Developing Individualized Interventions to Heighten Intellectual Humility

Past research has defined, established measures of, and examined correlates of intellectual humility (IH) – recognizing that one's beliefs and opinions might be incorrect. Building on this research, our project aims to discover the antecedents of IH and develop interventions that target these antecedents to heighten people’s IH. Importantly, rather than nudge individuals towards IH, the proposed interventions will provide people with the tools to heighten IH themselves. Based on successful pilot data, we will experimentally identify the facilitators and inhibitors of IH and intervene on these factors to heighten IH. To do so, we will use two well established intervention approaches, a machine learning approach and a self-regulation approach. Though based on different research traditions, these approaches allow us to create individualized IH interventions that respect the strengths and weaknesses of each individual, and further, do not require guidance from a trainer or interventionist. On top of testing the efficacy of our interventions in convenience samples and in a middle-school student sample, we will test whether our interventions have a long-lasting impact on IH, heighten the positive consequences of IH (e.g., open-discourse), and can heighten IH in specific domains – religious belief and political attitudes. The importance of our project is twofold. First, we will extend the basic science underlying IH by conducting a comprehensive examination of the antecedents of IH. Second, based on these findings, we will develop interventions that people can use to autonomously heighten their IH, thereby encouraging open-minded learning and respectful communication in society. To accomplish these goals, we will publish 7 research articles, share our findings at research conferences, disseminate our findings in news articles, and host our interventions open-source on a website-domain we have purchased for this project: www.intellectualhumility.org.