This paper presents five studies on the development and validation of a scale of intellectual humility. This scale captures cognitive, affective, behavioral, and motivational components of the construct that have been identified by various philosophers in their conceptual analyses of intellectual humility. We find that intellectual humility has four core dimensions: Open-mindedness (versus Arrogance), Intellectual Modesty (versus Vanity), Corrigibility (versus Fragility), and Engagement (versus Boredom). These dimensions display adequate self-informant agreement, and adequate convergent, divergent, and discriminant validity. In particular, Open-mindedness adds predictive power beyond the Big Six for an objective behavioral measure of intellectual humility, and Intellectual Modesty is uniquely related to Narcissism. We find that a similar factor structure emerges in Germanophone participants, giving initial evidence for the model’s cross-cultural generalizability.

Overgeneral memory refers to difficulty retrieving specific autobiographical memories and is consistently associated with depression and/or trauma. The present study developed a downward extension of the Autobiographical Memory Test (AMT; Williams & Broadbent, 1986) given the need to document normative developmental changes in ability to retrieve specific memories among preschoolers. Confirmatory factor analysis and item response theory demonstrated that the AMT-Preschool Version maintained the same underlying 1-factor structure as the original. Additionally, the present study determined that child age was associated with increased specificity. Inhibitory control was evaluated as a potential mediator. Although age was related to inhibition, inhibition was unrelated to memory specificity. This finding adds to research suggesting that behavioral inhibition is unrelated to overgeneral memory among youth.

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Individuation is widely considered a fundamental developmental task of adolescence. It is a process through which the adolescent seeks to define new boundaries between his or her self and others, and the failure to do so has been shown to have serious consequences. Given its importance for understanding developmental transitions, it is surprising that there are few assessments of dysfunctional individuation. Over three studies, we provide evidence of a promising new measure of this important construct: the 10-item Dysfunctional Individuation Scale (DIS). Using confirmatory factor analysis and item response theory, we demonstrate that the DIS possesses a strong one-factor structure and excellent psychometric properties. Furthermore, we document the convergent, discriminant, and concurrent validity of the DIS through its relationships with indices of individuation, adjustment, and clinically relevant symptoms. Finally, we examine the incremental validity of the DIS over neuroticism as a predictor of depression (Beck Depression Inventory-II).