Potential contributions of intellectual humility when reading on the Internet

ABSTRACT

This article presents a theoretical framework that describes how different facets of Intellectual Humility may function during authentic, everyday reading experiences on the Internet. In particular, the framework offers potential benefits and costs that varying levels of intellectual humility might have for (a) defining a reading purpose that suits a person’s inquiry needs; (b) searching for and selecting amongst texts from search engine results pages; (c) evaluating arguments found within Internet texts and the information sources providing them; (d) and integrating information across texts and with prior knowledge, beliefs, and attitudes. The nascent discussion in this article has implications for extending theories of intellectual humility, and guiding future empirical studies within the applied context of engaging with online information sources.

KEYWORDS:

• Intellectual humility
• learning
• reading
• source evaluation

Disclosure statement

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