Predictors and consequences of intellectual humility

Epistemic humility meets virtual reality: teaching an old ideal with novel tools

The pace of scientific advancements in medicine, driven by artificial intelligence as much as by novel biotechnologies, demands an ever-faster update of professional knowledge from physicians and collaboration in interdisciplinary teams. At the same time, the increased heterogeneity of patients' lifeworlds in socially and culturally diverse societies requires healthcare professionals to consider diverging personal and cultural perspectives in their treatment recommendations. Both developments require conveying to students a professional virtue that can be summarised as epistemic humility-a teaching process which, we argue, can and should be supported by novel technologies. By embedding students in realistic scenarios, virtual reality can play a crucial role in teaching medical students a stance of epistemic humility. Such stance implies acknowledging the limitations of one's knowledge as well as taking individual patients' perspectives and experiences seriously. In this sense, epistemic humility can also provide a crucial step towards tackling epistemic injustice and biases in medicine. We discuss how teaching epistemic humility with virtual reality tools can succeed and suggest the development of novel teaching tools that make use of this technology to immersively enable moral growth. Our paper thereby contributes to the emerging field of digital bioethics, calls for more work in the area of experimental bioethics and informs ongoing debates on how medical ethics teaching can prepare future physicians for the challenges of tomorrow's practice of medicine.

Changing the Paradigm: Practical Wisdom as True North in Medical Education

The practice of medicine is a complex endeavor requiring high levels of knowledge and technical capability, and the capacity to apply the skills and knowledge to do the right thing in the right way, for the right reason, in a particular context. The orchestration of the virtues, managing uncertainty, applying knowledge and technical skills to a particular individual in a particular circumstance, and exercising the virtues in challenging circumstances, are the tasks of practical wisdom. Centuries ago, Aristotle suggested that capacities for wise action are developed through practice, experience, and reflection. Neuroscience and cognitive psychology are now beginning to contribute to our understanding of the complex interplay between emotion, cognition, and behavior that is necessary for wise action, and how this capacity for wise action can be developed. In this paper, I propose that wisdom offers an appropriate true north for medical education. Wisdom shifts the focus beyond the simple acquisition of knowledge and technical skills and integrates essential virtues like compassion, trustworthiness, humility, and the balancing of the virtues, into the professional formation for medical students. Informed by the humanities, the neurosciences, and the social sciences, we must now integrate the skills and practices necessary to the development of practical wisdom into medical education at all levels.

Intellectual Humility Predicts Empathic Accuracy and Empathic Resilience

Three preregistered studies (N = 533) investigated the relationship between intellectual humility (IH) and cognitive and emotional empathy. Study 1 (n = 212) revealed a positive association between IH and empathic accuracy (EA), especially toward the outgroup. Study 2 (n = 112) replicated the significant association between IH and EA. Study 3 (n = 209) employed a manipulation to enhance IH to demonstrate causality. We found evidence for an indirect effect, wherein the manipulation increased state IH, which was associated with greater EA. A mini meta-analysis revealed that, on average, individuals with higher levels of IH exhibit increased EA, showing a greater understanding of others' emotional states. Moreover, IH predicts empathic resilience-buffering against personal distress while maintaining or increasing empathic concern for others. These findings highlight the positive influence of IH on empathy, emphasizing its potential for fostering deeper connections and better understanding in social interactions.

The effect of seeing scientists as intellectually humble on trust in scientists and their research

Public trust in scientists is critical to our ability to face societal threats. Here, across five pre-registered studies (N = 2,034), we assessed whether perceptions of scientists' intellectual humility affect perceived trustworthiness of scientists and their research. In study 1, we found that seeing scientists as higher in intellectual humility was associated with greater perceived trustworthiness of scientists and support for science-based beliefs. We then demonstrated that describing a scientist as high (versus low) in intellectual humility increased perceived trustworthiness of the scientist (studies 2-4), belief in their research (studies 2-4), intentions to follow their research-based recommendations (study 3) and information-seeking behaviour (study 4). We further demonstrated that these effects were not moderated by the scientist's gender (study 3) or race/ethnicity (study 4). In study 5, we experimentally tested communication approaches that scientists can use to convey intellectual humility. These studies reveal the benefits of seeing scientists as intellectually humble across medical, psychological and climate science topics.

