The Importance of Intellectual Humility for Fostering Effective Communication Between Scientists and the Public

Abstract

Self-relevant research (i.e., “me-search”) often elicits mixed reactions among both academics and laypeople. However, little is known about how social scientists perceive entire identity-related subfields (e.g., psychology of gender, sociology of religion). Building upon preliminary findings that social/personality psychologists view religion and gender research as less rigorous than subfields not closely tied to identities, we tested whether these perceptions of lower rigor are (a) predicted by beliefs that researchers in identity-related subfields primarily belong to the group(s) they study and thus have an “agenda,” and (b) weaker among academics high in intellectual humility (i.e., openness to admitting one’s views may be wrong). In our survey-experiment, 600 psychology, anthropology, and sociology faculty from US colleges/universities answered questions about their perceptions of research on religion, gender, and health/medicine within their home discipline. Faculty across disciplines viewed religion research as least intellectually/scientifically rigorous, followed by gender research, then health/medicine research. Furthermore, faculty viewed religion and gender researchers as mostly religious and mostly female, respectively, and as less objective than health/medicine researchers. Perceptions of lower objectivity in turn predicted lower perceived rigor. Encouragingly, though, intellectual humility mitigated tendencies to stereotype religion and gender research as less objective and rigorous than health/medicine research.