Intellectual humility: Validation and comparison of four self-report scales in the German context

Intellectual humility (IH), the recognition of one’s intellectual limitations, is a promising characteristic to tackle societal conflicts such as affective political polarization. Despite increasing research on IH in recent years, most research has been conducted in the USA, probably due to a lack of scales that are validated in languages other than English. Our objective was to offer researchers in the German context several IH measures to choose from depending on their specific research question. Therefore, we validated and compared four established IH scales within the German context. Items of three widely-used IH scales (CIHS, SIHS, LIHS) were translated from English into German by two independent researchers, rated by experts ( n = 8), and pre-tested ( n = 13). We then assessed the structural, convergent, discriminant, and incremental validity of the scales plus an existing Swiss-German IH scale (IHS) in a preregistered online-survey ( N = 698), representative for Germany regarding age, gender, and education. Discriminant validity was assessed via social desirability, cognitive closure, need for cognition, HEXACO honesty-humility, and openness, and incremental validity regarding affective polarization. Results showed that the IHS did not meet all of our pre-registered criteria, potentially due to cross-cultural differences between Germany and Switzerland. However, the three translated scales were comparable to the original English scales regarding structural, convergent, and discriminant validity. The SIHS showed the best incremental validity in predicting less affective polarization towards opinion-based outgroups. Limitations and directions for future research regarding IH in German-speaking contexts are discussed.