Assessing the Development of Intellectual Humility across Childhood

This project examines how Intellectual Humility (IH) develops in children aged 4–8 using anovel theoretical framework and behavioral battery (n = 135; 66 female; mostly white;data collection: 07.2022–10.2022). We investigated five IH components: Four—Sensitivity,Awareness, Action, and Revision— were tested across individual and social contexts, and afifth component—Evaluation—that measured preferences for intellectually humble agents.Age-related improvements emerged in several components: older children showed clearerevaluation of reliable agents, greater sensitivity to relevant information, more consistentadaptive actions, and more reliable belief revision. Social context and informationstructure shaped children’s performance in the Action and Revision blocks, and influencedconfidence estimates in the Awareness block. No meaningful correlations emerged betweenthe five behavioral measures or between the behavioral and questionnaire measures,suggesting that IH may consist of partly distinct components and underscoring the value ofnon-verbal assessments. These findings validate our framework, shed light on IH’sdevelopmental trajectory, and inform potential interventions.