Intellectual humility, the admission that one’s beliefs may be fallible, robustly curbed affective polarization, the resentment over one's political opponents being jerks

Bowes, Shauna, Madeline C. Blanchard, Thomas H. Costello, Alan I. Abramowitz, and scott lilienfeld. 2020. “Intellectual Humility and Between-party Animus: Implications for Affective Polarization in Two Community Samples.” PsyArXiv. March 5. doi:10.31234/osf.io/qn25s

Abstract: The extent to which individual differences in personality traits and cognitive styles diminish affective polarization (AP) is largely unknown. We address this gap by examining how one poorly understood but recently researched individual difference variable, namely, intellectual humility (IH), may buffer against AP. We examined the associations between domain-general and domain-specific measures of IH, on the one hand, and AP, on the other, in two community samples. Measures of IH were robustly negatively associated with AP and political polarization. Moreover, IH significantly incremented measures of allied constructs, including general humility, in the statistical prediction of AP. There was little evidence to suggest that IH buffers the relationships between strong political belief and AP. Future research is needed to clarify whether and if IH is sufficient to protect against AP in the presence of ideological extremity.

Measures of intellectual humility were robustly negatively associated with affective & political polarization