Stepping Outside the Echo Chamber: Is Intellectual Humility Associated With Less Political Myside Bias?

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 associated with less bias in two community samples (N-1 = 498; N-2 = 477). In line with our expectations, measures of IH were negatively correlated with political myside bias across paradigms, political topics, and samples. These relations were robust to controlling for humility. We also examined ideological asymmetries in the relations between IH and political myside bias, finding that IH-bias relations were statistically equivalent in members of the political left and right. Notwithstanding important limitations and caveats, these data establish IH as one of a small handful psychological features known to predict less political myside bias.

Automated summary

The research indicates a negative correlation between intellectual humility and political myside bias, which is robust across different paradigms and political topics. The study also finds that the relationship between intellectual humility and political myside bias is statistically equivalent among individuals on the political left and right, establishing intellectual humility as a psychological feature that predicts less political myside bias.