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How Intellectual Humility Can Boost Our Curiosity & Ability to Learn: Read the Findings of a New Study in Psychology | July 4th, 2019

When I think about the times I definitely knew what I was talking about, versus the times I kinda, sorta, might have, maybe did… well…. Let’s just say that wisdom doesn’t always come with age, but hindsight certainly does. We may cringe when we remember the moments we were overconfident, out of our depth, etcetera, and so forth—when we lacked the critical capacity known as intellectual humility. It’s a quality that can save us a lot of shame, for sure, if we’re the type of people capable of feeling that emotion.
But there’s more to knowing what you don’t know than avoiding regret, as important a consideration as that may be. Without intellectual humility, we can’t acquire new knowledge. Still, though we might find “open minded” listed on many an online dating profile, being flexible in one’s thinking and willing to say “I don’t know” are also socially stigmatized, says Pepperdine University professor of psychology Elizabeth J. Krumrei-Mancuso:
When it comes to beliefs, people tend to appreciate others being open-minded, yet they may also view people who are unsure about their beliefs as weak or they may view those who change their viewpoint as unstable or manipulative. These social perceptions might make people afraid to admit the fallibility in their thinking. They may believe they should be confident in their viewpoints, which can lead people to be afraid to change their minds.
Fundamentalist religion and polarized political battle-royales played out in social media stoke the fires of this tendency day in and out, creating a veritable conflagration of willful ignorance. Krumrei-Mancuso and her colleagues set out to investigate the opposite, “accepting one’s intellectual fallibility in an open and level-headed way,” writes Peter Dockrill at Science Alert.

Their findings were somewhat similar to those popularized by the Dunning-Krueger Effect. In one finding, for example, the researchers discovered that “intellectually humble people underestimated their cognitive ability,” perhaps not working up to their full potential. The intellectually overconfident, as we might expect, overestimated their abilities. On the whole, however, the conclusions tend to be quite positive.
In a series of five studies, which surveyed 1,200 individuals, the authors found that the intellectually humble are far more motivated to learn for its own sake, more likely to enjoy challenging cognitive tasks, more willing to consider different perspectives and alternative evidence, and less threatened by awareness of their own limitations.
The Harvard Business Review points out the Pepperdine studies’ importance in defining the fuzzy concept of open-mindedness, with a fourfold measure to assess individuals' intellectual humility:

Having respect for other viewpoints
Not being intellectually overconfident
Separating one’s ego from one’s intellect
Willingness to revise one’s own viewpoint

Becoming intellectually humble can take us into some uncomfortable territory, places where we don’t know what to say or do when people around us seem to be so certain. But it can also give us the push we need to actually learn the things we might have kinda, sorta pretended to understand. Read Pepperdine's study, “Links between intellectual humility and acquiring knowledge” at: The Journal of Positive Psychology.

Stephen Fry: What I Wish I Knew When I Was 18
in Life | October 18th, 2016
From www.openculture.com

Growing up, many of us assume that every adult can, by definition, give us life advice. When we grow up a little more, we realize that, like everything else, it isn’t quite that simple: though older people do, on the whole, seem eager and sometimes even desperate to dole out words of wisdom, whether those words apply in our own cases, or even make sense, falls to us to determine. And so we’d do better not to ask our elders to give us advice, but to give their younger selves advice: what, we might ask, do you wish you’d known before, say at the age of eighteen? Writer, comedian, and all-around man of the page and screen Stephen Fry answers in the clip above.
“The worst thing you can ever do in life is set yourself goals,” Fry says. “Two things happen: one is you don’t meet your goals so you call yourself a failure. Secondly, you meet your goal and go, ‘Well, I’m here, now what? I’m not happy I’ve got this car, this job, I’m living in this address which I always thought was the place I wanted to be.’ Because you’re going for something outside yourself, and that’s no good.” The observation that you can’t derive lasting satisfaction from external circumstances may date back at least to the Stoics, who recommend focusing only on your own actions and reactions, but it bears repeating more often than ever in the external circumstance-rich 21st century.

But that doesn’t mean that you can simply turn inward: “Let’s forget what successful people have in common. If there’s a thing that unsuccessful people have in common, it’s that they talk about themselves all the time. ‘I need to do this, I need’ — their first two words are usually ‘I need.’ That’s why nobody likes them, and that’s why they’ll never get where they want to be.” But “if you use your eyes to look out, not to be looked into, then you connect, then you’re interesting, then people want to be around you. It’s about the warmth and the charm you can radiate that is real because of your positive interest in others.”
I myself have thought about these words of Fry’s often since first watching this interview with him half a decade ago. Clearly these pieces of advice to his eighteen-year-old self have wider applicability, and he has much more to offer besides: Spend a few extra moments and a few extra words connecting with others. Efface yourself. Deliberately pursue experiences different from the ones you “know you like.” Travel and read. Have heroes and mentors, and keep learning from them. Sharing the benefits of life is the benefit of life. Understand the dual pull of being a part of and apart from the “tribe.” Test things out instead of taking them on trust. Never read the comments. Kindness counts more than virtue, justice, truth, or anything else.
And, we might add, make sure to ask the right questions when seeking advice — but make even more sure to ask the right people.