What motivates us to be intellectually humble?: A necessary bridge to applied work

ABSTRACT

In our reaction to Ballantyne (current issue), we consider a question we view as important when considering applied work on intellectual humility: What motivates us to be intellectually humble, and how does our cultural context influence our motivations? In particular, we reflect on the potential benefits and costs of intellectual humility. Compared with other virtues that have developed thriving applied research programs (e.g., forgiveness, gratitude), there has been less developed theory and empirical work explaining why individuals and groups would want to become more intellectually humble in the first place. In closing, we consider some strategies that might help individuals and groups identify why they would want to grow in intellectual humility, which could lay an important foundation for future applied work (e.g., developing effective interventions to promote intellectual humility) in this field.

KEYWORDS:

• Humility
• motivation
• intervention

Disclosure statement

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