Measuring qualities needed for interdisciplinary work: The Intellectual Virtues for Interdisciplinary Research Scale (IVIRS)

Previous work has suggested that the problems hindering the success of interdisciplinarity could be overcome by fostering certain intellectual character strengths in scholars. However, how to assess and cultivate the specific virtues required for interdisciplinarity among researchers is still a matter of inquiry. The general objective of this paper was to develop a psychometric instrument to assess intellectual virtues that are essential for interdisciplinary inquiry among researchers. To achieve this goal, two studies were conducted. Study 1 developed a new scale and studied its correlation with other validated measures. Study 2 focused on conducting a confirmatory analysis of the structure obtained in Study 1 and investigated the relationships between the new scale and the researchers' levels of (i) experience and productivity in interdisciplinary collaboration and (ii) satisfaction regarding the results of their interdisciplinary inquiry. The EFA conducted for Study 1 identified four dimensions: (1) intellectual empathy, (2) open-mindedness and intellectual humility, (3) intellectual perseverance, and (4) curiosity. Indeed, the pools of items that were initially developed to measure intellectual humility and open-mindedness in a separate way converged into a unique factor or dimension. The confirmatory factor analysis conducted for Study 2 corroborated the four-dimensional structure observed in Study 1 via a new different sample. In addition, Studies 1 and 2 also analyzed convergent validity through the AVE and correlated the IVIRS with other scales that measure intellectual virtues (open-mindedness, curiosity, intellectual humility, and perseverance) in a general epistemic context. The second study demonstrated that researchers with significant experience, productivity, and satisfaction in the context of interdisciplinary investigation also presented elevated levels of the intellectual virtues that we identified as essential for such research. Our analysis demonstrates that the IVIRS is a valid measure of the intellectual virtues needed for interdisciplinarity and paves the way for the future design of interventions to cultivate these character traits in scholars.

Frequency of limitations statements in original research articles of United States leading medical journals: A meta-research protocol

BACKGROUND

Limitation declarations are commonly deemed essential to uphold intellectual humility for scientific research, but little has been reported about the limitation statements in published original research articles. This meta-research study aims to investigate the trends of limitation statements among three leading general medical journals in the US.

METHODS

This cross-sectional study will compile a data set of full-length original research articles published in the New England Journal of Medicine, Journal of the American Medical Association, and Annals of Internal Medicine between 2002 and 2022. Limitation statement will be recognized by two investigators, and a predefined set of sensitive keywords is used for sensitivity analysis. Frequency of limitation statements within the main text of research articles and trends for different study designs, including their association with the corresponding reporting guidelines, are the main measurements. We employ the Cochran-Armitage test for trend analysis.

CONCLUSION

The findings of this study will provide an overview of the limitation statements in leading general medical journals in the US. The results may contribute to future research to identify factors that are associated with the presence of limitation statements.

Shadows of wisdom: Classifying meta-cognitive and morally grounded narrative content via large language models

We investigated large language models' (LLMs) efficacy in classifying complex psychological constructs like intellectual humility, perspective-taking, open-mindedness, and search for a compromise in narratives of 347 Canadian and American adults reflecting on a workplace conflict. Using state-of-the-art models like GPT-4 across few-shot and zero-shot paradigms and RoB-ELoC (RoBERTa -fine-tuned-on-Emotion-with-Logistic-Regression-Classifier), we compared their performance with expert human coders. Results showed robust classification by LLMs, with over 80% agreement and F1 scores above 0.85, and high human-model reliability (Cohen's κ Md across top models = .80). RoB-ELoC and few-shot GPT-4 were standout classifiers, although somewhat less effective in categorizing intellectual humility. We offer example workflows for easy integration into research. Our proof-of-concept findings indicate the viability of both open-source and commercial LLMs in automating the coding of complex constructs, potentially transforming social science research.

