Shauna Bowes, Ph.D. - Vanderbilt University

Topic: The Promise of Intellectual Humility

Beliefs have the power to drive human behavior—for better (e.g., social justice) and for worse (e.g., gun violence)—so it is essential to understand when, why, and how people latch on to certain beliefs over others. My research adopts an interdisciplinary individual differences approach to illuminate the psychological factors that predict accurate and openminded thinking and those that predict inaccurate and closeminded thinking. Both steps are necessary to create a wiser, less polarized society. One compelling vehicle for clarifying what makes people orient to accuracy and open-mindedness is intellectual humility, which reflects the tendency to recognize the limits of one’s views. I focus on the relations between intellectual humility and two timely, consequential belief systems: political polarization and misinformation susceptibility. In today’s talk, I will show that intellectual humility is powerful for understanding political polarization and misinformation susceptibility. I will then leverage the findings from my published work to discuss my ongoing research focused on uncovering the building blocks of political attitudes and susceptibility to misinformation. I will conclude by setting the stage for my future research that will identify robust and effective strategies for intervening on intellectual humility, polarization, and misinformation susceptibility. Altogether, my program of research reveals that using multi-method approaches provides a strong foundation for answering exciting and important questions surrounding the ways in which beliefs give rise to behaviors and how to interrupt and change the pathways that lead to dangerous and harmful outcomes.

Shauna Bowes received her doctorate in clinical psychology from Emory University. She is currently a National Science Foundation Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences Postdoctoral Fellow at Vanderbilt University in the Psychology and Human Development department. Her research program uses an individual differences approach to understand what makes people turn toward and away from accurate and openminded thinking. She specifically focuses on intellectual humility, political polarization, and misinformation susceptibility to build an understanding of how people form, interact with, and act on their beliefs.