Kate J. Diebels

Cognitive and Interpersonal Features of Intellectual Humility

Four studies examined intellectual humility—the degree to which people recognize that their beliefs might be wrong. Using a new Intellectual Humility (IH) Scale, Study 1 showed that intellectual humility was associated with variables related to openness, curiosity, tolerance of ambiguity, and low dogmatism. Study 2 revealed that participants high in intellectual humility were less certain that their beliefs about religion were correct and judged people less on the basis of their religious opinions. In Study 3, participants high in intellectual humility were less inclined to think that politicians who changed their attitudes were “flip-flopping,” and Study 4 showed that people high in intellectual humility were more attuned to the strength of persuasive arguments than those who were low. In addition to extending our understanding of intellectual humility, this research demonstrates that the IH Scale is a valid measure of the degree to which people recognize that their beliefs are fallible.

The Pursuit of Status: A Self-presentational Perspective on the Quest for Social Value

This chapter focuses on the ways in which people seek status in their interpersonal interactions and relationships. Our analysis conceptualizes status as the degree to which other people perceive that an individual possesses resources or personal characteristics that are important for the attainment of collective goals. That is, people have status to the degree that others perceive that they have instrumental social value. In being based on instrumental social value, status is distinguishable from interpersonal acceptance, which is based on relational value. Thus, the routes to obtaining status and respect are different from those that lead to acceptance and liking. The chapter discusses the central role that self-presentation plays in the pursuit of status, the ways in which people enhance their status through impression management, the features of social situations that moderate how people manage their public images in the pursuit of status, and the dilemma that people sometimes face in balancing their efforts to be respected and gain status with their efforts to be liked and accepted.

Distinguishing Intrapsychic From Interpersonal Motives in Psychological Theory and Research

Many psychological phenomena have been explained primarily in terms of intrapsychic motives to maintain particular cognitive or affective states—such as motives for consistency, self-esteem, and authenticity—whereas other phenomena have been explained in terms of interpersonal motives to obtain tangible resources, reactions, or outcomes from other people. In this article, we describe and contrast intrapsychic and interpersonal motives, and we review evidence showing that these two distinct sets of motives are sometimes conflated and confused in ways that undermine the viability of motivational theories. Explanations that invoke motives to maintain certain intrapsychic states offer a dramatically different view of the psychological foundations of human behavior than those that posit motives to obtain desired interpersonal outcomes. Several phenomena are examined as exemplars of instances in which interpersonal and intrapsychic motives have been inadequately distinguished, if not directly confounded, including cognitive dissonance, the self-esteem motive, biases in judgment and decision making, posttransgression accounts, authenticity, and self-conscious emotions. Our analysis of the literature suggests that theorists and researchers should consider the relative importance of intrapsychic versus interpersonal motives in the phenomena they study and that they should make a concerted effort to deconfound intrapsychic and interpersonal influences in their research.

Why Seemingly Trivial Events Sometimes Evoke Strong Emotional Reactions: The Role of Social Exchange Rule Violations

ABSTRACT People sometimes display strong emotional reactions to events that appear disproportionate to the tangible magnitude of the event. Although previous work has addressed the role that perceived disrespect and unfairness have on such reactions, this study examined the role of perceived social exchange rule violations more broadly. Participants (N = 179) rated the effects of another person’s behavior on important personal outcomes, the degree to which the other person had violated fundamental rules of social exchange, and their reactions to the event. Results showed that perceptions of social exchange rule violations accounted for more variance in participants’ reactions than the tangible consequences of the event. The findings support the hypothesis that responses that appear disproportionate to the seriousness of the eliciting event are often fueled by perceived rule violations that may not be obvious to others.

Measures of Concerns with Public Image and Social Evaluation

People differ in the degree to which they are attuned to other people’s evaluations of them, are motivated to make desired impressions on others, experience distress when their public images are damaged or others’ evaluations of them are unfavorable, and use various tactics to convey public impressions of themselves to others. This chapter focuses on measures of nine personality characteristics that reflect individual differences in such concerns, including public self-consciousness, self-monitoring, approval motivation, social anxiety, social scrutiny fear, social physique anxiety, embarrassability, self-presentation tactics, and impression management styles. Each measure is described, along with psychometric information regarding its reliability and validity.

The psychological implications of believing that everything is one

ABSTRACT A variety of philosophical, religious, spiritual, and scientific perspectives converge on the notion that everything that exists is part of some fundamental entity, substance, or process. People differ in the degree to which they believe that everything is one, but we know little about the psychological or social implications of holding this belief. In two studies, believing in oneness was associated with having an identity that includes distal people and the natural world, feeling connected to humanity and nature, and having values that focus on other people’s welfare. However, the belief was not associated with a lower focus on oneself or one’s concerns. Participants who believed in oneness tended to view themselves as spiritual but not necessarily religious, and reported experiences in which they directly perceived everything as one. The belief in oneness is a meaningful existential belief that has numerous implications for people’s self-views, experiences, values, relationships, and behavior.

Individual differences in selfishness as a major dimension of personality: A reinterpretation of the sixth personality factor.

Research on the structure of personality has identified a sixth major trait that emerges in addition to the Big Five. This factor has been characterized in a number of ways—as integrity, morality, trustworthiness, honesty, values, and, most commonly, honesty-humility. Although each of these labels captures some of the attributes associated with the trait, none of them fully represents the range of associated characteristics. In this article, we provide a reinterpretation of the sixth factor as reflecting individual differences in selfishness and review research that supports this interpretation. Interpreting the sixth trait as dispositional selfishness parsimoniously represents the array of variables that are associated with the sixth factor and reflects the behaviors of people who score low versus high on the trait. This reinterpretation provides greater coherence to six-factor models of personality and suggests new directions for research on the sixth factor and on dispositional selfishness more generally.