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On today’s episode, Tim speaks with psychologists Liz Hall (Ph.D.) and Erin Smith (Ph.D.) on the virtue of intellectual humility and the importance of this virtue for addressing biases and in helping with our consumption of social media. Through the course of the discussion, they address the following questions: What is intellectual humility? Do Christians have a responsibility to be intellectually humble? And drawing from resources in the Christian faith, how might we practice this important virtue to help strengthen our convictions?

Transcript

Tim Muehlhoff: Welcome to the Winsome Conviction Podcast. My name is Tim Muehlhoff. I'm the co-director of Biola's Winsome Conviction Project. I'm also a communication professor here at Biola University in La Mirada, California. One thing about this show that's interesting is we don't have all the answers. We try to treat this show a little bit of what is it like to work the problem? What is it like to think about deep issues? One of the issues that's becoming more prevalent today is something called my side bias. That my group is utterly convinced that we are right A to Z, thus there's no reason to consider other perspectives. I get rewarded from my perspective. There's also something called affective polarization. Which means your group isn't just wrong, but you're evil. That has certainly become part of the conversation.

If you remember in a past podcast, we had two scholars come on to help us understand a little bit on the deeper level my side bias, affective polarization. It was such a great conversation. I had so many questions I wanted to get to that we've asked them both to come back and they graciously have done that. One is a friend and colleague Dr. Elizabeth Hall. She teaches in Rosemead School of Psychology. She's one of our top researchers. She's probably shaking her head at that, but it's absolutely true. She's written over 100 academic articles, and more importantly than that, her and her husband Todd, are good friends with me and Noreen.

Then a brand new friend is Dr. Erin Smith at Cal Baptist. She is the Fletcher Jones Endowed Professor of Research, and she has graciously agreed to come back. Erin, thank you for joining us again.

Erin Smith: It's great to be back.

Tim Muehlhoff: And Liz, thank you.

Liz Hall: Yeah, great to be here.

Tim Muehlhoff: Let's remind the audience very quickly, a little bit of my side bias. Liz, you wrote this in a journal article for the Christian Scholar's Review on civility, and I think it's just a nice recap of what we're talking about when we say my side bias. When we hear an opinion that differs from ours during public engagement, our moral emotions alert us to a potential threat. We intuitively move away from threatening ideas and towards ones that keep us and our groups safe, and we jump quickly to conclusions about the issue, seeing only what is consistent with our position. And that is kind of what we've been talking about, my side bias. If you've not listened to the previous podcast, go ahead and take a listen to that, but you don't need to jump into this conversation.

So let me throw this out. Erin, what role does social media play in strengthening or even creating my side bias?

Erin Smith: What role does it not play?

Tim Muehlhoff: Yes.

Erin Smith: So my side bias and this sense of wanting to defend ourselves and be a part of this group, that's existed for as long as humans have. But, what is unique about our current cultural moment is that we continually feed inputs into machines that run on algorithms. Algorithms that are attempting to capture attention, and we know that attention is captured by things that are shocking and provocative. So we are consistently seeing algorithms which are using the same things, but pushing people further into these extremes and strengthening those voices. So even if it's a minority on the extremes of these various viewpoints, they have an out-sized influence on the space in the room, if you will. And so this is what social media and other kinds of internet platforms really run on is the exacerbation and identification of which side are you on?

Tim Muehlhoff: Oh, that's so good. Erin, let me give you an illustration of this that I think really hits on the points that you just said. I just spoke at Biola University, did an anchored conference, conference for pastors and lay leaders. And I was talking about this and I used a test case, this literally was sent to me by a friend. Public university rules now prohibit offensive facial features. Liz's eyes just went big listening to that. I'm thinking, okay, that's ridiculous. That's crazy. He wrote, when he sent it to me, we've lost our minds.

But here's what's funny, Erin. He actually put the link that you could click on to actually go to the real story. So the real story is that University of Montana Western had published a policy in which students are to be kind to each other, and they start with a quote from JFK, civility is not a sign of weakness. And then they list all these things, really good principles like expectations, trust each other, talk to not about others, listen, employ active listening by giving undivided attention, understand differing views, and then responsibility for how you communicate, not how the other person communicates. Erin, I'm reading all these going, that's awesome.

