For the John Templeton Foundation, I wrote about intellectual humility.
It’s a concept that can be described in multiple ways. One group of psychologists recently defined it as “a virtuous balance between intellectual arrogance (overvaluing one’s beliefs) and intellectual diffidence (undervaluing one’s beliefs),” that is “distinct from general humility, modesty, perspective-taking and open-mindedness.” A leading science journalist notes its role in the scientific method and sums it up as “about being actively curious about your blind spots.”
Theorists have treated intellectual humility variously as a personality trait, a cognitive disposition, a set of self-regulatory habits, an intellectual virtue, or simply an absence of intellectual vices.