Shauna Bowes

Emory University | EU · Department of Psychology

In this chapter, we focus on the construct of intellectual humility (IH), which has been of increasing interest in psychological science over the last several years. We identify why IH is an important construct in psychology, review emerging research on its nature and boundaries, and highlight its potential utility in the domain of critical thinkin...

Research on intellectual humility has accumulated rapidly. In this content analysis, we review existing published empirical work. We conducted searches using Google Scholar, ProQuest, and PsycInfo and found 59 articles with 134 samples. Most studies have focused on convenience samples and used similar measurement approaches – self-reports of intell...

We present three studies to examine intellectual humility (IH) contextualized to existential challenges across cultures. With samples (N = 1714) drawn from three regions (United States, Hong Kong, Netherlands), we explore the benefits and drawbacks of various configurations of IH and commitment to beliefs. In two studies, we created a measure of IH...

In Ballantyne’s (in press) review on the philosophy and psychology of intellectual humility (IH), he observes that it is not possible to ascertain whether IH is ‘good’ for people. In our commentary, we describe a way to tackle this ambiguity by advancing and testing an IH-health hypothesis. We first describe the humility-health hypothesis and the w...

The role that grant funding should play in the conduct and evaluation of psychological science is controversial, largely because few data are available to directly inform this issue. We sought to gain insights on grant funding in psychological science by examining the extent to which grant funding influenced eminent psychologists in their research...

The rigidity-of-the-right hypothesis (RRH), which posits that cognitive, motivational, and ideological rigidity resonate with political conservatism, is an influential but controversial psychological account of political ideology. Here, we leverage several methodological and theoretical sources of this controversy to conduct an extensive quantitati...

The rigidity-of-the-right hypothesis (RRH), which posits that cognitive, motivational, and ideological rigidity resonate with political conservatism, is an influential but controversial psychological account of political ideology. Here, we leverage several methodological and theoretical sources of this controversy to conduct an extensive quantitati...

We addressed key questions regarding the relations between intellectual humility (IH) and endorsing/believing misinformation by (1) understanding what aspects of IH best predict endorsing/believing misinformation, (2) examining whether IH is related to endorsing/believing multiple manifestations of misinformation (pseudoscience, conspiracy theories...

The present investigation examined curvilinear relations between political ideology, on the one hand, and absolute certainty and dogmatism, on the other, across six online samples (N = 2,889). Ideological extremists were more likely than others to be absolutely certain: About one in three extremists reported being absolutely (i.e., 100%) certain of...

Misinformation is widespread and consequential. Thus, identifying psychological characteristics that might mitigate misinformation susceptibility represents a timely and pragmatically important issue. One construct that may be particularly relevant to misinformation susceptibility is intellectual humility (IH). As such, we examined whether IH is re...

Authoritarianism has been the subject of scientific inquiry for nearly a century, yet the vast majority of authoritarianism research has focused on right-wing authoritarianism. In the present studies, we investigate the nature, structure, and nomological network of left-wing authoritarianism (LWA), a construct famously known as “the Loch Ness Monst...

In recent years, an upsurge of polarization has been a salient feature of political discourse in America. A small but growing body of research has examined the potential relevance of intellectual humility (IH) to political polarization. In the present investigation, we extend this work to political myside bias, testing the hypothesis that IH is ass...

In recent years, an upsurge of polarization has been a salient feature of political discourse in America. A small but growing body of research has examined the potential relevance of intellectual humility (IH) to political polarization. In the present investigation, we extend this work to political myside bias, testing the hypothesis that IH is ass...

Objective We sought to replicate and extend provisional research on the personological correlates of conspiracy beliefs by examining their associations with abnormal‐ and normal‐range personality domain‐level traits and, for the first time, lower‐order personality facets; we also examined internalizing symptoms. Method The study comprised four sam...

The extent to which individual differences in personality traits and cognitive styles diminish affective polarization (AP) is largely unknown. We address this gap by examining whether intellectual humility (IH) buffers against AP. We examined the associations between domain-general and domain-specific measures of IH, on the one hand, and AP, on the...

