Intellectual Humility: How Recognizing the Fallibility of Our Beliefs and Owning Our Limits May Create a Better Relationship Between the Physical Therapy Profession and Disability

Abstract

Despite the many advancements over the history of the profession, physical therapy remains in a somewhat paradoxical relationship with disability. The physical therapy profession values disability as diversity but continues to focus on the normalization of body functions as the primary means to promote functionality in people with disability. This focus, consistent with a medicalized view of disability, may prevent physical therapists from empowering individuals with disability to explore alternative, yet effective, perceptual-motor strategies to achieve their functional goals. Additionally, recent research documents implicit, negative biases of physical therapists and physical therapist assistants towards people with disability, again consistent with the medicalized view that disability is the product of an imperfectly functioning body. Dominant underlying beliefs in any profession are often difficult to counter because they are so pervasive, and those beliefs can be reinforced and made stronger when challenged. The purpose of this Perspective article is to introduce physical therapists to a rising construct in psychology—intellectual humility—that may help to facilitate the profession’s relationship with disability. Intellectual humility is predicated on recognizing the fallibility of one’s beliefs and related practices. Intellectual humility is a promising construct for physical therapy to address the disability paradox and confront implicit attitudes that have served as the basis for many dominant ideas about disability. This Perspective synthesizes views and evidence from the behavioral and social sciences, philosophy, and critical disability studies to contribute to the ongoing evolution of the profession with respect to disability. Impact The development of enhanced intellectual humility in physical therapy may help to challenge long-held beliefs among physical therapists about disability—many of which are unnoticed, unquestioned, and difficult to counter.