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This paper introduces a codebook and classifier for measuring intellectual humility (IH) and intellectual arrogance (IA) in online political discourse, using it to analyze IH dynamics on Reddit. They found that IH levels tend to self-perpetuate within online discussions, and that interventions can successfully nudge participants to express more IH. A randomized controlled trial demonstrated the possibility of enhancing IH across various contentious topics without reducing engagement.
Online political discussions tend to be intellectual humility echo chambers, but simple interventions can break the cycle and foster more open-mindedness.
Intellectual humility (IH)-a recognition of one's own intellectual limitations-can reduce polarization and foster more understanding across lines of difference. Yet little work explores how IH can be systematically defined, measured, evaluated, and enhanced in spaces that often lack it the most: online political discussions. In this paper, we seek to bridge these gaps by exploring two questions: 1) how might preexisting levels of IH influence future expressions of IH during online political discourse? and 2) can online interventions enhance IH across different political topics and conversational environments? To pursue these questions, we define a codebook characterizing different dimensions of IH and intellectual arrogance (IA) and have researchers use it to annotate several hundred Reddit posts, which we then use to develop and validate a classifier to support IH analysis at scale. These tools subsequently enable two key contributions: i) an observational data analysis of how IH varies across different political discussions on Reddit, which reveals that more/less IH environments tend to contain future posts of a similar nature, and ii) a randomized control trial evaluating strategies for nudging discussion participants to demonstrate more IH in their posts, which reveals the possibility of enhancing IH in online discussions across a range of contentious topics. Our findings highlight the possibility of measuring and increasing IH online without necessarily reducing engagement.
