The role of intellectual humility in predicting investigative behavioral tendencies in COVID-19 vaccine news

Abstract

During Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, the spread of fake news on social media occurred massively. To avoid any negative impacts, people are expected to exhibit investigative behavior towards the news they encounter, including conducting fact checks. Previous research has shown that intellectual humility can influence investigative behavior when exposed to fake news about COVID-19. This study aims to examine intellectual humility’s ability to predict investigative behavior when dealing with news about the COVID-19 vaccine. The study involved 227 students (157 female and 70 male, M = 21, SD = 1.19) as respondents who were selected by convenience sampling. The instruments used in revealing the two variables are the General Intellectual Humility Scale, headlines of news articles about the COVID-19 vaccine, and the scale of investigative behavior tendencies towards news about the COVID-19 vaccine. The results showed that intellectual humility could predict investigative behavior towards fake (B = 0.89; 95% CI [0,62, 1,15], p < 0,001) and fact news headlines (B = 0,87; 95% CI [0,60, 1,15], p < 0,001) about the COVID-19 vaccine. This finding implies that higher intellectual humility in individuals is predicted to increase investigative behavior towards news about the COVID-19 vaccine.

Altruism, Intelectual Humility, and Charisma, Are They Related?

“…Besides that, because of their basic nature, individuals who have intellectual humility tend to appreciate new things and are not fanatical about things that are conservative. This statement is supported by research during the last pandemic, where high intellectual humility in individuals was predicted to increase investigative behavior regarding news about the COVID-19 vaccine (Fahmi & Utama, 2022). Apart from that, intellectual humility is also correlated with religious tolerance (Arifianti & Septiana, 2021).…”

Factor associated with anxiety disorder during covid-19 pandemic among college students

“…People obtained reliable and trusted sources related to COVID-19, such as from WHO, CDC, journals, and other healthcare organizations. Social media platforms like Facebook were used to direct users to access information on the World Health Organization (WHO) websites and local health authorities (Fahmi & Utama, 2022;Merchant et al, 2020). According to a study by Olaimat et al (2020), most students obtained information about COVID-19 from the Internet (77.1%).…”