Intellectual humility is reliably associated with constructive responses to conflict

Conflict is a ubiquitous, but potentially destructive, feature of social life. In the current research, we argue that intellectual humility-the awareness of one's intellectual fallibility-plays an important role in promoting constructive responses and decreasing destructive responses to conflict in different contexts. In Study 1, we examine the role of intellectual humility in interpersonal conflicts with friends and family members. In Study 2, we extend this finding to workplace conflicts. In both studies we find that intellectual humility predicts more constructive and less destructive responses to conflict. This work extends the burgeoning literature on the benefits of intellectual humility by demonstrating its association with responses that help defuse conflictual encounters.

Are there potential costs for humility in a pluralistic democracy?: A longitudinal investigation of immigrants in the New Zealand attitudes and values study

Introduction

In this longitudinal study, we examine the potential costs and benefits of humility for well-being and civic trust among immigrants in a pluralistic democracy.

Methods

With data from 14,864 immigrant participants from a nationwide random sample in New Zealand, we used multilevel modeling to examine the associations of general humility (i.e., honesty-humility modesty) with well-being (life satisfaction and meaning) and civic trust (trust in police) over time in contexts with varying levels of ethnic deprivation and perceived religious discrimination. We hypothesized that (a) humility would correlate positively with well-being and civic trust (Hypothesis 1), (b) these associations would be attenuated in the contexts where perceptions of ethnic deprivation and religious discrimination are high (Hypothesis 2), and (c) these interaction effects would become more pronounced when cultural identities are salient (Hypothesis 3).

Results

Multilevel modeling revealed partial support for these hypotheses. Although humility correlated positively with well-being and trust in police over time, the two-way and three-way interactions did not yield substantial support for Hypotheses 2 and 3, respectively. The context of religious discrimination did, however, marginally attenuate the positive association between humility and trust in police.

Discussion

Collectively, these results demonstrate that humility is associated with multiple benefits to well-being and civic trust and has few-if any-potential drawbacks.

Complexity appreciated: How the communication of complexity impacts topic-specific intellectual humility and epistemic trustworthiness

In the context of science communication, complexity is often reduced. This study employs a 2 × 2 experimental design (N = 432) to investigate how two factors, namely the communication of complexity (reduced vs not reduced) and the provision of suggestions for concrete action (suggested vs not suggested), influence individuals' productive engagement with the socio-scientific topic of sustainable energy. Measured variables include topic-specific intellectual humility, judgements of source trustworthiness, willingness to act, anxiety, and hope. As expected, communication of complexity led to higher topic-specific intellectual humility, higher epistemic trustworthiness and higher anxiety. When a concrete action was communicated, participants reported lower topic-specific intellectual humility. Participants' willingness to act was not significantly affected by the experimental manipulation. The results of the study imply that the communication of complexity does not hinder people's productive engagement with science.

The Wise Mind Balances the Abstract and the Concrete

We explored how individuals' mental representations of complex and uncertain situations impact their ability to reason wisely. To this end, we introduce situated methods to capture abstract and concrete mental representations and the switching between them when reflecting on social challenges. Using these methods, we evaluated the alignment of abstractness and concreteness with four integral facets of wisdom: intellectual humility, open-mindedness, perspective-taking, and compromise-seeking. Data from North American and UK participants (N = 1,151) revealed that both abstract and concrete construals significantly contribute to wise reasoning, even when controlling for a host of relevant covariates and potential response bias. Natural language processing of unstructured texts among high (top 25%) and low (bottom 25%) wisdom participants corroborated these results: semantic networks of the high wisdom group reveal greater use of both abstract and concrete themes compared to the low wisdom group. Finally, employing a repeated strategy-choice method as an additional measure, our findings demonstrated that individuals who showed a greater balance and switching between these construal types exhibited higher wisdom. Our findings advance understanding of individual differences in mental representations and how construals shape reasoning across contexts in everyday life.