And then I get to the one place where it says, even non-verbals can communicate contempt, which by the way is absolutely true from the research. And yet this is how the person closed their essay for a very conservative journal based on everything that I just said. When George Orwell famously wrote about a dystopian future where every thought is monitored, he shouldn't have set it in Great Britain, it would've been much more accurate had he instead written about American college campuses where you can't even have negative non-verbals. But do you see, it's everything you just said?

Erin Smith: Yeah.

Tim Muehlhoff: It's the sensational that's click bait, that's taking that university's civility standards and presenting it in the worst possible light. And then if you don't click on that link, you walk away thinking that the University of Montana-Western is woke liberal and you can get suspended for not having the right facial features.

Erin Smith: Yeah.

Tim Muehlhoff: I mean I think that's such a microcosm of where we're at today. Liz, anything you would add to this, the role of social media today, of maybe creating or cultivating my side bias.

Liz Hall: I just automatically think of the way that our brains are wired, where we love those little hits of dopamine and the pleasure that it gives us. And so we know that novelty, of course, is one of the problems with the internet that we're becoming increasingly aware of, but also all those likes and the shares and the ones that get the likes and the shares are the ones that are over the top and extreme and full of emotion and that kind of thing. Which of course then makes everything so much worse because then you're not getting anything that's measured, you're not getting anything that is well thought through or nuanced. Instead, you're just getting... Well, as you illustrate so beautifully in that story. Just the really outrageous takes, those are the only ones that get any traction on the internet.

Tim Muehlhoff: And here's what's really sad, I actually reached out to the author and asked if he would be on the podcast, maybe I'm misreading this. Let's have a conversation. No response whatsoever. I tried multiple times. Because it doesn't seem like there's interest in having these conversations that are give and take conversations where there's a middle ground. You've introduced me to this concept, Liz, of intellectual humility. Can you unpack that for our listeners of what are the signs of intellectual humility? What is intellectual humility and does that really apply to even us as Christians?

Liz Hall: I think most of us are familiar with just plain old humility. We know it's a good thing. We know that Jesus illustrated it, that it's one of the ways in which we're supposed to follow Jesus. I think a lot less people are familiar with this concept of humility in the intellectual realm, in the realm of our thoughts and how we approach the ideas of other people. And so intellectual humility is something that I think, as you're right, needs a bit more unpacking.

There's a philosopher here at Biola, Kent Dunnington who has done some nice work in this area of intellectual humility, and he frames it as a Christian virtue. He calls it glad intellectual dependence on God. Glad intellectual dependence on God. So it's this idea that we live our thought lives before God. We live our thought lives in God's presence, and because of that, there should be certain things that characterize the way that we think about truth.

So one of the really important parts is an acknowledgement of our limitations, you know that your knowledge is incomplete as a creature before an omniscient God. You're very aware of your finitude, your limitations in that area. There's also kind of an awareness of the way in which you tend to approach your thinking. And so there's this, what psychologists called metacognitive awareness, where you recognize that as a flawed human being there might be certain biases that you bring to the table, certain ways that as you're thinking through evidence, you might tend toward a wanting to accept something and then discounting other things. And so there's kind of a virtuous approach to recognizing the ways that you might fail in terms of being kind of loving and hospitable, in terms of what other people are bringing to the table.

And then there's just kind of this basic willingness to change your mind. That if you're not so entrenched in some of your ideas, that you're completely unwilling to recognize that perhaps your view needs to be nuanced or perhaps your view needs to shift a little bit or that you may even, horror of horrors, have been wrong. So all of that is packed into this idea of intellectual humility.

Tim Muehlhoff: That you may have been wrong. Erin, so if we were going to practice intellectual humility and give a fair hearing to other perspectives, what would that look like if a person really wanted to do that? I've been very harsh towards a political perspective. I've been very harsh and closed-minded toward even theological issues. What might be the first steps of saying, okay, I need to cultivate a little bit more intellectual humility?

Erin Smith: I think one of the behavioral expressions that you'll see is a lot of listening, but not listening with the intention of building an armory to fire back. But actually listening to understand, listening with curiosity and listening to really put yourself in the position of the person who presumably you're having this as a conversation with someone, how did they arrive at their various conclusions? What is it about their story, about who they are as a person that has led them to this position? Because when we really listen well that form of validation, now validation here doesn't mean agreement but it means that there is a deep, attentive understanding and empathy around how they came to this position, that I think really opens us up to saying that there are many ways to approach different problems.

