Intellectual humility in the relationship between religious or spiritual conflict and psychological outcomes

We examined intellectual humility as a factor related to interpersonal religious or spiritual conflict. Among U.S. adults (N = 459), religious/spiritual conflict was associated with more perceived stress and psychological distress. Intellectual humility about religious/spiritual conflict was associated with less perceived stress, more forgiveness of the conflict partner(s), and more personal growth in response to the conflict. Intellectual humility about religious/spiritual conflict moderated links between religious/spiritual conflict and psychological distress. Contrary to expectations, the link between religious/spiritual conflict and psychological distress was present at average and high levels of intellectual humility about religious/spiritual conflict and was weaker at low levels of intellectual humility about religious/spiritual conflict. The findings suggest intellectual humility may be adaptive for a number of reasons, but that being aware of the limitations of one's beliefs might also sensitize individuals to experience more psychological distress during religious/spiritual conflict. Future work can examine whether this increase in distress is temporary in nature and how researchers and clinicians might address any psychological distress associated with intellectual humility interventions in the context of interpersonal conflict. Through this work, we introduced two new single-item intellectual humility measures, which functioned similarly to two established multi-item intellectual humility measures.