An Intellectually Humbling Experience: Changes in Interpersonal Perception and Cultural Reasoning across a Five-Week Course

Abstract

Finding ways to foster intellectual humility (IH)—the willingness to own one’s limitations—is an important goal for facilitating effective learning. We report the results of a longitudinal, quasi-experimental study, conducted across six undergraduate, culturally diverse (58% racial/ethnic minority) introductory philosophy courses, that evaluates how social perceptions and cross-cultural reasoning change following a course on epistemology and social ethics. Critically, we manipulated whether each class received a standardized lesson in IH at the start of the course or not. Participants provided self-ratings of IH, gave round-robin judgments of their classmates, and completed a wise-reasoning writing exercise focusing on a cultural conflict at both the beginning and end of the summer course session. Results revealed no change in self-reported IH, but an increase in perceived peer IH and conscientiousness within classes where IH was taught. Moreover, an analysis of the participants’ writing suggested greater levels of compromise-seeking when dealing with a cultural conflict among the students taught about IH, relative to those in the control classes. This study provides initial insights regarding the relationship between IH and cultural humility, as well as the efficacy of facilitating the development of IH among undergraduate students.

Keywords

positive psychology virtues

One of the key challenges of learning new information is that it requires the active pursuit of knowledge about which one is initially ignorant (i.e., information that is, in fact, new). This need to seek knowledge from a position of ignorance poses an ancient paradox, discussed as early as Plato: “A man cannot inquire either about what he knows, or about which he does not know; for if he already knows, there is no need for inquiry, and if he does not know, he does not know the very subject about which he is to inquire” (Weimer, 1973, p. 16). Teachers play a critical role in education by providing students with experiences designed to facilitate the acquisition of new information, but for this process to be successful, learning necessitates that students first acknowledge (and subsequently pursue) that which they do not already know.

Thus, learning requires intellectual humility (IH), the ability to own one’s limitations and be appropriately attentive to these limitations (Haggard et al., 2018; McElroy et al., 2014; Whitcomb, Battaly, Baehr, & Howard-Snyder, 2017). By being aware of one’s intellectual limits, such a disposition allows an individual to recognize when they are in a situation for which they lack knowledge, while also being able to accept this as reality, rather than deny, ignore, or exaggerate their ignorance. It is in this way that IH is essential for successful education. As a burgeoning area of inquiry, several recent studies have provided evidence that individual differences in IH predict behaviors associated with learning. For example, Leary et al. (2017) found that IH is associated with greater curiosity and sensitivity to the strength of an argument. Individuals high in IH have also been found to be more likely to actively seek out new information from opposing points of view (Porter & Schumann, 2018). Following interpersonal dialogue, they are also more likely to be influenced by hearing an alternative (Rodriguez et al., 2019). In light of these empirical findings, designing and evaluating ways to facilitate the development of IH in educational contexts represents a critical goal for teachers. In fact, DeWall (2017) has recently argued that fostering IH is particularly important for present-day American college students, who have been found to be disproportionately higher on narcissistic traits than previous generations (Twenge & Foster, 2010; Twenge, Konrath, Foster, Campbell, & Bushman, 2008).

Moreover, growing rates of diversity within the US population (and within college classrooms) will require greater sensitivity to alternative points of view. Cultural humility is one domain or expression of humility highly relevant to this issue. Cultural humility is regarded as one’s ability to engage culturally diverse others in ways that are open and other-oriented, marked by a lack of superiority of one’s own cultural worldview or values, and with a self-awareness regarding the limitations of their own cultural beliefs (Hook, Davis, Owen, Worthington Jr., & Utsey, 2013). Cultural humility looms large for understanding the psychology of religion in particular. Religious and spiritual beliefs, as core features of one’s worldview, are often defended vigorously and viciously. However, humility—or more specifically, a nuanced form of cultural humility—may be one way in which people help regulate the expression of their beliefs in ways that are open to learning and capable of fostering communication and cooperation with ideologically diverse others.

