one important critical thinking disposition is intellectual humility

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Supplement to Critical Thinking

Internal critical thinking dispositions.

Researchers have identified a dauntingly long list of internal critical thinking dispositions. However, the task of designing a curriculum that will foster them all is simpler than it seems. For by definition internal critical thinking dispositions are fostered by getting students into the habit of inquiry and facilitating improvement in how they do it. The obvious key to such improvement is guided and scaffolded internally motivated practice of inquiry, with feedback.

The following traits have been identified as critical thinking dispositions in the publications cited:

• wholehearted interest in the subject (Dewey 1933)
• intellectual responsibility (Dewey 1933; Siegel 1988; Paul & Elder 2006)
• concern to become and remain generally well-informed (Facione 1990a; Ennis 1991)
• flexibility in considering alternatives and options (Facione 1990a; Ennis 1991)
• fair-mindedness (Siegel 1988; Facione 1990a; Bailin et al. 1999b; Paul & Elder 2006)
• honesty in facing one’s own biases, prejudices, stereotypes. and egocentric or sociocentric tendencies (Siegel 1988; Facione 1990a; Ennis 1991)
• understanding of the opinions of other people (Facione 1990a; Paul & Elder 2006)
• prudence in suspending, making or altering judgments (Facione 1990a; Ennis 1991; Facione, Facione, & Giancarlo 2001)
• willingness to reconsider and revise views where honest reflection suggests that change is warranted (Siegel 1988; Facione, Facione, & Giancarlo 2001; Ennis 1991)
• clarity in speaking; writing or otherwise communicating (Facione, Facione, & Giancarlo 2001; Ennis 1991)
• orderliness in working with complexity (Facione 1990a; Facione, Facione, & Giancarlo 2001)
• intellectual perseverance (Facione 1990a; Halpern 1998; Paul & Elder 2006)
• reasonableness in selecting and applying criteria (Facione 1990a)
• focusing attention on the concern at hand (Facione 1990a; Ennis 1991)
• seeking as much precision as the situation requires (Facione 1990a; Ennis 1991)
• taking into account the total situation (Ennis 1991)
• seeking and offering reasons (Siegel 1988; Ennis 1991)
• suppression of impulsive activity (Halpern 1998)
• willingness to abandon non-productive strategies in an attempt to self-correct (Halpern 1998)
• awareness of the social realities that need to be overcome so that thought can become actions (Halpern 1998)
• respect for high-quality products and performances (Bailin et al. 1999b)
• independent-mindedness (Siegel 1988; Bailin et al. 1999b; Paul & Elder 2006)
• intellectual humility (Siegel 1988; Paul & Elder 2006)
• respect for others in group inquiry and deliberation (Bailin et al. 1999b)
• respect for legitimate intellectual authority (Bailin et al. 1999b)
• an intellectual work-ethic (Bailin et al. 1999b)
• anticipating possible consequences (Facione, Facione, & Giancarlo 2001)
• mature and nuanced judgment (Facione, Facione, & Giancarlo 2001)

Copyright © 2022 by David Hitchcock < hitchckd @ mcmaster . ca >

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Library of Congress Catalog Data: ISSN 1095-5054

Intelligence

What do intellectually humble people do, is there a difference between self and peer ratings for intellectual humility.

Posted November 1, 2020 | Reviewed by Ekua Hagan

Intellectual humility has long been theorized to be an intellectual virtue, meaning that it reflects qualities necessary for critical thinking and forming accurate belief systems. In essence, intellectual humility may lie between the vice of intellectual arrogance (e.g., believing that one is always correct and remaining inflexible even when presented with compelling evidence) and the vice of intellectual servility (e.g., changing one’s mind in the face of any and all evidence and focusing entirely on one’s intellectual limitations). Intellectual humility, thus, comprises an appropriate attentiveness to the flaws in one’s web of beliefs in conjunction with a tendency to be relatively unconcerned with one’s status in the eyes of others.

Researchers and laypeople alike hypothesize that intellectual humility not only comprises these virtuous metacognitive features (e.g., thinking about how we think) but interpersonal features (e.g., relational, social) as well. Samuelson and colleagues (2015), for instance, found evidence to suggest that lay ratings (e.g., community members rather than academics provide ratings) of intellectual humility include separable social (e.g., fair, kind) and metacognitive (e.g., inquisitive, curious) features. Studies suggest that self-reported intellectual humility is related to both metacognitive constructs, such as intelligence and an enhanced ability to parse strong from weak evidence, and social constructs, such as an enhanced tendency to forgive others following disagreement and tolerance for opposing views.

