Knowing what you know: Intellectual humility and judgments of recognition memory

Abstract

This study examined the relationship between recognition memory and intellectual humility, the degree to which people recognize that their personal beliefs are fallible. Participants completed the General Intellectual Humility Scale, an incidental old/new recognition task, and a task that assessed the tendency to over-claim one's knowledge. Signal detection analyses showed that higher intellectual humility was associated with higher discriminability between old and new items, regardless of whether the items were congruent or incongruent with participants' own beliefs. However, intellectual humility was not related to response bias, indicating that intellectually arrogant people were not biased to claim that they knew everything. Together, the findings support a relationship between intellectual humility and performance on memory tasks, indicating that individual differences in intellectual humility may partly reflect how people process information and judge what they do and do not know.

Links between intellectual humility and acquiring knowledge

“…Previous research offers support for links between IH and indicators of learning. For example, IH has been linked to more general knowledge of people, places, and events, and better recognition memory (Alfano et al, 2017;Deffler, Leary, & Hoyle, 2016). This is consistent with the public perception that intellectually humble individuals are knowledgeable and smart (Samuelson et al, 2015).…”

“…In addition, there is experimental evidence that greater self-perceived knowledge independent of actual knowledge, a potential sign of intellectual arrogance, is associated with overclaiming of knowledge (Atir, Rosenzweig, & Dunning, 2015). Similarly, Deffler et al (2016) found that those low in IH were more confident in their incorrect answers on a recognition memory task than those higher in IH. Thus, it seems that IH may make individuals more accurate at judging what they do not know.…”

“…Similarly, college students' overconfidence in the correctness of chosen responses on a multiple-choice test, which might be a sign of intellectual arrogance, has been associated with lower grades on the test (Zakay & Glicksohn, 1992). Deffler et al (2016) suggested the link between IH and knowledge acquisition might be due to differential attentional processing when exposed to new information. Intellectually humble individuals may gain more knowledge because they pay more attention to new information.…”

“…A number of previous studies have suggested IH may relate to how people judge what they do and do not know. Two studies have examined whether IH predicts less overclaiming of knowledge (i.e., claiming to have knowledge one doesn't have), one confirming this hypothesis (Alfano et al, 2017) and one finding no relationship (Deffler et al, 2016). In addition, there is experimental evidence that greater self-perceived knowledge independent of actual knowledge, a potential sign of intellectual arrogance, is associated with overclaiming of knowledge (Atir, Rosenzweig, & Dunning, 2015).…”

Ian M. Church & Peter L. Samuelson, Intellectual Humility: An Introduction to the Philosophy and Science, London/Oxford/New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2017, 368 pp., £65 (Hardback), ISBN 9781474236744.

“…Understanding epistemic goods as character traits or virtues has proved fruitful (Brady and Pritchard , Aikin and Clanton , Battaly , Kidd ). And virtue epistemology offers a place for productive collaboration between philosophers and psychologists (Samuelson et al , Deffler et al , Johnson ).…”