Although a significant amount of research explores the role of cultural humility in therapeutic settings (Hook, Watkins, et al., 2016)—such as the association between a therapist’s cultural humility and racial microaggressions (Davis et al., 2016; Hook, Farrell, et al., 2016)—little work exists that examines the relationship between IH and cultural humility. This study seeks to address that gap by testing the hypothesis that cultivating IH—a broader construct tied to acknowledging the limitations of one’s general knowledge—will prompt greater cultural humility in how students reasons about cross-cultural issues and conflict.

The Present Study

Although all individuals must occasionally interact with others with whom they disagree, it is in educational settings where these experiences are perhaps most strikingly relevant. After all, curricula are typically designed for the purpose of exposing students to new and alternative points of view. In fact, greater open-mindedness to others’ ideas has been identified as one of the main needs in contemporary education (Barak & Levenberg, 2016). Even so, although previous research has demonstrated the effectiveness of positive psychology interventions aimed at enhancing traits like general humility, tolerance, and open-mindedness (e.g., Bezrukova, Spell, Perry, & Jehn, 2016; Lavelock et al., 2014, 2017; Zhou et al., 2016), the outcomes associated with incorporating such an intervention into the broader structure of a college course have not been previously evaluated. The goal of the present study was to assess the extent to which explicitly teaching undergraduate students about concepts related to IH within a class curriculum can produce a change in how they think and communicate, particularly in terms of their ability to engage with cross-cultural issues. In this quasi-experimental study, students in five-week introductory philosophy courses were taught about cognitive biases that hinder IH (e.g., confirmation bias) during their first week of class. We collected a set of measures from these students at the start of the summer session and at the end of their course, which allowed us to address three key questions related to how these students changed relative to a control group.

First, do students show an increase in self-reported IH from baseline? A primary goal of this study was to assess whether IH can be developed. One critical indicator would be the extent to which students actually report greater IH over the course of their class. Although there are a number of challenges associated with assessing IH via self-report measures (Davis, Worthington, & Hook, 2010; Meagher, Leman, Bias, Latendresse, & Rowatt, 2015), the recent development of IH scales across multiple labs (Haggard et al., 2018; Krumrei-Mancuso & Rouse, 2016; McElroy et al., 2014; Leary et al., 2017) has provided evidence of predictive validity. However, their use as dependent variables has been minimal, so the extent to which self-reported IH can be influenced by contextual factors, such as course content, has yet to be extensively tested.

Second, do students’ impressions of their classroom peers change over the length of the course? Davis et al. (2011, 2010) have argued for a personality-judgment approach to assessing humility that includes the triangulation of self-reports, other-reports, and observation of trait-relevant behavior as the best way to assess humility. In studies predicting criterion behavior, often other-reports of evaluative traits have the strongest predictive validity (for a review, see Vazire, 2010). Such a relational measure is particularly informative in the present study, where learning is being done amongst peers in a classroom context. Measuring participants’ impressions of their fellow students allows us to assess whether participants believed that the social climate of their class was affected by their lessons. A classroom environment where one believes that the other students are intellectually humble should be one that facilitates more open dialogue and less apprehension about negative social evaluation for voicing one’s own point of view.

Third, do students show observable changes in humility-related behavior, as indicated by third-party ratings of writing about another culture? One of the key goals of a philosophy course is to train students to think and communicate about issues in a more reflective, critical way. Recently, there has been a growing empirical literature investigating the ways in which wise and unwise forms of reasoning can be differentiated (Grossmann, 2017; Grossmann et al., 2010; Grossmann, Gerlach, & Denissen, 2016). For example, Grossmann (2017) has characterized wise thinking as consisting of a set of cognitive attributes, including a willingness to recognize the limits of one’s own knowledge and a preference for integration and compromise. In the present study, students were asked to write in response to an intergroup conflict occurring in another culture, providing their analysis of what they expected to happen. These essay responses were coded to assess changes in how students communicate about another culture’s contentious social issues. Thus, we test here whether students’ writing about cross-cultural conflict will demonstrate an increase in acknowledging their own uncertainty and seeking out compromise following our classroom IH lesson, thereby demonstrating greater humility in how they reason about other cultures.