Despite these advances in defining intellectual humility, Meagher and colleagues (2020) point out a still unresolved, and pragmatically important, question: How do people make judgments of intellectual humility? Put differently, what information do people use to form impressions of another person’s intellectual humility?

Consistent with these questions, it is unclear whether and to what extent self-reported intellectual humility corresponds with peer-reported intellectual humility. Does the self (“I”) use the same information to make intellectual humility judgments as others (“my friend”)? Meagher and colleagues (2020) sought to address these questions in two studies now published in The Journal of Positive Psychology .

In the first study, Study 1, the authors recruited a sample of more than 100 undergraduate pre-nursing students enrolled in psychology courses. In these courses, the students were randomly assigned to groups at the beginning of the semester to complete team-based learning activities. At the end of the academic semester, participants in the groups provided ratings for (a) themselves and (b) other group members on a variety of personality questionnaires, including intellectual humility. Perhaps surprisingly, self- and peer-ratings of intellectual humility were not significantly related.

Moreover, some interesting patterns emerged across sources of ratings. Individuals who rated themselves as high on intellectual humility tended to rate themselves as high on honesty and openness and low on arrogance. Perceptions of individuals scoring high on intellectual humility corresponded with perceptions of individuals scoring high on trait agreeableness and low on dominance. These results suggest that those who perceive themselves as intellectually humble may focus more on metacognitive features, such as openness, than peers in making their judgments. In contrast, peers may focus on social features, such as agreeableness, when making intellectual humility judgments.

To further investigate their research questions, Meagher and colleagues (2020) conducted another study in which they recruited more than 150 community members to engage in conversations about contentious political issues (Study 2). This study afforded the opportunity to conduct a “risky test” — if intellectual humility is not exhibited in a contentious conversation, what does this mean about our definitions of intellectual humility? We should expect intellectual humility to “shine” in situations such as these. Hence, risky tests allow researchers to examine “where the rubber meets the road” for a certain theory. As esteemed clinical psychologist Paul Meehl (1978) wrote, “a theory is corroborated to the extent that we have subjected it to such risky tests; the more dangerous tests it has survived, the better corroborated it is” (p. 817)

In Study 2, participants were assigned to groups based on ratings provided for certain political issues — those who disagree were put in the same group. Following the interaction and conversation about the assigned political topic, participants rated (a) themselves and (b) other group members on personality questionnaires, including intellectual humility. In addition, researchers coded for behaviors in the interaction, such as the number of interjections one made, the valence of these interjections (e.g., positive, negative), and the number of inquiries one made.

Similar to Study 1, they found evidence for a fascinating discrepancy between self- and peer-reported intellectual humility. Those who rated themselves as highly intellectually humble also perceived themselves as participating more in the conversation, meaning they spoke more, inquired more, and generated more arguments. In contrast, those who were perceived as intellectually humble by others in the group were also perceived as making fewer arguments and negative interjections (e.g., interrupting to voice disagreement).

Collectively, their results suggest that peers may conflate intellectual humility with conciliation or diffidence. Those who agree with others and are supportive in a discussion are perceived as intellectually humble. Although intellectually humble individuals may in fact agree with others when provided with compelling evidence to do so and offer support in so far as they are respectful, peer-ratings differed from self-ratings. Those who perceive themselves as intellectually humble also perceive themselves as engaging more actively in discussions, even when not in agreement with others.

How, if at all, do we put these pieces together? Perhaps we do not need to try and reconcile these discrepancies. It is possible that each rating source, namely self and peer, samples different slices from the same pie: the self samples from the metacognitive piece and the peer samples from the social piece. Both are essential for productive conversation and respectful dialogue.

And this one study, while informative, does not resolve these lingering questions. Future work is needed to continue exploring this discrepancy between self- and peer-ratings of intellectual humility. In exploring this discrepancy, research should consider whether and to what extent this discrepancy bears implications for (a) definitions of intellectual humility and (b) positive interpersonal interactions across settings (e.g., religion, the workplace).

Hook, J. N., Davis, D. E., Van Tongeren, D. R., Hill, P. C., Worthington Jr, E. L., Farrell, J. E., & Dieke, P. (2015). Intellectual humility and forgiveness of religious leaders. The Journal of Positive Psychology , 10 , 499-506.

Hook, J. N., Farrell, J. E., Johnson, K. A., Van Tongeren, D. R., Davis, D. E., & Aten, J. D. (2017). Intellectual humility and religious tolerance. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 12 , 29-35.