I'm thinking about this especially in the context of politics where when we're talking about policies, we might agree on what problem we're trying to solve, but we have different pathways of trying to get there. And it's very easy to look at pathways that are different than the ones we like and say, well, only dumb people think that. But when we actually take the time to listen well, we can still disagree at the end of the day and say, that's not a policy that I would adopt. But we actually engage with another person in a way that says, and I see how somebody else could arrive at that conclusion. And I think that's one of the markers of intellectual humility, but it requires a lot of work in meaningful listening.

Tim Muehlhoff: But can listening go too far? Can empathy go too far? I recently was on Sean McDowell's YouTube channel responding to a book called The Sin of the Empathy. And his concern is that we listen too much. We cross the boundary of empathy where we're condoning a perspective, not just merely listening to it. Any quick thoughts on when might my listening actually cross over into condoning?

Erin Smith: So the quick thought is I understand that impulse because when we validate someone's experience, that feels a lot like, excuse me, agreement. But because they're really butted up against each other. But I think that one of the things that as Christians we are called to do is actually put a line there and say, yes, I do understand how you came to this. And still that's not the position that I hold and when to actually speak up on that, I think requires a different kind of listening that we might want to call attunement to the Holy Spirit, but it's still another form of listening.

Tim Muehlhoff: Oh, that's really good. And a form of acknowledgement that your story is worth listening to is I think... And I think that's what makes Christian communicators so powerful is everybody's made in the image of God. I think everybody has a voice that we need to recognize the validity of that voice even if we really do disagree with each other.

But Liz, maybe a quick comment as Christian educators, what to do about this? So I do this thing in my class, and by the way, give me credit. I did it before tenure, students read the Quran cover to cover in one of my communication classes. When they finish they're part of 1%, 1%, of American Christians who have ever read a book of another faith tradition, which is very interesting. So how do we expand the horizons of our students and not freak out parents? Because when I did this, the very first time I did this, I got a response from a parent who said, I did not send my daughter to Biola University to read the Quran, was her comment. So how can we increase intellectual humility among our students and ourselves? Isn't that going to get a little messy? I mean, what if we listen to the best arguments or open ourselves up to really strong perspectives that we know maybe go against the grains of scripture, isn't that going to be really messy? And what do we do if we start to realize, wow, that was a really good argument. Can you speak into that a little bit as an educator?

Liz Hall: Oh, there's so much to say here. Well, let me begin with just the really pragmatic observation that in this day and age where anything is just a few minutes away, as fast as you can type on the internet, that we're not doing anybody a favor, especially our students at this kind of vulnerable age to protect them from anything. And well, maybe that's a little extreme. We'll protect them from some things.

But the best way to help them to make their way in the world post their college education is to allow them the space to really wrestle with the best possible version of whatever problematic idea is out there in the world so that they're really prepared then and they've developed not just an opinion about this particular topic, but they've developed the intellectual capacities to not get freaked out when something challenges their way of thinking. And to actually be able to think in kind of nuanced and complex ways about the new challenges that might come up 10 years from now. We're not going to be around to hold their hand then, so how have we prepared them to deal with these issues in the world?

So exposing them in the relative safety of a place where there's lots of support and lots of place to discuss and the developmental progress of increasing their capacity to deal with these issues is the best possible thing we can do for them as educators. So that's just kind of a pragmatic comment here.

Tim Muehlhoff: And there's a difference between somebody just starting Biola, first year, and somebody entering their junior senior year. I think we would look at that and say, developmentally we're dealing with a different student.

Liz Hall: Absolutely. Absolutely. But you also asked the question about intellectual humility. And here we're getting, I think into spiritual formation, which is also something that we take very seriously in terms of our students, helping them to grow in their intellectual ability, but to do it again, as Kent says, in glad intellectual dependence on God. Which brings with it just this very weighty awareness of our finitude and of our limitations. So I do think that it is very important to train students that when they're entering into the world of people who have ideas that are different than ours, as you said earlier, they're dealing with ideas that are coming from people who are made in God's image. And that these are people that they're supposed to not just buckle down and throw arrows from over a wall, but they're supposed to engage with them and love. And so how can you be hospitable to the ideas of others?

