Development and validation of a multi-dimensional measure of intellectual humility

PLoS One. 2017 Aug 16;12(8):e0182950. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0182950. eCollection 2017.

Abstract

This paper presents five studies on the development and validation of a scale of intellectual humility. This scale captures cognitive, affective, behavioral, and motivational components of the construct that have been identified by various philosophers in their conceptual analyses of intellectual humility. We find that intellectual humility has four core dimensions: Open-mindedness (versus Arrogance), Intellectual Modesty (versus Vanity), Corrigibility (versus Fragility), and Engagement (versus Boredom). These dimensions display adequate self-informant agreement, and adequate convergent, divergent, and discriminant validity. In particular, Open-mindedness adds predictive power beyond the Big Six for an objective behavioral measure of intellectual humility, and Intellectual Modesty is uniquely related to Narcissism. We find that a similar factor structure emerges in Germanophone participants, giving initial evidence for the model's cross-cultural generalizability.

MeSH terms

  • Adolescent
  • Adult
  • Aged
  • Female
  • Germany / epidemiology
  • Germany / ethnology
  • Humans
  • Intelligence Tests*
  • Intelligence*
  • Male
  • Middle Aged
  • Reproducibility of Results
  • Self Report
  • United States / epidemiology
  • United States / ethnology
  • Young Adult

Grants and funding

This work was supported by the John D. Templeton Foundation via a grant from the Fuller Theological Seminary. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.