Explaining contentious political issues promotes open-minded thinking

Cognitive scientists suggest that inviting people to explain contentious political issues might reduce intergroup toxicity because it exposes people to how poorly they understand the issue. However, whether providing explanations can result in more open-minded political thinking remains unclear. On one hand, inviting people to explain a political issue might make them more impartial and open-minded in their thinking. On the other hand, an invitation to explain a contentious political issue might lead to myside bias-rationalization of one's default position. Here, we address these contrasting predictions in five experiments (N = 1884; three pre-registered), conducted across a variety of contexts: with graduate students interacting with an actor in a laboratory setting, with US residents at the peak of the 2012 and 2016 U.S. presidential elections, with UK residents before the highly polarized 2019 Brexit vote, and with gun-control partisans. Across studies, we found that explaining politically contentious topics resulted in more open-minded thinking, an effect that generalized across coded (Studies 1-4) and self-report (Studies 3-4) measures. We also observed that participants who were made to feel like their explanations were welcomed felt closer to their discussion partner (Studies 3-4), an effect that generalized to all outgroup members with whom they disagreed with about the politically contentious issue (Study 4). We discuss the theoretical implications of these findings, and the potential for explanations to foster open-minded political engagement.

Conservatism, anti-vaccination attitudes, and intellectual humility: examining their associations through a social judgment theory framework

Previous research has consistently found that more political conservatism is related to higher anti-vaccination attitudes. However, little work has investigated how intellectual humility could potentially contribute to this relationship. Employing the social judgment theory of attitude change, we examined whether conservatism could mediate the association between intellectual humility and anti-vaccination attitudes. Participants (N = 1,293; 40.1% female; Mage = 38.23 years, SDage = 11.61, range of age was 18-78) completed a multifaceted measure of intellectual humility, an assessment of four types of anti-vaccination attitudes, and a measure of political orientation. Results from structural equation modeling revealed that decreased levels of most aspects of intellectual humility (i.e., independence of intellect and ego, openness to revising one's viewpoint, and lack of intellectual overconfidence) are associated with more conservative political views, which in turn is associated with stronger anti-vaccination attitudes, particularly worries about unforeseen future effects, concerns about commercial profiteering, and preference for natural immunity. These findings suggest that intellectual humility could reflect one's latitude widths, thereby predicting their openness to vaccine massaging, and thus may play an important role in addressing anti-vaccination attitudes, especially when politics is involved.

Longitudinal processes among humility, social justice activism, transcendence, and well-being

Introduction

Existing research shows positive associations between humility and well-being, and between civic engagement and well-being. Rarely have humility, civic engagement, and well-being been examined together. We build off of previous cross-sectional findings and a prior longitudinal study that used three waves of data and found significant positive bivariate correlations between humility and the presence of life purpose across time points.

Methods

Extending these previous findings, we used six waves of data obtained from graduate students at 18 seminaries across North America (N = 574; Mage = 31.54; 46.7% female; 65.3% White) to explore the dynamic associations among humility and life purpose, along with horizontal transcendence (an indicator of the attitudinal dimension of civic engagement) and social justice activism (an indicator for the behavioral dimension). We explored reciprocal short-run processes and dynamic long-run effects using a general cross-lagged panel model.

Results and discussion

We found robust evidence for a reciprocal influence between the presence of life purpose and horizontal transcendence, and long-run effects for initial levels of life purpose to influence later levels of horizontal transcendence. We also found long-run effects for the influence of initial levels of life purpose on later levels of humility, and initial levels of social justice activism on later levels of horizontal transcendence. Implications center on the use of the findings for planning future one-time life purpose and social justice interventions to affect changes in humility and horizontal transcendence.

When expert predictions fail

We examine the opportunities and challenges of expert judgment in the social sciences, scrutinizing the way social scientists make predictions. While social scientists show above-chance accuracy in predicting laboratory-based phenomena, they often struggle to predict real-world societal changes. We argue that most causal models used in social sciences are oversimplified, confuse levels of analysis to which a model applies, misalign the nature of the model with the nature of the phenomena, and fail to consider factors beyond the scientist's pet theory. Taking cues from physical sciences and meteorology, we advocate an approach that integrates broad foundational models with context-specific time series data. We call for a shift in the social sciences towards more precise, daring predictions and greater intellectual humility.