Method

Participants

All participants were undergraduate students enrolled in a five-week, summer introductory philosophy course in Connecticut. Six classes were involved, with sizes ranging from 12 to 28 students. Of the 113 students enrolled who initially agreed to participate, 102 students (54 women, 47 men, and 1 other) completed the questionnaire at both Time 1 and 2.¹ Ages ranged from 17 to 34 years old (M = 19.34; SD = 2.50), and 56% were freshmen, 11% were sophomores, 16% were juniors, and 17% were seniors. The sample was 42% Caucasian, 23% Asian/Pacific Islander, 15% Hispanic, 14% Black/African American, and 6% other race or ethnicity.

Design of the Course

The introductory philosophy courses consisted of five weeks of applied moral thinking, with a theme of expanding circles of ethical consideration: What do we owe to each other? To society? To non-humans? To the future? Topics included debates on charity, affirmative action, responsibility for climate change, animal experimentation, parental licensing, and reproductive genetic engineering. The first week of the course involved learning a set of key moral concepts that would serve as a basis for reflecting on applied topics over the course. For example, students learned the difference between an action being “morally obligatory” (e.g., not committing murder) and “morally permissible” (e.g., giving your friends cakes). Classes then alternated between an hour of lecture and interactive discussion, and an hour of group-based workshop activities mediated by the professor. Workshops consisted of small groups reading an ethical dilemma related to the topic of the lecture. Students were encouraged to use the key moral concepts to guide their reflection and deliberation of issues. A full outline of the course content is available in our supplemental materials.

Critically, in only four of the six participating classes was an introduction to IH included among the key moral concepts. IH was defined for them as “the owning of one’s cognitive limitations, a healthy recognition of one’s intellectual debts to others, and low concern for intellectual domination and certain kinds of social status. It is closely allied with traits such as open-mindedness, a sense of one’s fallibility, and being responsive to reasons” (Humanities Institute, 2017). In IH classes, professors frequently brought IH into the discussion as a way of promoting charitable and fair discussion of the arguments considered for and against a topic. The concept, then, was not merely course content but a guiding norm for classroom conduct. Control classes did not make use of the concept of IH, nor was it introduced as an explicit norm for deliberation. Two different instructors taught the IH classes and two different instructors taught the control classes.

Measures and Procedure

Participants in all classes were assessed twice: (1) at Time 1, following the first three hours of class time, and (2) at Time 2, on their final day of class. The assessment consisted of three components, which collectively took about 30–40 minutes to complete.

Writing sample

Drawing on prompts used in prior research (Grossmann et al., 2010, 2012), each participant read a brief newspaper clipping about a supposed international event that occurred several decades ago in either Tajikistan or Djibouti. In both stories, a fictitious intergroup conflict was described regarding immigration (in the former) or ethnic tension over political power (in the latter). These prompts were randomized so that half of the students read each article at Time 1 and the other at Time 2. They were prompted to respond to the article by writing their thoughts on what they think would happen next and, critically, why they think that would happen. Participants had 15 minutes to read and respond to this article.

Self-report scales

Participants completed a series of questionnaire items, indicating their agreement with statements on a 5-pt. scale, ranging from “strongly disagree” to “strongly agree.” First, the General Intellectual Humility Scale (Leary et al., 2017) was employed, which consists of six items (α = .72) to assess an individual’s willingness to question his or her opinions (e.g., “I reconsider my opinions when presented with new evidence,” “I question my own opinions, positions, and viewpoints because they could be wrong”). This measure has previously been shown to be associated with greater curiosity, tolerance of ambiguity, and greater sensitivity to strong arguments (Deffler, Leary, & Hoyle, 2016; Leary et al., 2017).

