An international team led by the University of Pittsburgh and with the participation of the University of Vienna has investigated mechanisms of trust in science. Using surveys and online experiments, they were ultimately able to show that "intellectual modesty" plays a central role. By this, the authors of the study mean the willingness of scientists to acknowledge the limits of their own knowledge and adapt to new, potentially contradictory findings. According to the new study, this modesty increases the trustworthiness of scientists in society. The results were recently published in the renowned journal Nature Human Behavior.
Trust in research results is important so that both scientists and the general public can effectively deal with complex scientific information. Current crises such as climate change or the coronavirus pandemic highlight the importance of trust in scientific findings in order to make informed decisions. What mechanisms create such trust? The international team of psychologists, including Nina Vaupotic from the University of Vienna, investigated this question.
To this end, 2,000 participants in the USA were surveyed and involved in online experiments. In a survey, the psychologists tested various characteristics in relation to trust in scientists and identified "intellectual modesty" as a decisive mechanism. Several experiments were conducted to test this thesis.
The participants were presented with scientific texts that were formulated either with "high intellectual modesty", "low intellectual modesty" or without a specific style (control group). For "high intellectual modesty", formulations such as "Dr. Moore is not afraid to admit when she doesn’t yet know something" or "Dr. Moore changes her position when opposing evidence arises" were used. The participants then assessed the trustworthiness of the scientists in the text, whether they trust the research results and whether they would follow recommendations based on them.
"Our experiments have shown that participants who read texts that were formulated with ’high intellectual modesty’ also rated the scientists and their findings as more trustworthy and were more willing to follow the scientific recommendations or search for further information on the respective topic," explains psychologist Nina Vaupotic from the University of Vienna. "The most effective approach proved to be the admission of personal knowledge limitations by scientists."
Such "modesty" had a positive effect across various scientific fields such as medicine, climate and psychology. There was also a positive effect in every case for scientists of different genders and ethnic backgrounds.
Original publication :
Koetke, J., Schumann, K., Bowes, S. M., & Vaupotic, N. (2024). The effect of seeing scientists as intellectually humble on trust in scientists and their research. Nature Human Behavior.
DOI: 10.1038/s41562’024 -02060-x
’024 -02060-x
