent approach to learning and engaging with others. It's like the difference between a single note and a recurring melody (Exhibit A: my current, favorite gentle tune.) While we all have moments of intellectual humility, for some of us it’s a recurring theme in our intellectual engagements.

But what if it's not just about us as individuals? What if intellectual humility is also about the groups and cultures we're part of?

It Takes a Village to Raise a Thought

Yes, IH is about knowing your limits, recognizing your mistakes, and being open to new ideas. But that's only a partial description.

It's about how we, as a group, create an environment that encourages humility, that values questioning and curiosity, and that isn't afraid to say, "I am definitely not the smartest person in the room, so where is my thinking off?"

This idea is in line with some of the latest psychological research. There's a growing recognition that traits we usually think of as individual—like implicit bias or a growth mindset—might be better understood as a product of our social environments than about us as individuals.

Take implicit bias—a contentious topic. The conversation about it often focuses on the individual biases that each of us carries around. But what if we zoomed out? What if we looked at how social environments—schools, workplaces, communities—shape and reinforce these biases?

Consider the Implicit Association Test (IAT), a popular tool used for measuring implicit bias over the past 25 years. It's often used to give individuals feedback on their level of bias. You can test for rapid likes and dislikes on the fringes of conscious awareness toward almost anything. Sometimes your implicit bias is highly related to your conscious thoughts and actions. If you show an implicit bias against eating a Japanese Wagyu Ribeye then you are very unlikely to eat it. However, if you show an implicit bias against overweight people you don't behave much differently than people who lack this implicit bias. (See the published data.)

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Perhaps the IAT says little about individuals and our biases might be better understood as products of the cultures we're part of. This point is captured by David Dunning (one named entity of the Dunning-Krueger effect, which might not be real):

In studying implicit bias, psychologists assess attitudes and prejudices a person may harbor toward other racial groups that lie outside of their awareness, intention, and control (Kurdi et al., 2019). However, in developing scientific measures of this disposition, such as the implicit association test (IAT), a few issues have puzzled researchers. Such measures often fail to exhibit the statistical signatures expected of a meaningful disposition on which individuals differ. Implicit measures tend not to correlate that highly with behaviors they should predict, nor do they stay stable over time – as would be predicted if they reflected unwavering individual dispositions (Payne & Hannay, 2021). Implicit measures correlate with one another inconsistently (Brauer et al., 2000), and with more explicit measures (i.e., those under the control and awareness of the individual) only modestly (Hehman et al., 2019).

However, if one examines implicit bias at a more collective level, the statistical signatures of a disposition emerge. At the county level, temporal stability of implicit attitudes emerges – even more so at the level of urban metropolises or American states. Strong correlations between implicit and explicit attitudes also emerge as one moves from the individual to state level (Hehman et al., 2019). Further, at levels of the collective, implicit bias measures begin to correlate meaningfully with behavior. For example, college campuses with higher bias scores among its students are more likely to display Confederate monuments and to possess lower diversity among its faculty (Vuletich & Payne, 2019). Disproportionate use of lethal force by police against black citizens correlates with anti-black implicit bias when metropolitan areas in the United States are compared (Hehman et al., 2018). These findings have led to a new assertion that implicit bias may not represent personal attitudes but rather a set of expectations and associations coming from the social environment people are embedded in (Payne & Hannay, 2021; Payne et al., 2017), although this emerging perspective does draw contention (Connor & Evers, 2020).

A Cultural Lens to Psychological Strengths

Take a look at different professions. They often have specific norms and practices designed to keep intellectual arrogance in check and promote humility. Or, maybe you wish you worked at one of these amazing organizations—which are surprisingly rare in higher education.

Think about the checklists pilots go through before takeoff, or the differential diagnoses that doctors use to make sure they're not missing alternative explanations for a patient's symptoms. These aren't just about individual humility; they indicate a culture of humility.

So, let's start thinking about intellectual humility and other psychological strengths such as curiosity and creativity in a new way. It's about us. It’s about social environments. It's about creating an incentive structure in which humility, curiosity, and perspective taking are honored and hopefully, replicated regularly. Because intellectual humility will grow in teams faster from norms, not private masterclasses.

Be careful about what you reward and punish, especially in public settings.

Be careful about incentivizing bad behavior by giving a free pass to problematic precedents.

Thse are lessons that many organizations must take seriously, from Harvard University to the Supreme Court. The presence of a few intellectually humble individuals rarely counteracts the adverse consequences of a rigid thinking, highly entitled, hypocritical group.