Dr. Liberman and Dr. Shaw receive a grant from the Templeton Foundation.

Dr. Liberman and Dr. Shaw receive a grant from the Templeton Foundation. The three-year award is aligned with the Templeton Foundation’s Character Virtue Development area, which seeks to advance the science and practice of character, with a focus on moral, performance, civic, and intellectual virtues such as humility, gratitude, curiosity, diligence, and honesty.

The (Social) Science of Intellectual Humility

Recently, researchers have become more interesting in Intellectual humility (IH): people’s likelihood of being able to admit when they are wrong, or need more information. Much of the research has thought of this as a cognitive problem—to admit you are wrong, you must have an appropriate assessment of your knowledge and lack of knowledge. But, being intellectually humble may also be a social process. Our work proposes a novel hypothesis about the development of IH by focusing on the link between children’s concerns about reputation management and their IH behaviors. For example, are children reluctant to admit they need more information because they are worried someone will judge
them as incompetent? If so, we will investigate ways to increase children’s IH via reducing their concerns about their reputation.