Additionally, two scales conceptually related to IH were also used: the Compromise Style subscale of the Rahim Organizational Conflict Inventory-II (Rahim, 1983), a four-item measure (α = .64) of preference for reaching compromise (e.g., “During conflict I negotiate with my peers so that a compromise can be reached”), and the Attitude towards Contradiction subscale of the Analysis–Holism scale (Choi, Koo, & An Choi, 2007), which consists of six items (α = .54) assessing tolerance for opposing views (e.g., “It is desirable to be in harmony, rather than in discord, with others of different opinions than one’s own”). The reliability for both scales was weaker than previous uses (e.g., α = .72 in Rahim, 1983; α = .69 in Choi et al., 2007), suggesting some idiosyncrasy resulting from the current sample or context.

Round-robin peer ratings

After completing the writing exercise and self-report scales, participants were randomly assigned to small groups, which ranged from four to seven people, and were asked to provide their impressions of the personality traits of everyone in that group using a 6-pt. Likert scale. In addition to rating others’ IH (intellectually humble, intellectually arrogant*), participants also provided ratings for the Ten-Item Personality Inventory (Gosling, Rentfrow, & Swann, 2003), assessing (a) extraversion (extroverted/enthusiastic, reserved/quiet*), (b) agreeableness (sympathetic/warm, critical/quarrelsome*), (c) conscientiousness (dependable/self-disciplined, disorganized/careless*), (d) neuroticism (anxious/easily upset, calm/emotionally stable*), and (e) openness (open to new experiences/complex, conventional/uncreative*), as well as (f) leadership (a good leader, prefers to follow others*, good at helping people work together), (g) self-esteem (has high self-esteem, self-confident, has a low opinion of him-/herself*), and (h) intelligence (intelligent, competent). These additional traits have been used in previous round-robin designs (e.g., Meagher, 2016; Meagher & Kenny, 2013; Meagher et al., 2015) and, if statistically significant target variance is found for IH, can be used to assess what other judgments covary with the groups’ consensus for IH.

These ratings were analyzed using the Social Relations Model (Kenny, 1988, 1994), a methodology that partitions interpersonal judgments into three components: (1) the perceiver effect, or how a perceiver generally rates everyone, (2) the target effect, or how a target is generally rated by everyone, and (3) the relationship effect, or the idiosyncratic way in which a particular perceiver uniquely sees a particular target. By having participants rate all other members of their group, we can estimate the relative amount of variance attributable to each of these three components within the sample as a whole. For example, the amount of variance attributable to the target effect indicates the amount of consensus present in the sample for that trait (i.e., the extent to which some participants are rated highly by everyone and others rated low by everyone). Statistical significance testing involves evaluating whether this variance is reliably greater than zero. In this study, variance partitioning was done using the software program SOREMO (Kenny, 1998).

Results

Self-Report Measures

Table 1 shows the means, standard deviations, and correlations between the three self-report measures at Time 1 and Time 2. To evaluate any change in the self-report scales, mixed effects models were employed, predicting the outcome variable by classroom condition and time, while including the participant, instructor, and the participant’s class as random effects. For all three of the self-reported measures, we found no statistically significant interaction between classroom condition and time: for IH, F(1,99) = 0.01, p = .914, for compromising style, F(1,99) = 0.01, p = .963, and for attitude toward conflict, F(1,99) = 0.36, p = .549. The only marginally significant main effect observed was a slight decrease over time among both groups in terms of their attitude toward contradiction, F(1, 99) = 3.17, p = .078, partial η²= .031. These effects were not moderated by age or class year.

Table 1.

Means and correlations for self-report scales.

	Time 1			Time 2
	IH	CS	ATC	IH	CS	ATC
Mean (SD):	4.16 (0.51)	3.86 (0.56)	3.74 (0.54)	4.14 (0.51)	3.84 (0.58)	3.63 (0.60)
Time 1
Intellectual Humility	–	–	–	–	–	–
Compromising Style	.388**	–	–	–	–	–
Attitude toward Conflict	−.101	.291**	–	–	–	–
Time 2
Intellectual Humility	.626**	.171	.038	–	–	–
Compromising Style	.142	.492**	.370**	.149	–	–
Attitude toward Conflict	−.076	.134	.559**	.003	.533**	–

Note. *p < .05. **p < .01.