Authoritarianism has been the subject of scientific inquiry for nearly a century, yet the vast majority of authoritarianism research has focused on right-wing authoritarianism. In the present studies, we investigate the nature, structure, and nomological network of left-wing authoritarianism (LWA), a construct famously known as “the Loch Ness Monst...

Philosophers have long speculated that authoritarianism and belief in determinism are functionally related. To evaluate this hypothesis, we assessed whether authoritarianism and allied personality and political variables predict varieties of belief in determinism in three community samples (N1 = 566 to 20,010; N2 = 500; N3 = 419). Authoritarianism...

Philosophers have long speculated that authoritarianism and belief in determinism are functionally related. To evaluate this hypothesis, we assessed whether authoritarianism and allied personality and political variables predict varieties of belief in determinism in three community samples (N1 = 566 to 20,010; N2 = 500; N3 = 419). Authoritarianism...

Cognitive biases can permeate everyday clinical decision-making processes and adversely affect the accuracy of clinical judgments, even among the many practitioners who are capable, knowledgeable, and highly intelligent. Reviews summarizing the cognitive biases that affect clinical decision-making have largely targeted physicians rather than practi...

The extent to which individual differences in personality traits and cognitive styles diminish affective polarization (AP) is largely unknown. We address this gap by examining how one poorly understood but recently researched individual difference variable, namely, intellectual humility (IH), may buffer against AP. We examined the associations betw...

Objective: We sought to replicate and extend research on the personological correlates of conspiracy beliefs by examining their associations with abnormal- and normal-range personality domain-level traits and, for the first time, lower-order personality facets; we also examined internalizing symptoms. Method: The study comprised four samples of com...

Critical Thinking in Psychology - edited by Robert J. Sternberg January 2020

In our article (Lilienfeld et al., 2019), we hypothesized that psychopathy and some other personality disorders are emergent interpersonal syndromes (EISs): interpersonally malignant configurations of distinct personality subdimensions. We respond to three commentaries by distinguished scholars who raise provocative challenges to our arguments and...

Personality disorders have long been bedeviled by a host of conceptual and methodological quandaries. Starting from the assumption that personality disorders are inherently interpersonal conditions that reflect folk concepts of social impairment, the authors contend that a subset of personality disorders, rather than traditional syndromes, are emer...

Research suggests that the Boldness and Disinhibition traits of psychopathy are negatively and positively related to internalizing, respectively. Although the associations between psychopathy and internalizing are relatively well-demonstrated, few studies have examined the specificity of these associations with psychopathy as opposed to general per...

Although psychopathy traits are traditionally associated with maladaptivity, certain traits may statistically buffer against risk for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Research suggests that psychopathy traits are differentially associated with PTSD, as boldness traits are negatively related to PTSD whereas disinhibition features are positively...

There are two major types of rationality, namely epistemic and instrumental rationality. These two forms of rationality refer to what is true and what to do, respectively.

Using a risky-choice framing paradigm, we investigated (a) the extent to which psychopathic features shape behavioral responses to potential losses vs. potential gains and (b) how these relations bear on real-world economic decision-making in a community sample (N = 475). Associations among psychopathic features, risk-seeking, sensitivity to framin...

We examined the associations between psychopathic subdimensions and music and movie genre preferences in a community sample (N = 429). We also considered the extent to which these relations were specific to psychopathy per se as opposed to other personality disorder or general personality traits. Fearless Dominance psychopathy features were moderat...

Sexual aggression is pervasive in American society and affects deleteriously the lives of men and women. Two potential predictors sexual assault are psychopathic personality (psychopathy) traits and rape myth acceptance (RMA), although there is a paucity of research on the relation between RMA and psychopathic traits. We adopted a multi-measure app...

The fearlessness model posits that psychopathy is underpinned by a deficiency in the capacity to experience fear, predisposing to other features of the condition, such as superficial charm, guiltlessness, callousness, narcissism, and dishonesty. Nevertheless, it is unclear whether fearlessness is irrelevant, necessary, sufficient, or merely contrib...