Leary, M. R., Diebels, K. J., Davisson, E. K., Jongman-Sereno, K. P., Isherwood, J. C., Raimi, K. T., ... & Hoyle, R. H. (2017). Cognitive and interpersonal features of intellectual humility. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 43 , 793-813.

Meagher, B. R., Leman, J. C., Heidenga, C. A., Ringquist, M. R., & Rowatt, W. C. (2020). Intellectual humility in conversation: Distinct behavioral indicators of self and peer ratings. The Journal of Positive Psychology , 1-13.

Meehl, P. E. (1978). Theoretical risks and tabular asterisks: Sir Karl, Sir Ronald, and the slow progress of soft psychology. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 46 , 806-834.

Samuelson, P. L., Jarvinen, M. J., Paulus, T. B., Church, I. M., Hardy, S. A., & Barrett, J. L. (2015). Implicit theories of intellectual virtues and vices: A focus on intellectual humility. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 10 , 1–18.

Zmigrod, L., Zmigrod, S., Rentfrow, P. J., & Robbins, T. W. (2019). The psychological roots of intellectual humility: The role of intelligence and cognitive flexibility. Personality and Individual Differences, 141 , 200-208.

Shauna Bowes is a fourth-year doctoral student in the clinical psychology program at Emory University in Atlanta.

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13: Conclusion - Intellectual Honesty, Intellectual Humility, and Charity

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A lot from this conclusion has been copied into the chapter on Intellectual Virtues and Vices. I decided to keep it here in the conclusion as a means of emphasizing the centrality of these ideas to thinking well: thinking well is thinking virtuously. So here it is, some of it repeated, for emphasis:

This textbook and the courses associated with it are aimed at a number of different things. I and your instructors want to teach some basic skills in recognizing arguments, different types of arguments or inferences, different problems in reasoning, and so on. We want you to walk away from the course with some knowledge about arguments, argumentation and reason and with some skills in putting that knowledge to use.

More than that, though, I want to instill in my students a set of habits and dispositions—particularly intellectual habits or habits of mind. The three that come to my mind first are intellectual honesty, intellectual humility, and charity.

Intellectual honesty is the disposition to be truthful and sober in your assessment of your own knowledge. It’s easy to claim that we know things and even to have confidence in what we know, but often we find that on reflection we shouldn’t have as much confidence as we do. Confidence is cheap. What is of higher worth is the ability and disposition to recognize the things we don’t know or shouldn’t be confident in and the things that we do know and do have reason to be confident in. Much of what we think we know we think we know really because we read a headline while scrolling through Facebook or Twitter or someone told us once sort of off-handedly. These, when we think about it, aren’t very good sources of knowledge. They aren’t really grounds or justifications for our beliefs—or at any rate aren’t very good justifications for our beliefs. Intellectual honesty is the disposition to take a beat, think about why it is that we feel confident in a belief and feel ready to assert it, and then proceed with a more honest assessment of what we know and why we think we know it.

Intellectual humility goes hand in hand with intellectual honesty. What is means to be intellectually humble, though, is slightly different from being honest. Intellectual humility is a disposition to recognize that even when we have good grounds for knowing something, there might always be something that upsets that understanding or set of beliefs. To be intellectually humble is to remember that human beings have been very confident many times in the past and often for very good reason, but have turned out to be wrong due to some false assumption somewhere in their thinking. It’s the disposition to say “even if I have really good reason to believe what I believe, I still might be wrong.”

Both of these are dispositions worth cultivating. But there is one more worth coming back to: what is Charity? To be charitable is to attribute the best intentions and strongest justifications to someone else. To interpret a set of actions charitably is to try to see those actions in terms of the most reasonable set of motivations or intentions behind them. To interpret someone’s beliefs charitably is to attribute moral innocence to them as a person as far as is possible so as to give them the strongest possible benefit of the doubt. Only when you have really good reasons for doing so might you think of someone else as irrational, vicious (in the sense meaning the opposite of virtuous), or petty. Charity, then, is a habit of interpreting actions and beliefs in a good light— a rational and moral light.

All of these dispositions have their appropriate limits, of course: many beliefs and actions are just wrongheaded or irrational or bigoted and we needn’t bend ourselves in pretzel knots trying to interpret them charitably. Many of our own beliefs are things we have really good reason for believing, so we don’t need to be so humble that we refuse to believe anything. Some of us, furthermore, are really in a better position to know things and to reason about them. A false sense of humility stops being honest at a certain point.