Round-Robin Judgments

The relative variance partitioning for peer ratings of personality traits at Time 1 and Time 2 are provided in Table 2. As can be observed in the target variance column, very little consensus in peer judgments was observed in either of the classroom conditions, with the exception of extraversion. To assess whether any changes in consensus that did occur could be attributed to the classroom condition, a series of mixed-design ANOVA models were employed, predicting group-level target variance (i.e., consensus) on each of the nine trait judgments, respectively, as a product of time and classroom condition. Notably, the only observed main effect of time in these analyses was found for judgments of leadership, F(1, 19) = 5.09, p = .036, partial η²= .211, with consensus increasing from Time 1 to Time 2.

Table 2.

Relative variance partitioning.

	IH Classes			Control Classes
	Perceiver	Target	Relationship	Perceiver	Target	Relationship
Time 1
IH	.19*	.05	.25	.27*	.02	.10
Self Esteem	.02	.10*	.43**	.05	.03	.20*
Leadership	.12	.06	.19*	.13*	.01	.22**
Intelligence	.43*	.03	.12*	.19	.03	.11*
Extraversion	.00	.31*	.31**	.00	.19**	.26*
Agreeableness	.00	.02	.14	.08*	.06	.12
Conscientiousness	.16	.10	.07	.07	.06*	.10
Neuroticism	.12	.03	.26**	.09	.03	.22*
Openness	.00	.01	.13	.00	.00	.06
Time 2
IH	.23	.00	.35**	.03	.05	.33**
Self Esteem	.13*	.07*	.30*	.00	.13	.31*
Leadership	.08	.11	.12*	.09	.07	.15**
Intelligence	.31	.01	.27	.11	.04	.14*
Extraversion	.00	.31**	.30*	.01	.36**	.13
Agreeableness	.03	.15*	.09	.05	.11	.13
Conscientiousness	.16	.05	.28*	.01	.12	.17*
Neuroticism	.12	.00	.28**	.11	.12	.35**
Openness	.03	.08	.05	.06	.13	.11

Note. *p < .05. **p < .01. Significance tests are based on one-sample t-tests of absolute variance (df = 10 in IH condition; df = 8 in Control condition).

Although the classes generally did not reach higher levels of consensus in their judgments of peers, it is possible that evaluations of their classmates in general changed over the course of the summer session. To evaluate how impressions of peers changed, we assessed how target effects at the level of the individual were influenced by the class condition. That is, another set of mixed-design ANOVA models were employed, predicting each participant’s target effect (i.e., their mean rating by everyone in their group) on each of the nine trait judgments as a product of time and classroom condition. A statistically significant interaction was observed for ratings of IH, F(1, 95) = 6.81, p = .011, partial η²= .067, which decreased among those in the control class (M_T1 = 4.80, SD_T1 = 0.51; M_T2 = 4.66, SD_T2 = 0.72) but increased among those in the IH class (M_T1 = 4.47, SD_T1 = 0.52; M_T2 = 4.64, SD_T2 = 0.44). These results indicate that although participants did not agree about which specific individuals were deemed high or low in terms of IH, students in the experimental class tended to be viewed on average as higher in IH at the end of the summer. A similar interaction effect was observed for ratings of conscientiousness, F(1, 95) = 5.31, p = .023, partial η²= .053, with peer ratings decreasing in the control class (M_T1 = 4.79, SD_T1 = 0.52; M_T2 = 4.69, SD_T2 = 0.59) but increasing in the IH class (M_T1 = 4.73, SD_T1 = 0.50; M_T2 = 4.84, SD_T2 = 0.48). No statistically significant main effects or interactions were observed for any of the other trait ratings.

Writing Prompt

To quantify the participants’ written responses, essays were coded by a group of five undergraduate research assistants for wise-reasoning constructs, using the methodology outlined in Grossmann (2012). The coders were trained in an afternoon session by completing several sample essays using the same prompt, and then comparing their assessments with one another until consensus about criteria were reached. Each essay in the sample was coded by two people. Interrater reliability was assessed using a one-way random intraclass correlation for these two raters. Two constructs showed good reliability: compromise, ICC(1, 2) = .66, the extent to which participants either predicted or emphasized the importance of the two feuding groups reaching a compromise, and uncertainty, ICC(1, 2) = .63, the extent to which participants acknowledged the limits of his or her knowledge or ability to make an accurate prediction. Both constructs were rated on 3-pt. scale ranging from 0 to 2.

