Ellen Phiddian
Cosmos science journalist
People see humble scientists as more trustworthy, according to a new study.
The study, published in Nature Human Behaviour, finds that scientists who display “intellectual humility” seem more reliable than those who don’t.
“Research has shown that having intellectual humility – which is an awareness that one’s knowledge or beliefs might be incomplete or wrong – is associated with engaging in more effortful and less biased information processing,” says lead author Jonah Koetke, a graduate student at the University of Pittsburgh, USA.
“In this work, we wanted to flip the perspective and examine whether members of the public believe that scientists who are intellectually humble also produce more rigorous and trustworthy research.
“Because it is so critical to the scientific process – for example, being aware of the limits of our knowledge, communicating the limitations of results, being willing to update beliefs – members of the public might be more likely to trust scientists who exhibit intellectual humility.”
The researcher ran 5 different online experiments, including a total of 2,034 participants.
In the first study, 298 people were asked to rate the perceived humility and trustworthiness of various scientists, as well as their beliefs on polarising science topics like climate change and vaccination.
In each of the next 3 studies, more than 300 participants read an article about a fictional scientist who was espousing a particular health or environmental activity. Participants were shown different articles, where the “scientist” displayed different levels of humility – the more humble scientist was consistently rated as more trustworthy.
In 2 of these studies, the researchers changed the racial and gender identity of the fictional scientist to see if this had an effect on how they saw the scientist. They didn’t find an effect in either case.
However, as science often does, the 5th study threw up conflicting answers.
The researchers asked 679 different participants to read 1 of 4 “interviews” with a scientist, some of which tried different strategies to display intellectual humility – like giving credit to graduate students, or talking about the limitations of their results.
While these techniques did make the scientist seem more humble, they didn’t make them seem much more trustworthy. And 2 of the communication methods actually backfired: participants found the scientist’s research less trustworthy.
“This finding raises the question of how perceived trustworthiness in the scientist as a person might differ from trust in the scientist’s results,” write the researchers in their paper.
“We still have a lot to learn about specific strategies scientists can use to display their intellectual humility in their public communications,” says Koetke.
Co-author Associate Professor Karina Schumann, a psychology researcher at the University of Pittsburgh, says she finds the results encouraging.
“They suggest that the public understands that science isn’t about having all the answers; it’s about asking the right questions, admitting what we don’t yet understand, and learning as we go,” says Schumann.
“Although we still have much to discover about how scientists can authentically convey intellectual humility, we now know people sense that a lack of intellectual humility undermines the very aspects of science that make it valuable and rigorous.”
