ABSTRACT
Public trust in scientists is critical to our ability to face societal threats. Here, across five pre-registered studies (N = 2,034), we assessed whether perceptions of scientists’ intellectual humility affect perceived trustworthiness of scientists and their research. In study 1, we found that seeing scientists as higher in intellectual humility was associated with greater perceived trustworthiness of scientists and support for science-based beliefs. We then demonstrated that describing a scientist as high (versus low) in intellectual humility increased perceived trustworthiness of the scientist (studies 2–4), belief in their research (studies 2–4), intentions to follow their research-based recommendations (study 3) and information-seeking behaviour (study 4). We further demonstrated that these effects were not moderated by the scientist’s gender (study 3) or race/ethnicity (study 4). In study 5, we experimentally tested communication approaches that scientists can use to convey intellectual humility. These studies reveal the benefits of seeing scientists as intellectually humble across medical, psychological and climate science topics.
I see “lack of trust” as a major obstacle in modern communication, and this has broad effects from science to politics. I think it’s not surprising that “Intellectual Humility” (IH) is associated with trust, but scientists have little control over how their results are represented in the media.
I also wonder about the value of IH for presenting basic facts. If people don’t trust the result when you tell them “2+2=4”, then I don’t think humility is the issue.
What was the magnitude of effect, and how much must the scientist prostrate themselves before the public, before the gains in trustworthiness have a significant effect?
Does literal self-flagellation ala 1300s preachers convert conspiracy theorists into trusting scientists?
If you have to whip yourself bloody to gain 1% more trust I think we’re doomed.
I agree - showing an association in a controlled experiments doesn’t mean this has any practical application. I’m not sure it even matters if the scientist is IH when the media controls how it is presented.
I do not have access to the full test of the article. Does the text identify what forms of humility are most effective? I’d suspect that humility is multi-axial, and would doubt if public self-flagellation would actually improve trust – they’d more likely simply dismiss the scientist as crazy.
My guess is it’s uttering phrases like
“I could of course be wrong…”
“We don’t know everything, scientists don’t know everything…”
“Scientists can be biased too…”
and so on.
Of course, some forms of intellectual humility (stating conclusions, correctly, in terms of probabilities or possibilities) are actually interpreted to go against your conclusions. See for example Gilberts interpretation of scientists using words like “may”, “might”, etc.
To some people who are just completely closed-minded, it doesn’t matter what you say or how you say it. If you’re not speaking in terms of absolute confidence, then you’re just guessing on no basis, and unsure of yourself and your conclusions. If you speak with confidence and assert things strongly, you’re being dogmatic, parroting the party line, and closed-minded, bla bla bla.
The converse of this is when creationists and other science deniers use scientists’ tendency to describe their findings with tentative terms like “possibly” as a pretext to claim scientists are just making stuff up. Can’t win.
Exactly the point I was about to make. And Young Earth Creationists like their leaders to speak with absolutely confidence and swagger on every topic. The few YEC ministry leaders who don’t exhibit those characteristics are usually shunned by much of the YEC community, as with Todd Wood.
I don’t think scientists are any better, or more humble, than anyone else. But their work can be repeated, and their logic questioned. It is the resulting vulnerability that may make them more hesitant to be dogmatic. Unfortunately, the current way that they need to publicize their work is to catch the attention of the popular science press, with the claim that their work is revolutionary and overthrows all previous work. So that works against humility.
A good start is to follow the evidence wherever it lead. Another way to understand the issue would be to point toward a behavior that is antithetical to humility such as when Fauci said that criticizing him was an attack against science because he reprensented science.
The full quote: “A lot of what you’re seeing as attacks on me, quite frankly, are attacks on science, because all of the things that I have spoken about, consistently from the very beginning, have been fundamentally based on science.”
He didn’t say, as it’s often been quote-mined, that “attacks on me are attacks on science.” He said that “what you’re seeing as attacks on me… are attacks on science.”
Is it possible he was thinking he was defending good science, and didn’t mean that any sort of criticism of himself as a person was a de facto attack on science?
I don’t know what specifically you’re referring to, but isn’t this a totally reasonable interpretation of what he might have meant?
I think that’s what he meant too. It’s not really humble, but it’s not not humble either. In hindsight he probably should have phrased it better to avoid the mischaracterization from the right, but he’s not a politician. (Which I happen to think is a good thing in a scientist.)
But the reproductive-organ-grabber-in-chief is forgiven every utterance, and the amount of charity extended to his every word could feed all the worlds poor for a millenium.