Due to the high number of zero values for ratings on both constructs, the R package “glmmTMB” (Brooks et al., 2017) was used to test the statistical models using a zero-inflated probability distribution. First, evidence of compromise was regressed on class condition, time, and their interaction, along with the article type (i.e., immigration story or ethnic political power story) as a covariate. A main effect was found for article type, with higher levels of compromise observed for the story involving Tajikistan immigration, b = .32, t(97) = 4.08, p = .001. A significant main effect was also found for time, b = -.15, t(97) = 2.25, p = .024, indicating that students were focused less on compromise at the end of their philosophy course. However, this finding was qualified by a statistically significant interaction between time and class condition, b = .19, t(97) = 1.98, p = .048, which explained a small amount of the variance, ΔR² = .02. Whereas those in the control classes showed a clear decrease in writing about compromise (M_T1 = 0.62, SD_T2 = 0.63; M_T2 = 0.39, SD_T2 = 0.47), those in the IH classes showed a small increase (M_T1 = 0.63, SD_T1 = 0.65; M_T2 = 0.70, SD_T2 = 0.65). However, a similar analysis predicting uncertainty in student writing revealed no main effects for either time or class condition, nor was a statistically significant interaction observed, ps ⩾ .330. Only a main effect for article type was found, with greater uncertainty expressed regarding the story about Djibouti political conflict, b = -.15, t(97) = 2.32, p = .020. Neither age nor class year moderated these effects.

Discussion

The goal of this study was to assess whether incorporating additional content related to IH into an introductory philosophy class would lead to changes in how students think about themselves, form impressions of their classmates, and communicate with greater cultural humility when writing about a cross-cultural intergroup conflict. The results of this study were, ultimately, mixed. On the one hand, no change was observed in terms of their self-reported IH; instead, initial attitudes remained largely stable across the five weeks for both groups. Moreover, students did not appear to become more discriminating in terms of detecting IH, as no consensus was reached regarding who in their class was high (or low) on this trait. This finding is in contrast to previous research, which found that students working in small groups (e.g., on class projects) can reach consensus over the course of a semester (Meagher et al., 2015). The current results suggest that consensus may be less likely in the broader context of an entire class, which may fail to provide the necessary types of situations that reveal uniquely high or low IH individuals (Chancellor & Lyubomirsky, 2013; Davis et al., 2010). Instead, judgments of IH in this study were driven primarily by perceiver variance, reflecting their generalized impression of all classmates.

Nevertheless, a pair of statistically significant findings are worth noting. First, students’ ratings of their fellow classmates in terms of IH increased during the course in the experimental group, while they declined in the control group. Thus, even though individuals in the IH condition did not view themselves as becoming more intellectually humble over the course of the summer session, their peers in the class believed that they did. Moreover, these students also reported that their classmates became more conscientious during the session, whereas those in the more traditional introductory philosophy class evaluated their peers more negatively at Time 2. In a course that involves frequent discussion of potentially polarizing moral issues (e.g., the trolley problem), it is perhaps reasonable to expect that judgments of peers with whom one disagrees may decline over time, as they did in the control courses. Successfully buffering this pattern is therefore a strong positive outcome for the intervention.

Although impressions of peers’ IH did in fact improve, it is possible that this social judgment was purely at the level of perception. The goal of the writing task was to assess whether there would be clear behavioral differences in how students communicate about a cross-cultural, intergroup conflict after completing their course. Here too, the results were mixed. No difference was observed between the groups in terms of actually acknowledging their limits in making an accurate prediction. Explicit statements of uncertainty were quite rare, with nearly half of all essays (48%) across both groups rated a 0 on this dimension. Several researchers have argued that humility may be revealed in only select types of social situations, such as when one receives praise, is criticized, or must apologize (Chancellor & Lyubomirsky, 2013; Davis et al., 2010; Meagher et al., 2015). However, it is possible that the medium of communication may also be relevant. Academic essays are traditionally written as an assessment of knowledge, so one may actively avoid statements highlighting one’s limitations. Previous uses of these prompts have generally asked participants to respond verbally (e.g., Kross & Grossmann, 2012), a methodology that may lend itself to more spontaneous remarks indicating uncertainty.

