Enhancing Intellectual Humility About Political Topics: An Intervention Tournament Including Five Conceptual Replications

Abstract

Intellectual humility, the recognition of one's intellectual limitations, is promising to make controversial political debates more constructive. However, it is unknown how to best enhance a person's intellectual humility in experiments or interventions. Therefore, we studied how to promote intellectual humility by adapting and conceptually replicating five different approaches suggested in previous work: the explanatory depth approach, growth mindset intervention, a humility information text, listing unknowns and self-distancing. Results of a preregistered online intervention tournament (N₁ = 1503) showed that intellectual humility about political topics was enhanced via providing information about the benefits of intellectual humility in controversial political discussions. Study 2 replicated and extended this finding regarding expressed intellectual humility in written text with a sample quota-stratified for Germany's population regarding age, gender and education (N₂ = 1654). However, the intervention did not lead to higher engagement with diverse viewpoints and effects on general intellectual humility and pre–post differences in self-rated knowledge were inconsistent. We discuss how our studies provide a starting point for effectively increasing intellectual humility in experiments and in interventions.