Intellectual humility and existentially relevant moral decisions

ABSTRACT

Research on intellectual humility has grown, but little work has explored its role in moral decisions. Building on recent work on the Veil of Ignorance, we randomly assigned some participants to imagine being part of an existentially-threatening situation that could possibly lead to the greater good for society (i.e. The Human Challenge Experiments [HCE]). We predicted that informing participants that they might be part of such a study (i.e. the veil of ignorance [VOI]) would reduce HCE support, and that this would be amplified among intellectually humble participants. A preregistered study (N = 1,032) drawn from three samples, including participants from the United States (n = 346), the Netherlands (n = 340), and Hong Kong (n = 346), confirmed our hypothesis. In addition, this effect was pronounced for those high in intellectual humility. This work offers a novel contribution by examining the role of intellectual humility in existentially-relevant moral decisions.

KEYWORDS:

• Intellectual humility
• morality
• veil of ignorance
• human challenge experiments

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The data described in this article are openly available in the Open Science Framework at https://osf.io/bwhv5/

Open Scholarship

This article has earned the Center for Open Science badges for Open Data, Open Materials and Preregistered. The data and materials are openly accessible at https://osf.io/bwhv5/ (data) and https://osf.io/ctbgh/ (materials). The preregistration plan can be found at https://osf.io/54fcb/.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1. Other measures included in that survey include the Big Five, self-construal, religious commitment, general and existential humility, existential avoidance/engagement, intolerance of uncertainty, empathy, psychological flourishing, prosociality, differentiation of self, spiritual well-being, perceived growth, and meaning in life (which were assessed prior to the experiment described here).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the John Templeton Foundation [61392].