And the concern is always, is that going to undermine their faith? I mean that's the concern here. And so I think really what the crux of the issue is, is it possible to have a robust intellectual humility and also have deep Christian convictions? I'm a clinical psychologist. So a lot of what informs my way of thinking even about these issues that might seem far removed from clinical psychology is our theories like attachment theory. Let me take you back to attachment theory and what it does for a child. And one of the things it does is it provides what psychologists call a secure base. In other words, you're at a playground, you see a small child, and what's the pattern that you see? You see a mom or dad sitting there and the child goes away and explores the world a little bit and then comes back to the safety of mom. And then goes away a little bit more, explores and then comes back, puts the hand on the knee or whatever it is. And then you see this pattern with kids that have that secure connection with their parents.

And we do this as adults too. It doesn't necessarily take the form of running at the playground. Instead, we're not exploring the physical world, but often the world of ideas. And it's helpful to think of conviction, I think in this way. We're not convicted of a set of intellectual propositions merely. We are convinced of a relationship with God. And so when we think about God as that secure base for us, if we have cultivated the relationship with God where we can rest in the confidence that our God is a God that has our back, that loves us. Then it frees us up to explore the intellectual world in a way where we have that anchor, we have those convictions that are rooted in the person. And then we can go out and we can explore things without worrying that we're somehow going to lose our faith in that kind of thing.

And here's the deal. I mean, as Christians, we believe that we have truth. And so if you think about intellectual humility as a virtue that's supposed to support the pursuit of truth, isn't it always going to come back to the person who said, I am the way and the truth and the life? So I don't think that we need to worry that much. I think that the fear of ideas that are out there in the world might be more an indication that maybe we need to tend to this relationship, that there might be some insecurity there, and that if we can bolster that, then that allows our students then to freely go out into the world with conviction.

Tim Muehlhoff: Oh, I really like that. We talked to a child, a psychologist one time who said, if your only parenting philosophy is locking the liquor cabinet, that's it. Well then when your child goes off to college every liquor cabinet is open and they never really bought your values, they just couldn't go there.

Erin, from educator standpoint, any thought that you would like to add of how does one cultivate the safe boundaries but also expose people to ideas that might be a little threatening to their Christian convictions?

Erin Smith: Yeah, so this idea that Liz shared I think is so good. This is a number of years ago now, and there's many other examples, but for some reason this one sticks out in my mind when, was it Russell Crowe, the Noah movie came out-

Tim Muehlhoff: Yes. Yeah.

Erin Smith: I didn't see it, but I know it caused a lot of buzz. And I remember having a conversation with my students who really just wanted to rail against it because of all the things that got wrong. And so we had an interesting conversation about what really does a Hollywood movie have to say about the gospel? And if your gospel is threatened by this movie, what does that actually say about your gospel? And so it's this really interesting idea around where are you anchored? And so the secure base analogy I think is a really appropriate one.

It was just this morning in my devotion time that... So I journal when I pray, and I just told God, I said, the more I learn about you, the less I know. Because the more I learn about God, the bigger he becomes and so the smaller my respective knowledge of his magnitude is. But that actually requires me to acknowledge that for the rest of my life I am in the process of knowing less and that makes God all the much bigger. Which is actually, it can be both freeing and a little scary, I think. But that's what... When I prayed this morning I wasn't explicitly thinking about intellectual humility, but I think that is part of my growth in that area in cultivating this sense of intellectual humility.

Tim Muehlhoff: Boy, I really appreciate that. To have a devotional time where we reflect on things with God, not just in the absence of God, we wrestle with him even as we think about issues that might be challenging to us.

Let me close with this. Sometimes you write a book and then you talk about the book. Other times you are in the midst of writing the book. So right now I am writing a book with John Marriott who used to be a professor here. He is now a Whittier Christian High School, one of our premier high schools here. We're writing a book on de-conversion, Erin, of the alarming number of evangelical students raised in a Christian home are leaving the faith completely. We're playing around with this idea of give the broad answer not the narrow answer. So when a child comes to a parent... The book is for parents, teachers, youth pastors, grandparents who are freaking out because the child's asking really, really hard questions. This book is kind of advice to that person. So I want to get your opinion of this, and I think it has to do with intellectual humility.

