There are a lot of people that you will meet in your life and be blown away by how
they are. Then you get to know them and you realise that they didn't know nearly as much about the world as it looked like they did. The thing is, there are many different types of
a person can have - and completing your PhD at
or Oxford doesn't necessarily mean you have the emotional intelligence to engage with others properly.
But what is the key thing that all smart people need to truly be intelligent? A study at Duke University had a theory on this, and began by testing their participants' awareness that they may occasionally be wrong about things. For example, they asked them to critique an essay or weigh up contradictory evidence.
See, the trait they were looking for was humility, with the belief that if you think you're smart, you probably aren't.
The study, titled
"Cognitive and Interpersonal Features of Intellectual Humility" and published in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, examined "intellectual humility", which they define as "the degree to which people recognize that their beliefs might be wrong".
Using a new Intellectual Humility Scale, their first study showed that this trait was associated with variables related to openness, curiosity, and the tolerance of ambiguity. The second study revealed that participants high in intellectual humility were less certain that their beliefs about religion were correct and judged people less theirs. Their final studies showed that the intellectually humble were less inclined to think that politicians who changed their attitudes were 'flip-flopping'.
[[twitterwidget||https://twitter.com/stephenfry/status/918841191386492929]]
Basically, if you're open-minded, you were also found to be better at assessing evidence, sticking to your principles, and are generally less judgemental than others.
The study's lead author, Professor Mark Leary, believes that making the political world more intellectually humble may be the key to doing away with "negative politics". The research found that both liberals and conservatives are equally capable of the trait, which he elaborates on when he spoke to PsyBlog:
"If you think about what’s been wrong in Washington for a long time, it’s a whole lot of people who are very intellectually arrogant about the positions they have, on both sides of the aisle.
"But even in interpersonal relationships, the minor squabbles we have with our friends, lovers and coworkers are often about relatively trivial things where we are convinced that our view of the world is correct and their view is wrong."
"Not being afraid of being wrong – that’s a value, and I think it is a value we could promote."
He believes that taking these principles into our daily lives would help improve the world around us. "I think if everyone was a bit more intellectually humble we’d all get along better, we’d be less frustrated with each other," he said. "If you’re sitting around a table at a meeting and the boss is very low in intellectual humility, he or she isn’t going to listen to other people’s suggestions."
This is an incredibly important thing to consider as the world changes around us, and we learn more about ourselves. If you believe in your own intellect, yet aren't open-minded enough to accept that you may be wrong - you might just be stupid.
