Intellectual Arrogance and Intellectual Humility: An Evolutionary-Epistemological Account

In this paper, we scrutinize intellectual arrogance and intellectual humility through an evolutionary lens. Our basic thesis might be summarized as follows. Human cognition, though it partly transcends the natural order, remains rooted in it: it is half-emancipated, half-embodied. In particular, it bears the lowly stamp of competitive dynamics that form part of the adaptive behavioral repertoire of all complex animals. Such dynamics, transmuted to the mental realm in human beings, help to explain, in psychological terms, why argumentation and ratiocination can be sometimes motivationally biased, but sometimes dispassionately truth-oriented too. Alongside furnishing our evolutionary-epistemological account of intellectual humility, we embed the construct in a wider nomological net, and report some recent empirical findings illustrating the automaticity of the tendency towards intellectual arrogance. We conclude by considering the role spirituality and religion might play in either helpfully fostering intellectual humility or inadvertently fostering intellectual arrogance

Desperately Seeking Status: How Desires for, and Perceived Attainment of, Status and Inclusion Relate to Grandiose and Vulnerable Narcissism

The desire for social status is theorized as being central to narcissism; however, research to date has focused exclusively on grandiose narcissism. We examined how desires for, and perceived attainment of, status and inclusion relate to grandiose narcissism, vulnerable narcissism, and three-factor models of narcissism. Two studies (total N = 676) found that all expressions of narcissism relate to a stronger desire for status. Within three-factor models, this relation was not due solely to variance shared by grandiose and vulnerable narcissism, but also to phenotype-specific components. Grandiose narcissism was also strongly associated with perceived attainment of status, but not desire for or perceived attainment of inclusion, whereas vulnerable narcissism was strongly associated with desire for inclusion, but not perceived attainment of status or inclusion. Three-factor models of narcissism revealed comparable results. The findings delineate the social and motivational profiles of different expressions of narcissism, helping to illuminate narcissism’s fundamental character

The Ups and Downs of Social Life: Within-Person Variations in Daily Status and Inclusion Differentially Predict Self-Regard and Interpersonal Behavior

Objective: Grounded in sociometer theory and hierometer theory, the current research examined, for the first time, how within-person fluctuations in people’s status and inclusion relate to their self-regard and interpersonal behavior. Method: We conducted a 10-day diary study and analyzed the data using multilevel modeling. Participants (N=415) completed daily measures of their status, inclusion, self-esteem, narcissism, assertiveness, and affiliativeness. Results: On days when both their status and inclusion were higher, participants reported higher self-esteem, but only on days when their status was higher did they report higher narcissism. Furthermore, on days when their self-esteem was higher, participants behaved more assertively and more affiliatively, but only on days when their narcissism was higher, did they behave more assertively. These patterns persisted after controlling for baseline individual differences in all constructs. Self-esteem, moreover, mediated the links between daily status and assertiveness, and between daily inclusion and affiliativeness; narcissism, in contrast, mediated the link between daily status and assertiveness only. Conclusions: This research replicates at the within-person level empirical links previously found at the between-person level. The results suggest that narcissism operates chiefly as a hierometer (tracking status and regulating assertiveness), whereas self-esteem additionally operates as a sociometer (also tracking inclusion and regulating affiliativeness)

Detecting lies about consumer attitudes using the timed antagonistic response alethiometer.