Nevertheless, we did observe a difference between the two groups in terms of participants’ prioritization of compromise. Students in the control classes showed a clear decrease in writing about compromise from Time 1 to Time 2, whereas students in the IH classes showed a small increase. This research suggests that working to develop IH in the classroom may have positive effects on issues related to cultural humility, motivating students to think about cultural conflict in a wiser way by acknowledging the inherent value of those on both sides of an issue. It is interesting that, as with the more positive peer judgments, the IH content appeared primarily to buffer students from declines, rather than necessarily facilitate increases, regarding this construct. If wise reasoning is something educators wish to foster—particularly regarding cultural humility—it may in fact be necessary to spend more time on issues related to compromise, tolerance, and integration.

Limitations and Future Directions

As a consequence of being a quasi-experimental study, several additional factors could not be controlled in the analysis. First, each class had a different instructor who likely led the class in slightly unique ways. Distinct teaching styles, even when teaching the same content, could influence the humility and response style of students. As a consequence, it is possible that the key difference between the conditions were the instructors, rather than the material. However, it should be noted that the critical effect—the increase in judgments of others’ IH—was consistent across the instructors in the IH condition. Moreover, no additional variance was explained in our models by including a random effect for the instructor, indicating little effect for teaching style independent of the class’s IH content.

Second, because a convenience sample was used, the makeup of the classes in the IH condition differed from the control group in several ways. For example, the mean class size in the IH courses was just 15 people, compared to an average of 26 people in the two control groups. However, there is no evidence to support the argument that students in the control classes were less closely acquainted with one another than those in the IH classes. In fact, consensus on interpersonal judgments was equivalent or larger in the control condition on nearly all of the measured constructs at Time 2, indicating that they collectively observed and shared information about one another to no less an extent than did the experimental courses. Additionally, although IH and conscientiousness ratings of classmates increased in the IH group and declined in the control group, this pattern was not found for judgments of agreeableness, a trait more closely related to liking. Thus, it does not appear that a smaller class size led to closer relationships or universally positive evaluations.

Finally, the IH group and the control group also differed in terms of class standing, as the IH classes consisted primarily of upperclassmen and the control classes of freshmen. It is possible that existing college experience, by providing a wider frame of reference, would make individuals respond to a philosophy course quite differently. However, there is not clear evidence from this data to indicate large, preexisting differences between these two groups in terms of IH or personality, as none of the measured self-report constructs differed between the two groups at Time 1.

Ultimately, much could be done in future research to more fully assess the effects of teaching IH in the classroom. A truly experimental methodology with standardized administration of the IH content—controlling for the instructor, class size, and class standing—would be needed to rule out the potential confounds discussed above. For example, Lavelock et al. (2014) developed a 7.5-hour general humility workbook that they have tested experimentally, which resulted in increases in self-reported humility, forgiveness, patience, and self-control relative to a control group. Although this study has its own limitations—dependence on self-report outcomes and potential demand characteristics—it represents a potentially viable model for distilling critical educational content into a manageable experimental intervention.

The current study does offer an initial feasibility assessment for alternative methodologies that can be used in such interventions: round-robin peer evaluations and coding written arguments. Ultimately, future studies would benefit from further refinement of these measures. For example, although changes in attitudes towards the class as a whole were observed, students proved unable to differentiate their peers in terms of IH. These classroom environments therefore may not have been effective settings for revealing IH to others, limiting the value of the overall round-robin paradigm. It is also possible that observing the effects of such classroom interventions may require more precise self- and peer judgments of IH within the specific intellectual domain of the course (e.g., Hoyle, Davisson, Diebels, & Leary, 2016). In terms of coding IH behaviorally, it is important to note that although we employed the methodology outlined and used by Grossmann (2012), our coders did have difficulty providing reliable ratings for our measures, which makes the conclusions drawn from this analysis somewhat tentative. As mentioned earlier, previous uses of these prompts generally have coders analyze transcribed verbal responses (e.g., Kross & Grossmann, 2012). This form of feedback, free of the constraints of academic writing, may allow for clearer distinctions regarding the key coding variables.

