Toward an understanding of collective intellectual humility

Elizabeth J. Krumrei-Mancuso*, Philip Pärnamets, Steven Bland, Mandi Astola, Aleksandra Cichocka, Jeroen de Ridder, Hugo Mercier, Marco Meyer, Cailin O'Connor, Tenelle Porter, Alessandra Tanesini, Mark Alfano, Jay J. Van Bavel

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalReview articlepeer-review

Abstract

The study of intellectual humility (IH), which is gaining increasing interest among cognitive scientists, has been dominated by a focus on individuals. We propose that IH operates at the collective level as the tendency of a collective's members to attend to each other's intellectual limitations and the limitations of their collective cognitive efforts. Given people's propensity to better recognize others’ limitations than their own, IH may be more readily achievable in collectives than individuals. We describe the socio-cognitive dynamics that can interfere with collective IH and offer the solution of building intellectually humbling environments that create a culture of IH that can outlast the given membership of a collective. We conclude with promising research directions.

Original languageEnglish
JournalTrends in Cognitive Sciences
DOIs
Publication statusE-pub ahead of print - 2 Oct 2024

Keywords

  • collective intellectual humility
  • group deliberation
  • intellectual humility
  • intellectual virtue
  • interactionism
  • open science

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