Young children's conceptualization of empirical disagreement

Chinese and American children aged 5-11 years (total N = 144) heard two child informants make conflicting empirical claims about each of 4 scenarios. For example, one informant claimed that a ball would float when dropped in water whereas the other informant claimed that it would sink. Children were asked to judge whether each informant could be right, and to justify their overall judgment. In both samples, there was a change with age. Older children often said that each informant could be right whereas younger children, especially in China, were more likely to say that only one informant could be right. Nevertheless, in the wake of decisive empirical evidence (e.g., the ball was shown to sink when dropped in water), almost all children, irrespective of age, drew appropriate conclusions about which of the two informants had been right. Thus, with increasing age, children differ in their prospective - but not in their retrospective - appraisal of empirical disagreement. Absent decisive evidence, older children are more likely than younger children to suspend judgment by acknowledging that either of two conflicting claims could be right. We argue that children's tendency to suspend judgment is linked to their developing awareness of empirical uncertainty, as expressed both in the justifications they give when judging the disagreement and in their own beliefs about the scenarios. Implications for children's understanding of disagreement are discussed.

Intellectual Humility and Responsiveness to Public Health Recommendations

We examined the association between intellectual humility (IH)-a willingness to consider credible new information and alternative views and revise one's own views if warranted-and adherence to experts' health behavior recommendations in the U.S. during the COVID-19 pandemic. Study 1 (N = 541) results showed that people higher in IH are more likely to engage in recommended health behaviors (e.g., mask-wearing, social distancing)-even when controlling for political affiliation. Additional analyses focused specifically on mask-wearing produced initial evidence consistent with mediation of the IH-mask-wearing relationship by the beliefs that mask-wearing 1) is an effective way to slow the spread of COVID-19 and 2) protects others. Based on the pathway from IH to mask-wearing through a concern for others found in Study 1, Study 2 further examined the relationship between IH and prosocial tendencies. The results from Study 2 (Ns for correlation coefficients ranged from 265 to 702) showed an association between IH and several values and traits that reflect a concern for others (e.g., agreeableness, benevolence). These findings suggest that IH may influence behavior through both intra- and interpersonal mechanisms. Implications of these findings for the health-behavior domain are discussed.

Early-Career Autism Researchers Are Shifting Their Research Directions: Tragedy or Opportunity?

Early-career researchers (ECRs) are among the most creative, talented, and energetic researchers, and they play an important role in knowledge production and pushing scientific boundaries. Recent debates have implied that many early-career autism researchers are compelled to shift their areas of focus within autism research as a consequence of their work being scrutinized by the autistic and autism communities. In this Perspective, I draw on my own experience as an early-career autism researcher having recently pivoted my research focus to become more aligned with community priorities. I reflect on whether these putative shifts in research direction are, indeed, a tragedy, as has previously been suggested, or, in fact, an opportunity for autism researchers. I argue that pivoting in research is a demonstration of science adapting to the ever-evolving needs in society and changes in our understanding of neurodiversity, neurodivergence, and research methods. While disagreements between the autistic, autism, and research communities may well feel uncomfortable, these tensions also present an opportunity for us-as non-autistic autism researchers-to reflect and to act toward building trust with the community. I recommend three areas for reflections: the purpose of our research, our position of power, and the epistemic limits of our academic expertise. I end by encouraging ECRs to consider taking actions, however small, to lead the charge in improving practices in autism research.

The wisdom in the story: Clarifying assumptions about radical uncertainty and reasonableness in narrative judgment

Human lives are radically uncertain. Making sense of such uncertainties is the hallmark of wisdom. Sense-making requires narratives, putting them in the center stage of human everyday decision-making. Yet what if radical uncertainty is a narrative itself? Moreover, do laypeople always consider such narratives irrational? Here we pose these questions to enrich a theory of choice under uncertainty.

