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The Natural Tendency for Wide and Careful Listening: Exploring the Relationship Between Open-Mindedness and Psychological Science

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Abstract

We take open-mindedness to be a component of intellectual humility, as much of the recent empirical literature regarding intellectual humility does but contrary to what some philosophers think. More particularly, we understand intellectual humility as having a self-directed component, which is concerned primarily with the regulation of confidence we have on our own epistemic goods and capacities, and an other-directed component, which is concerned primarily with one’s epistemic openness to others so to improve one’s epistemic situation. Given that the open-minded person is disposed give new ideas serious consideration, it is crucial that she both listens widely and carefully to other’s ideas. In this paper, we examine whether there is evidence to suggest that we have a natural, evolved tendency for this wide and careful listening related to open-mindedness. We conclude that there is indication of a natural tendency for wide listening, especially an in-group tendency. However, careful listening lacks more substantive empirical studies. It seems that human infants are much more inclined to be charitable and attentive to in-group cues or opinions. This is important evidence to deconstruct the idea of a natural tendency of virtuous intellectual humility that opens up the discussion for the role of social learning in cultivating and maintaining a virtuous life.

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Notes

  1. Moreover, both the self- and other-directed components are present in the implicit theories of intellectual humility that the folk have and, particularly, they view intellectually humble people as open-minded (Samuelson et al., 2015). Although many researchers agree that humility involves both components, there is more agreement with the regard to the exact nature of the self-directed one (i.e., involving an accurate view of the self) than the other-directed one (Davies & Hook, 2014; Reis et al., 2018).

  2. On such inter-dependability, see, e.g., De Brasi (2018).

  3. Notice that Priest (2017, p.476-7) understands intellectual humility as being interpersonal but rejects the self-assessment component as an essential facet of intellectual humility and thinks of it as a byproduct of it. So, for Priest, the self-directed component is not constitutive of intellectual humility. Although we disagree, this is not an issue we will engage with here.

  4. Dalmiya (2016) speaks of the intellectual virtue of “relational humility” to emphasize the other-directed component of humility.

  5. Of course, there are other forms of communicative receptivity aside from this aural one, but for simplicity-sake here the focus is on listening.

  6. As Dewey says: “While it is hospitality to new themes, facts, ideas, questions, it is not the kind of hospitality that would be indicated by hanging out a sign: “Come right in; there is nobody at home”.” (1986, p.136).

  7. Indeed, Gilbert Harman (1999 and 2000), based on social-psychological evidence, argues against the existence of character traits. John M. Doris (2002) more moderately argues that “narrow” but not global character traits can be empirically supported. Such traits have limited explanatory power, since agents do not manifest them in most or all circumstances.

  8. A virtue is understood as consisting of attitudes and dispositions of the agent which “perfect” a natural human faculty or correct for proneness to dysfunction and error in certain situations (Roberts & Wood, 2007, p.59). An intellectual virtue consists, roughly, of attitudes and dispositions for good and productive thinking.

  9. Notice that we are here assuming an effect conception of virtue (i.e., promoting good epistemic effects) as opposed to a motive one (i.e., being motivated by good epistemic desires); see, e.g., Battaly (2015). Having said that, the positive effects, as we shall see, need not be for oneself but others. So, to use Kawall’s (2002) distinction between self-regarding and other-regarding virtues, where the former tend to directly benefit one while the latter tend to directly benefit others, open-mindedness is both self- and other-regarding. We could say that open-mindedness (and so too the more complex construct of intellectual humility) is a social intellectual virtue that has positive epistemic effects for the intellectual community.

  10. For example, one party may advance a reason in favour of some claim and another one may respond by introducing a counter-reason or defeater that speaks against the claim; then the first party may introduce a defeater of the defeater or concede the original reason offered has been defeated—or weakened to certain extent—and perhaps introduce some new reason, and so on. Eventually they weight the reasons for and against to see how strong the case for the claim is.

  11. For empirical research showing the connection between intellectual humility, open-mindedness and knowledge acquisition; see Krumrei-Mancuso et al. (2020).

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Acknowledgements

The authors state that both have contributed equally to all steps of the writing process. This research has been partly funded by the Fondecyt project #1210724 (ANID, Chile). We, the authors of this paper, declare that we have no conflicts of interest to disclose.

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  1. Faculty of Psychology, Universidad Alberto Hurtado, Santiago, Chile

    Gabriel Fortes

  2. Department of Social Sciences, Universidad de La Frontera, Temuco, Chile

    Leandro De Brasi

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Fortes, G., De Brasi, L. The Natural Tendency for Wide and Careful Listening: Exploring the Relationship Between Open-Mindedness and Psychological Science. Integr. psych. behav. 57, 1312–1330 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12124-023-09774-z

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