‘If I only had a little humility, I would be perfect’: Children’s and adults’ perceptions of intellectually arrogant, humble, and diffident people

Abstract

Intellectual humility is usually regarded as a virtue. In this paper, we conceptualized intellectual humility along two dimensions: (1) placing an adequate level of confidence in one’s own beliefs; (2) being willing to consider other people’s beliefs. We tested whether children (ages 4 to 11 years) and adults perceived intellectual humility as positive and how these perceptions changed across development. To do so, we asked participants to evaluate an intellectually humble person as compared to an intellectually arrogant person, who readily dismissed other people’s beliefs, or to an intellectually diffident person, who was unsure of a well-supported belief. Young children did not favor the intellectually humble person over the others, but older children and adults liked this person better and tended to consider her nicer than the arrogant one and smarter than the diffident one. These findings suggest that the virtuousness of intellectual humility in others is recognized from mid-childhood on.

Keywords:

• Intellectual humility
• humility
• arrogance
• diffidence
• social perceptions
• person perception
• personality impressions
• social cognitive development
• children’s perceptions

Acknowledgments

This research was supported by a grant from the Fuller Theological Seminary/Thrive Center in concert with the John Templeton Foundation and by a postdoctoral grant awarded to the first author by the Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (FCT). We thank Anne Fast, Karalyn Holten, Madeleine DeMeules, Rachel Horton, and Sara Guirgis for their support with stimuli creation and data collection. We also thank our participants, their families, and their schools for their collaboration with this research.

Funding

This work was supported by the Fuller Theological Seminary/Thrive Center in concert with the John Templeton Foundation [grant number IH 105]; and Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (FCT) [grant number SFRH/BPD/79479/2011].

Notes

1. Samuelson, Church, Jarvinen, and Paulus (2013) suggest that intellectual diffidence, and not intellectual humility as commonly believed, is the opposite of intellectual arrogance. In this paper, we follow that conceptualization.

2. We had originally included a question about whether each person was a ‘know-it-all,’ as a way to assess children’s perceptions of arrogance. However, the majority of the younger children were unfamiliar with this concept, so we decided to drop this measure before analysis and in the subsequent studies.

3. Variances were not homogeneous for the arrogant person, F(3, 76) = 4.48, p = .006, or the humble person, F(3, 76) = 10.08, p < .001. However, the residuals were normally distributed in both cases, which increases our confidence in the robustness of the test.

4. As before, the variances were not homogeneous (arrogant person: F_nice(3, 76) = 2.31, p = .083; F_smart(3, 76) = 12.60, p < .001; humble person: F_nice(3, 76) = 11.23, p < .001; F_smart(3, 76) = 18.78, p < .001), but the residuals were normally distributed in all the cases.

5. Variances were not homogeneous, F(3, 76) = 3.13, p = .031), but the residuals were normally distributed. Moreover, a non-parametric alternative (i.e. a Kruskal–Wallis test) yields identical results.

6. The parametric assumptions of the three ANOVAs were met.

7. The parametric assumptions of these two (gender) one-way ANOVAs were met. When we exclude the participants who failed the memory check from the analysis, gender had one statistically significant effect, F(1, 12) = 7.57, MSE = 0.573, p = .018,  = .387, with boys in this study tending to endorse the labels provided by the arrogant person (M = −.50, 95% CI = [−1.17, .17]) and girls the labels provided by the humble person (M = .63, 95% CI = [.04, 1.21]). Note, the latter gender effect was not observed in Study 1a and is actually in the opposite direction of the one other gender effect observed in this age group, suggesting yet again that no meaningful pattern of gender effects is observed consistently in this age group.

8. The variances in the liking ratings for the humble person, F(3, 76) = 8.34, p < .001, in the niceness ratings for the diffident person, F(3, 76) = 2.82, p = .044, and in the smartness ratings for the diffident person, F(3, 76) = 7.59, p < .001 were not homogeneous. However, the residuals were normally distributed in all cases.

9. When we exclude the participants who failed the memory check, the perceptions of how nice each person is vary with gender, F(1, 57) = 7.79, MSE = 0.232, p = .007,  = .120. While female participants tended to rate the humble person (M = 2.68, 95% CI = [2.46, 2.85]) as nicer than the diffident one (M = 2.40, 95% CI = [2.17, 2.63]), male participants showed the opposite tendency (M_humble = 2.39, 95% CI = [2.16, 2.61]; M_diffident = 2.64, 95% CI = [2.38, 2.90]). This effect did not interact with age.

10. The parametric assumptions were met.