The Timed Antagonistic Response Alethiometer (TARA) is a true-false statement classification task that diagnoses lying on the basis of slower average response speeds. Previous research (Gregg in Applied Cognitive Psychology, 21, 621-647, 2007) showed that a computer-based TARA was about 80 % accurate when its statements conveyed demographic facts or religious views. Here, we tested the TARA's diagnostic potential when its statements conveyed attitudes-here, toward both branded and generic consumer products-across different versions of the TARA (Exps. 1a, 1b, and 1c), as well as across consecutive administrations (Exp. 2). The results generalized well across versions, and maximal accuracy rates exceeding 80 % were obtained, although accuracy declined somewhat upon readministration. Overall, the TARA shows promise as a comparatively cheap, convenient, and diagnostic index of lying about attitudes

Self-Esteem as a Hierometer: Sociometric Status Is a More Potent and Proximate Predictor of Self-Esteem than Socioeconomic Status

The link between status and self-esteem remains theoretically and empirically controversial. To help clarify it, we proposed an integrated account of status and self-esteem, and tested several hypotheses derived from it. We distinguished between two types of status: socioeconomic status (SES; education, income, occupation) and sociometric status (SMS; respect, admiration, importance). We then examined how they related to one another and to self-esteem across five studies (N = 2,018). As hypothesized, in Studies 1–2 (cross-sectional), SES and SMS correlated positively with one another, and both correlated positively with self-esteem; yet SMS predicted self-esteem more strongly than SES did. Moreover, SMS mediated the link between SES and self-esteem, and this statistical model fit the data better than an alternative model where SMS and SES reversed roles. Studies 3–5 demonstrated causal links experimentally. In Study 3, manipulating SES to be higher (vs. lower) led to higher (vs. lower) SMS and state self-esteem, with SMS again statistically mediating the impact of SES on state self-esteem. In Study 4, manipulating SMS to be higher (vs. lower) led to higher (vs. lower) state self-esteem. Finally, in Study 5, manipulating SMS showed that it causally mediated the link between SES and state self-esteem. Our findings also persisted across multiple measurement formats and after controlling for the Big Five personality traits. They point to SMS being a more powerful and proximate predictor of self-esteem than SES, thereby illuminating the link between status and self-esteem, and adding to a growing literature on the psychology of status

When Imitating Successful Others Fails: Accidentally Successful Exemplars Inspire Risky Decisions and can Hamper Performance

We examined the impact of viewing exemplars on people’s behavior in risky decision-making environments. Specifically, we tested if people disproportionally choose to view and then imitate the behavior of successful (vs. unsuccessful) others, which in the case of risky decision-making increases risk-taking and can hamper performance. In doing so, our research tested how a fundamental social psychological process (social influence) interacts with a fundamental statistical phenomenon (regression to the mean) to produce biases in decision-making. Experiment 1 (N = 96) showed that people indeed model their own behavior after that of a successful exemplar, resulting in more risky behavior and poorer outcomes. Experiment 2 (N = 208) indicated that people disproportionally choose to examine and then imitate most-successful versus least-successful exemplars. Experiment 3 (N = 381) replicated Experiment 2 in a context where we offered participants the full freedom to examine any possible exemplar or no exemplar whatsoever, and across different incentive conditions. The results have implications for decision-making in a broad range of social contexts such as education, health, and finances where risk-taking can have detrimental outcomes, and they may be particularly helpful to understand the role of social influence in gambling behavior

Citizen Vain? Exposure to the UK Citizenship Test Predicts Milder Demands from Immigrants Across the Political Spectrum

Passing the Life in the UK Test is an essential requirement for those who seek UK citizenship. This citizenship test, attempted around 150,000 times per year, has incurred criticism for its content and difficulty, and for its role in causing psychological distress. We examined, among a representative adult UK population, people’s reactions to this important instrument. Results showed that two-thirds (66.4%) of UK residents, most of whom held citizenship, failed their own countries citizenship test. Participants on the right (vs. left) of the political and ideological spectrum were more likely to overestimate their own performance and demand higher performance from immigrants than left-leaning voters, even though these voters’ actual performance did not differ. Strikingly, completing the Life in the UK Test caused participants to subsequently endorse milder test requirements; a finding that generalized well across political ideology and voter categories. Initial overconfidence in one’s own test performance mediated this change in attitudes. Results suggest that support for improving the Life in the UK Test can be garnered across the political spectrum by confronting people with the content of this life-changing tool