New publication: Differentiating general and intellectual humility

Danielsen Institute Visiting Researcher Dr. Peter J. Jankowski led a project that works through some measurement issues in differentiating intellectual humility (IH) from general humility. This articles offers a useful contrast to authoritarian modes of thinking within religious contexts and beyond. The citation and abstract are below.

Jankowski, P.J., Sandage, S.J., Hill, P.C., Chan, A., Choe, E.J., & Wang, D.C. (2025). Discriminating the dimensions of humility: A construct validation study of intellectual and general humility. Current Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-025-08271-3

Abstract

Concerns about the conceptual and operational definitions for intellectual humility have frequently been noted, along with concerns about the nature of the relation between intellectual and general humility. We therefore evaluated the internal and external construct validation evidence for intellectual and general humility using self-report measures from some of the earliest items for these constructs. To achieve this aim, we used archival data from two independent samples of religious identifying participants to conduct factor analyses on the items (sample 1: N=238; Mage = 34.06; 58.4% male; 75.6% White; sample 2: N=218; 64.7% female; 44% White). These samples also permitted addressing the secondary research aim of synthesizing the study of virtues across the disciplines of positive psychology and the psychology of religion and spirituality. Results suggested that the revised IH and GH factors were empirically distinct constructs, that tapped into perspective-taking grounded in an awareness of self-fallibility as the core for IH and resisting self-enhancing superiority relative to others as the core for GH. External structure evidence for IH and GH were consistent with theory and offered clarification and expansion of prior findings. Results offered construct validation for use of the scores derived from these items to assess IH and GH as relational virtues involving the regulation of egoistic tendencies.