Insights into the accuracy of social scientists' forecasts of societal change

How well can social scientists predict societal change, and what processes underlie their predictions? To answer these questions, we ran two forecasting tournaments testing the accuracy of predictions of societal change in domains commonly studied in the social sciences: ideological preferences, political polarization, life satisfaction, sentiment on social media, and gender-career and racial bias. After we provided them with historical trend data on the relevant domain, social scientists submitted pre-registered monthly forecasts for a year (Tournament 1; N = 86 teams and 359 forecasts), with an opportunity to update forecasts on the basis of new data six months later (Tournament 2; N = 120 teams and 546 forecasts). Benchmarking forecasting accuracy revealed that social scientists' forecasts were on average no more accurate than those of simple statistical models (historical means, random walks or linear regressions) or the aggregate forecasts of a sample from the general public (N = 802). However, scientists were more accurate if they had scientific expertise in a prediction domain, were interdisciplinary, used simpler models and based predictions on prior data.

A manifesto for applying behavioural science

Recent years have seen a rapid increase in the use of behavioural science to address the priorities of public and private sector actors. There is now a vibrant ecosystem of practitioners, teams and academics building on each other's findings across the globe. Their focus on robust evaluation means we know that this work has had an impact on important issues such as antimicrobial resistance, educational attainment and climate change. However, several critiques have also emerged; taken together, they suggest that applied behavioural science needs to evolve further over its next decade. This manifesto for the future of applied behavioural science looks at the challenges facing the field and sets out ten proposals to address them. Meeting these challenges will mean that behavioural science is better equipped to help to build policies, products and services on stronger empirical foundations-and thereby address the world's crucial challenges.

Pursuing student success in the library: a case study in peer mentor program transition, training and engagement

Purpose

This article shares an academic library's transition from traditional reference services to a peer support model during a campus reopening post-COVID-19 closure. It examines the conception, implementation and implications of the Peer Mentor program amidst shifts in campus priorities, Library research and reference paradigms and the Library workforce, from the perspectives of library faculty and staff, alongside feedback from student workers.

Design/methodology/approach

The article uses a case study approach to detail the Library's Peer Mentor Program by authors involved in various stages of the program's lifespan and discusses the beginnings, implementations and challenges of the program and introduces the unique curriculum used to train student Peer Mentors.

Findings

The authors chronicle their own experience after two semesters of the Peer Mentor program alongside qualitative feedback from the first cohort of Peer Mentors. The Peer Mentor feedback points to positive impacts in other academic pursuits and in gaining a greater understanding of the information landscape and the library field.

Originality/value

The case study presented is a valuable example for academic librarians considering beginning peer-to-peer learning models within their own research and reference services units, especially those who may be creating these peer learning networks in the wake of library service disruption or restructure (such as due to the COVID-19 pandemic).

Going beyond ourselves: the role of self-transcendent experiences in wisdom

Having good moral character often involves shifting one's focus of attention from the self to others and the world. Across three studies (N  =  605 adults), we found converging evidence that self-transcendent experiences, specifically awe and flow, enabled the expression of wisdom, as captured by wise reasoning and epistemic humility measures. Study 1 found that dispositionally awe- and flow-prone people have stronger wise reasoning and epistemic humility abilities, over and above dispositional happiness. Consistent with Study 1, Study 2 found that, across diverse recalled experiences, individuals who experienced more awe showed greater wise reasoning, and those who experienced more flow showed greater epistemic humility. In Study 3, using situated interventions, we induced awe (watching a video involving vast nature scenes) and flow (composing a song using an online music maker) and compared them with neutral and amusement experiences. Compared to these control conditions, eliciting awe and flow facilitated one's (1) ability to address interpersonal conflicts with wise reasoning, (2) ability to acknowledge one's epistemic gaps, and (3) willingness to improve those aspects and one's general moral character. Altogether, these findings reveal the promising role of self-transcendent experiences in motivating people to appreciate others' perspectives beyond one's own.