Conclusion

The current research provides initial evidence that including IH content in these introductory philosophy courses can buffer students’ impressions of their peers, both in terms of IH and conscientiousness. Accomplishing this task alone would be a valuable achievement, reflecting an improved social environment conducive to learning and discussion. Nevertheless, experimental procedures are still needed to validate these findings. Moreover, it remains unclear whether this change is purely a perception or whether there are in fact genuine behavioral differences reflecting cultural humility that emerged between the IH and control classrooms. If such differences are in fact real, they may be less likely to emerge in independent writing tasks that typically involve advocating for a single position. Rather, assessments of the students’ verbal communication during a conversation (e.g., tone of voice, frequency of interruptions, ability to articulate the other person’s point of view) may be more likely to capture critical differences in IH and cultural humility. As a result, future research is still needed to identify the social-behavioral indicators of IH during interactions (Meagher et al., 2015), which can then be used to evaluate changes following interventions.

Supplemental Material

Supplemental_Material – Supplemental material for An Intellectually Humbling Experience: Changes in Interpersonal Perception and Cultural Reasoning across a Five-Week Course

Supplemental material, Supplemental_Material for An Intellectually Humbling Experience: Changes in Interpersonal Perception and Cultural Reasoning across a Five-Week Course by Benjamin R. Meagher, Hanna Gunn, Nathan Sheff and Daryl R. Van Tongeren in Journal of Psychology and Theology

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

The contents of this article are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official views of UConn or the John Templeton Foundation. We thank Caitlyn Heidenga, Linnea Hjelm, Russell Houpt, Reece Lindemann, and Michala Ringquist for their assistance with essay coding, as well as Jordan Ochs and Drew Johnson for allowing us to collect data in their classes.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article: This research was supported by a subaward from the University of Connecticut with funds provided by Grant No. 58942 from the John Templeton Foundation.

Supplemental material

Supplemental material for this article is available online.

ORCID iD

Benjamin R. Meagher

1.

Of these 102 people, five participants did not have usable round-robin ratings, and two participants did not write an essay response. In our analyses, we include all cases available for that particular statistical test.

Benjamin R. Meagher, PhD. Address: Department of Psychology, Hope College, Schaap Science Center, 35 East 12th Street, Holland, MI 49423-3605. Degrees: BA (Psychology) Gordon College; MA (Social Psychology) University of Connecticut; PhD (Social Psychology) University of Connecticut. Specializations: intellectual humility, interpersonal perception, and ecological social psychology.

Hanna Gunn, PhD. Address: Department of Phillosophy, Vanderbilt University, PMB 406319, 2301 Vanderbilt Place, Nashville, Tennessee 37240-6319. Degrees: BA (Philosophy) University of Canterbury; MA (Philosophy) University of Connecticut; PhD (Philosophy) University of Connecticut. Specializations: social epistemology, feminist philosophy of language.

Nathan Sheff, PhD. Address: Department of Philosophy, University of Connecticut - Stamford, 1 University Place, Stamford, CT 06901. Degrees: BA (Philosophy) University of Wisconsin; MA (Philosophy) University of Connecticut; PhD (Philosophy) University of Connecticut. Specializations: social epistemology, philosophy of mind.

Daryl R. Van Tongeren, PhD. Address: Department of Psychology, Hope College, Schaap Science Center, 35 East 12th Street, Holland, MI 49423-3605. Degrees: BA (Psychology) Colorado Christian University; MA (Experimental Psychology) University of Colorado, Colorado Springs; PhD (Social Psychology) Virginia Commonwealth University. Specializations: social psychological approaches to meaning, religion, and virtues, such as humility and forgiveness.

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