Everyone is biased, except me.
Ballantyne (2023) provides a synthesis of recent work on intellectual humility, including why it matters
“What a stupid policy.” Back in my younger days, in my previous career as a college administrator, I was walking down the hallway with my (much wiser) supervisor, complaining about a rule we had to follow, why it made no sense, etc. I’ll never forget what she did next: she stopped, turned me gently toward her, and said, “You know, Jeff, the people who made that policy were likely thoughtful professionals trying to do their best. So maybe before we dismiss it as stupid, we should look into it more to see if we’re missing something.” Her words have really stuck with me. Back then, I lacked sufficient intellectual humility. Sometimes, I still do.
Nathan Ballantyne (2023) has written a great overview of current psychological and philosophical thinking about intellectual humility. He admits the definitions of intellectual humility are all over the place. But I really like his, which focuses on the down-regulation of self-oriented motives (e.g., egoic or egoistic impulses) during information processing in factor of better attuning to the evidence. Basically, intellectual humility involves paying less attention to our need to be “right” or “smart” and paying more attention to “getting it right.”
People are enacting intellectual humility when they remain open to new ideas or evidence, when they recognize the limits of their knowledge, and when they prevent themselves from thinking they are “smarter” than everyone else. I can think of some prominent politicians and TV personalities (or prominent politician TV personalities) who could use a healthy dose of intellectual humility. And when we disagree, we would all be better off if we were able to be a bit more humble and open to what the other people think.
The whole paper is worth reading, but I was particularly intrigued by Ballantyne’s connections between intellectual humility and metacognition. Intellectual humility seems to depend upon accurately (1) determining what we do and don’t know, (2) weighing the strength of the evidence for our convictions, (3) evaluating new evidence well, and (4) recognizing and controlling our biases. I suspect there are motivation and volition aspects to intellectual humility, also. I may be more motivated to be humble with certain people, or on certain topics, or in certain contexts. And my willingness to remain humble may erode the longer we disagree. I’d be interested in seeing some work on those factors, also. Humbly, I think they are pretty good ideas.