Intellectual Humility and Perceptions of Political Opponents

Seli, Paul, Ph.D. 2019. “Intellectual Humility and Perceptions of Political Opponents.” PsyArXiv. October 22. psyarxiv.com/h8fy9

Abstract: The epistemic virtue of intellectual humility (IH) refers to the recognition that personal beliefs might be wrong. In four initial studies, we examined the role of IH in predicting how people perceive their sociopolitical opponents, and the role of IH in people’s willingness to befriend their sociopolitical opponents. We found that people lower in IH are more likely to derogate and less likely to befriend their opponents. In two additional studies, we experimentally explored a possible method with which to make people less likely to derogate opponents and more willing to befriend them. After informing participants about the results of our existing studies showing that people who hold opposing positions do not differ in IH, participants were less likely to derogate opponents and somewhat more willing to befriend them. We discuss the implications of these results for sincere, open discussion, and for reducing social extremism and polarization.

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General Discussion
In Studies 1a and 1b, we investigated a possible way in which people who are low in IH might be overconfident in their beliefs and particularly unwilling to seriously engage with opponents’ views. For five of the six sociopolitical issues examined, we found that participants lower in IH tended to derogate the intellectual capabilities and moral character of sociopolitical opponents more than participants higher in IH. By believing that opponents are unintelligent and unethical, it may become easier to dismiss others’ views and to believe in the superiority of one’s own views. Studies 2a and 2b examined whether participants lower in IH are less willing to befriend people with opposing views. For both highly-contentious, polarized issues, and less-contentious, polarized issues, those lower in IH were indeed less willing than those higher in IH to befriend people who hold opposing positions. Then, in Studies 3a and 3b, we introduced an experimental manipulation to explore a possible way to render participants less likely to derogate opponents and more willing to befriend opponents. We informed participants that there are actually no differences in IH between people who hold opposing positions on the issues, and we tested whether this information influenced their perceptions of their opponents. For both issues examined, informing participants that opponents do not actually differ on IH made participants derogate opponents less. Moreover, for the standardized testing issue, but not for the concealed carry issue, informing participants that those who hold opposing positions do not differ on IH made them more willing to befriend those with opposing views. The results from these two final studies provide experimental evidence for a simple and effective means of reducing the tendency for people to derogate others who hold different sociopolitical views.
There has been a recent surge of research on IH, much of which has been devoted to IH scale development and validation (e.g., Haggard et al., 2018; Krumrei-Mancuso & Rouse, 2016; Leary et al., 2017). By most psychological accounts, IH is fundamentally a cognitive intrapersonal construct reflecting people’s private assessments of their beliefs and attitudes (Leary et al., 2017). There are, however, important interpersonal consequences of differences in IH. Other research has found that those higher in IH tend to be more forgiving (Lavelock et al., 2014), generous (Exline & Hill, 2012), and empathic (Krumrei-Mancuso & Rouse, 2016). Our research expands upon these findings by identifying an interpersonal consequence of differences in IH, namely that those low in IH tend to both derogate sociopolitical opponents and express an unwillingness to befriend people with opposing sociopolitical views.
Our finding that IH predicts the degree to which people derogate sociopolitical opponents and express an unwillingness to befriend them may have significant implications for social extremism and political polarization. Derogating opponents and being unwilling to befriend them might create cliques of people, with the same views, who collectively seek out and share information that reinforces their shared views (i.e., “echo chambers”). With contemporary social media, there is no shortage of opportunities for people to create and find their desired echo chambers. In fact, echo chambers comprised of people discussing sociopolitical issues and events have been identified on Twitter (Barberá, et al., 2015; Williams, McMurray, Kurz, & Lambert, 2015), Facebook (Del Vicario, et al., 2016), and various blogs (Suhay, Blackwell, Roche, & Bruggeman, 2015). Critically, the results of our final two studies suggest that informing people about actual psychological research on IH has the potential to make them less likely to derogate opponents and more willing to befriend them. This kind of simple intervention might help to minimize social extremism and political polarization—especially for low-IH individuals.
Disagreements over sociopolitical issues can be useful and fruitful. Such disagreements offer the potential for understanding the perspectives of others, generating creative solutions to significant problems, and growing intellectually. However, the extent to which disagreements are useful depends on the willingness of opposing sides to try to understand opposing positions (de Wied, Branje, & Meeus, 2007; Stone, Patton, & Heen, 2010). Promoting IH as an epistemic virtue worth cultivating and informing the public about research on IH has the potential to reduce social extremism, polarization, and the frequency of unresolvable disagreements over time.