How ‘Intellectual/ˌɪntə'lɛktʃuəl/ Humility/hju'mɪləti/’ Can Make You a Better Person
By Cindy Lamothe
There’s a well-known Indian parable/'pærəbl/ about six blind men who argue at length about what an elephant/'ɛlɪfənt/ feels like. Each has a different idea, and each holds fast to his own view. “It’s like a rope/rop/,” says the man who touched the tail. “Oh no, it’s more like the solid/'sɑlɪd/ branch of a tree,” contends/kən'tɛnd/ the one who touched the trunk/trʌŋk/. And so on and so forth, and round and round they go.
The moral/'mɔrəl/ of the story: We all have a tendency to overestimate/ˌovər'ɛstɪmət/ how much we know — which, in turn, means that we often cling/klɪŋ/ stubbornly/ˈst ʌbɚnɪ/ to our beliefs while tuning out opinions different from our own. We generally believe we’re better or more correct than everyone else, or at least better than most people — a psychological/ˌsaɪkə'lɑdʒɪkl/ quirk/kwɝk/ that’s as true for politics and religionrɪ'lɪdʒən/ as it is for things like fashion and lifestyles. And in a time when it seems like we’re all more convinced than ever of our own rightness, social scientists have begun to look more closely at an antidote/'æntɪdot/: a concept called intellectual humility.
Unlike general humility — which is defined by traits/tret/ like sincerity/sɪn'sɪərəti/, honesty, and unselfishness/ʌn'selfiʃnis/ — intellectual humility has to do with understanding the limits of one’s knowledge. It’s a state of openness/ˈopənnɪs/ to new ideas, a willingness to be receptive/rɪ'sɛptɪv/ to new sources of evidence, and it comes with significant benefits: People with intellectual humility are both better learners and better able to engage in civil/'sɪvl/ discourse. Google’s VP in charge of hiring, Laszlo Bock, has claimed it as one of the top qualities/'kwɑləti/ he looks for in a candidate/'kændɪdət/: Without intellectual humility, he has said, “you are unable to learn.”
Psychologists agree with him, as research has shown that intellectually humble adults are more likely to learn from people they disagree with. “When we’re more engaged and listening to the other side, the disagreements tend to be more constructive,” says Tenelle Porter, a postdoctoral/ˌpost'dɑktərəl/ researcher in psychology at the University of California, Davis. But to get there, she adds, we have to be willing to expose ourselves to opposing/ə'pozɪŋ/ perspectives in the first place — which means that, as daunting/'dɔntɪŋ/ as it may seem, listening to friends and family with radically different views can be beneficial to our long-term intellectual progress.
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