Evidence that Attitudinal Self-Justification (not Self-Refutation) Enhances Intellectual Humility

Previous research has shown that the dispositional trait of intellectual humility (IH) predicts increased tolerance to opposing perspectives and beliefs. In the current study, we reasoned that the relationship might also work in the reverse direction, i.e., that critiquing one’s position on a contentious issue might enhance IH. To evaluate this hypothesis, we prompted participants to declare their position on a potentially divisive social issue (specifically, whether to allocate scarce medical resources to nonvaccinated COVID-19 patients) and then randomly assigned them to either contradict their position, justify their position, or engage in an unrelated writing exercise. Contrary to our hypothesis, we found that participants who justified their belief reported higher levels of IH than participants who contradicted it. In light of this unexpected and somewhat counterintuitive result, we argue that the intellectually humble mindset is fortified under conditions of minimal self-threat as opposed to threatening forms of self-examination.