The Correlation Between Intellectual Humility and Political Affiliation

Indianapolis, IN

This study was conducted with the purpose of creating an assessment that would measure the trait of intellectual humility, and to uncover a possible correlation between intellectual humility and participant political affiliation. Intellectual humility is defined as having a consciousness of the limits of one's knowledge, including a sensitivity to circumstances in which one's native egocentrism is likely to function self-deceptively (Duke, 2017). In this study there were two sessions. In session one, the participants were administered the Burnett Personality Scale (BPS), Comprehensive Intellectual Humility Scale (CIHS), Right Wing Authoritarianism Scale (RWA), and demographic surveys. In session two, which took place two weeks later, only the BPS was administered. Significant results were found to support convergent validity of the BPS with the CIHS (r(31)= .81, p<.01.), test-retest reliability (r(31)= .98, p<.01.), and the correlation between the parents political affiliation and the total of the RWA scale, r(31)= -.51. Overall, this study found that intellectual humility should continue to be studied with political affiliation. This is because if a political party could be identified as having low intellectual humility overall, it would mean that they would have cause to either strengthen their IH and or their linked emotional intelligence. Political parties have an overabundance of power over people. If a group, or certain members of a group, could be identified as having low intellectual humility, wouldn’t it be important to either take those people out of power or strengthen their ways of thinking?