Is Intellectual Humility an Antidote for Our Polarized Nation?

Sgambati, Tyrone J; Ayduk, Özlem

doi:10.1177/08901171221125326d

Cited by 4 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 38 publications

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“…Therefore, intergroup anxiety, although conceptualized as an outcome in our model, when reduced, may itself facilitate greater political heterophily and higher intellectual humility. Another possibility is that political heterophily actually leads to increases in intellectual humility (see Sgambati & Ayduk, 2022 for a theoretical discussion). Although no work to date has directly examined this question, evidence that attitudinally heterogenous networks predict less attitude rigidity is suggestive of this possibility (Visser & Mirabile, 2004).…”

Section: The Mediating Role Of Political Heterophilymentioning

confidence: 99%

Intellectual Humility and Political Polarization: An Exploration of Social Networks, Attitudes, and Affect

Sgambati

Ayduk

2023

Political Psychology

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Political polarization is increasing in the United States, threatening social harmony. As this threat grows, it is important to identify factors that engender polarization and ways to disrupt them. To this end, we examined the buffering role of intellectual humility against political polarization and the potential mediating role of political heterophily (i.e., affiliation and communication with political outgroup members). Data were collected in five assessments over an eight‐month period, beginning one day prior to the 2020 U.S. presidential election (N = 387) and ending in July 2021 (N = 181). Results showed that intellectual humility was associated with (1) less affective and attitudinal polarization (although in some cases this effect was only present among conservatives) and (2) more political heterophily. Cross‐sectional and prospective mediation analyses suggested that intellectual humility may act through political heterophily to reduce attitude polarization. Our findings offer support for the notion that intellectual humility buffers against political polarization and provide preliminary evidence for political heterophily as one mechanism of action.

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Section: The Mediating Role Of Political Heterophilymentioning

confidence: 99%

Intellectual Humility and Political Polarization: An Exploration of Social Networks, Attitudes, and Affect

Sgambati

Ayduk

2023

Political Psychology

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“…Importantly, higher intellectual humility is also linked to greater openness to learning about different political views, lower affective polarization, and higher religious tolerance (Hook et al, 2017;Krumrei-Mancuso & Newman, 2020;Porter & Schumann, 2018). Although intellectual humility has been suggested as an antidote for political polarization (Sgambati & Ayduk, 2022), it remains to be seen whether experimentally manipulating intellectual humility can lead to changes in affective polarization or vice versa.…”

Section: Increasing Intellectual Humilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

The online educational program ‘Perspectives’ improves affective polarization, intellectual humility, and conflict management

Welker,

Duong,

Rakhshani

et al. 2023

J. Soc. Polit. Psych.

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Solving the most pressing problems of our time requires broad collaboration across political party lines. Yet, the United States is experiencing record levels of affective polarization (distrust of the opposing political party). In response to these trends, we developed and tested an asynchronous online educational program rooted in psychological principles called Perspectives. In Study 1, using a large longitudinal dataset (total N = 35,209), we examined Perspectives users’ scores on affective polarization and intellectual humility at pre- and post-intervention. Studies 2 and 3 were longitudinal randomized controlled trials with government finance officers (N = 341) and college students (N = 775), respectively, and examined the effects of Perspectives on affective polarization, intellectual humility, and conflict resolution skills. Across these studies, we found that Perspectives users experienced small to medium-sized decreases in affective polarization and small to medium-sized increases in intellectual humility. In Study 3, we found that Perspectives led to small yet significant improvements in conflict resolution skills. These findings suggest promise for a brief and scalable intervention to improve affective polarization, intellectual humility, and conflict management.

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“…IH predicts information‐seeking behaviours and searching for information from multiple sources (Gorichanaz, 2022). Additionally, IH predicts open‐mindedness towards counter information and spending more time viewing counter information (Porter & Schumann, 2018), as well as greater attempts to understand epistemic opponents (Bowes et al., 2022; Rodriguez et al., 2019; Sgambati & Ayduk, 2022). Moreover, people with higher versus lower IH appear to process information differently; IH predicts a greater ability to discern information as true versus false (Bowes & Tasimi, 2022), better memorization of information (Deffler et al., 2016) and greater deliberation about new information (see Leary, 2022; Porter et al., 2022).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Intellectual humility as a tool to combat false beliefs: An individual‐based approach to belief revision

Gollwitzer,

Bao,

Oettingen

2024

British J Social Psychol

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False beliefs pose significant societal threats, including health risks, political polarization and even violence. In two studies (N = 884) we explored the efficacy of an individual‐based approach to correcting false beliefs. We examined whether the character virtue of intellectual humility (IH)—an appreciation of one's intellectual boundaries—encourages revising one's false beliefs in response to counter‐information. Our research produced encouraging but also mixed findings. Among participants who held false beliefs about the risks of vaccines (Study 1) and the 2020 US Election being rigged (Study 2), those with higher IH explored more information opposing these false beliefs. This exploration of opposing information, in turn, predicted updating away from these inaccurate health and political beliefs. IH did not directly predict updating away from false beliefs, however, suggesting that this effect—if it exists—may not be particularly powerful. Taken together, these results provide moderate support for IH as a character trait that can foster belief revision but, simultaneously, suggest that alternate pathways to combat false beliefs and misinformation may be preferred.

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Is Intellectual Humility an Antidote for Our Polarized Nation?

Cited by 4 publications

References 38 publications

Intellectual Humility and Political Polarization: An Exploration of Social Networks, Attitudes, and Affect

Intellectual Humility and Political Polarization: An Exploration of Social Networks, Attitudes, and Affect

The online educational program ‘Perspectives’ improves affective polarization, intellectual humility, and conflict management

Intellectual humility as a tool to combat false beliefs: An individual‐based approach to belief revision

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