Research Symposium

BIO

I am a first year Honors student studying Biological Sciences. I am currently working on research regarding first impressions and bias regulaation.

Intellectual Humility and First Impression Reliance

Abstract

Intellectual Humility is a character virtue referring to an individual’s ability to recognize their intellectual shortcomings and become open to new perspectives. We wanted to determine how this character virtue relates to individuals’ self-reported tendency to use their first impressions when making decisions of another individual. Doing so can be problematic, as people who rely heavily on first impressions may not consider the idea of them being wrong. We hypothesized that participants with higher levels of Intellectual Humility would be less likely to rely heavily on their first impressions of others in later interactions. We surveyed 300 participants using an online survey with a preexisting self-reported Intellectual Humility Scale and a self-reported First Impression Reliance Scale that we developed. As predicted, our results demonstrated a negative association between the two variables; participants with higher Intellectual Humility tended to have lower First Impression Reliance. This study contributed to the literature on impression formation by introducing and validating a new measure of First Impression Reliance. Further, it contributed to the limited amount of work examining Intellectual Humility within the context of person perception. Further research should validate the First Impression Reliance Scale in different contexts and replicate these findings. The findings from this study suggest that the promotion of Intellectual Humility could be effective in reducing individual biases and encouraging a more analytical perspective when forming impressions of others. This could be beneficial in areas like diversity training in the workplace.

Keywords: Psychology, Impressions, Intellectual Humility