1. Intellectual Humility
People with high intelligence will admit their lack of knowledge on a topic and readily say “I don’t know” and revise beliefs when better evidence appears. This mindset is a characteristic of intellectual humility. This trait reduces bias, improves learning, and supports better decision-making because it keeps attention focused on accuracy rather than ego protection or premature certainty. Meta-cognitively, intellectual humility involves recognizing the limits of one’s knowledge and the possibility of being wrong, which promotes the authentic pursuit of knowledge and not to fulfill one’s ego.
In conversation, intelligent people will show this trait by giving follow-up questions, pauses before answering questions, and keeping an open mind with new and changing information. When working in teams, it improves collaboration by lowering defensiveness and encouraging viewpoint integration during complex problem-solving. In everyday life, it prevents escalations of commitment to bad ideas by treating errors as something to learn from rather than failures. Continue reading…