So it might be that your church really has a firm conviction that God did not use evolution to create the first human couple. By the way, at Biola University our doctrinal statement falls in that category. But there are other Christian intellectuals, theologians, who believe that God did use that. So don't present just your narrow answer, which is by golly, we believe in the word of God and there's no way Genesis can be reconciled with a Darwinian evolution. But maybe intellectual humility is saying, but fairness, there are some really noted Christians who believe otherwise. Now they couldn't necessarily teach at Biola University, that's okay. But they're really honest to goodness card-carrying evangelical intellectuals.

That's a little bit of intellectual humility in the part of the parent to say, mom and I do have our convictions on this issue, but we know there's really, really smart people who see it very differently. I'm thinking of Zondervan's awesome Four Views series that I think is really good and some people don't like.

Erin, could that be a form of intellectual humility, of saying to your child or student, listen, I do have convictions, but I realize there are people really smart, godly people who see it very differently than I do? Could that be a form of intellectual humility, presenting more than just one perspective, my perspective to my children, to my students?

Erin Smith: Absolutely. And I think it's exceptionally good practice. Now, to put my bias on the table, that's exactly what I do in my classroom with my students, except I don't tell them what my beliefs are about some of these things. But I tell them at the beginning, I say, what I'm trying to do is carve out the biggest range of beliefs possible under orthodox Christianity on a particular issue. And I really want you to see... So I have a particular spot on this spectrum where I land. But I want to meaningfully engage on the diversity of views that all fall under orthodox Christianity so that you recognize that in this class we can be Christian and look at one another and not agree on this particular topic and we all still are Christian.

When I think about the data that show young people leaving the church and saying, oh, it's because of science. Science is why I'm leaving the church. I think actually what has happened is that the church has failed to articulate the number of diverse pathways that we can kind of take that ultimately one of them will be right and on this side, we don't know which one, and yet we can still remain faithful in the tent as Christians, as brothers and sisters and hold this tension of disagreement together. Not on all issues, there are issues, there are beliefs that are outside of this tent, but can we do a service and say where are those boundaries really?

Tim Muehlhoff: Oh, that's really good. Erin, as you were saying that, I was thinking Romans Chapter 14 where Paul is dealing with Jewish converts who are like, hey, of course we're doing days and diets. Of course we are. That's showing fidelity to God. And Gentile converts are saying, no, you said I was free in Christ. I'm not taking on this Jewish baggage. And Paul says, I'm not going to settle this one. I see merit in both. I just don't want you to have contempt for each other and you're going to answer before God for your beliefs. And then last, and we need to hear this today, don't stop the work of God because of food is what Paul says. And I think we're stopping the work of God because of a lot of things.

Liz, add anything to this? Give the broad answer, not necessarily the narrow. Although you can believe the narrow. You can say, I have landed the plane on this, but I know that I'm not alone when it comes to thinking about these kind of issues.

Liz Hall: No, I love the approach. What I often add, because I do similar to what Erin does in some of my classes, I'll often add, thank God there are some things about the Christian faith that are repeated so frequently, so often in the Bible that they're the place where we can put our anchor. They're the place that we can cling on to. So I really want to get away from this idea that there's a tension between conviction and intellectual humility. There's really not. It's just simply the recognition that some things are crystal clear in scripture and some things are fuzzy. And once things are fuzzy, there's going to be differences of opinion.

And so to expect ourselves and everyone around us to have the same degree of conviction if we want to put it in that language or certainty about all of these things with varying degrees of clarity in scripture is really problematic. And as you said, sets us up for all kinds of problematic things, de-conversion, but even spiritual wrestling on the part of a lot of people who think, I'm not a very good Christian if I'm struggling or having questions about this.

Tim Muehlhoff: I really appreciate my... I was on the debate team at Eastern Michigan University, and they would hand out to each person on the team a topic, and you had to get up in front of the team and do both sides of the issue. And you actually got prizes if the team was split in how they voted. So if Muehlhoff got up and I present both sides and I go, get out of here, you're side B, and it was like 80% voting side B, you'd got no points whatsoever. But if the audience was actually split, like Muehlhoff, you're clocking in at 60/40, that's pretty good and you get a prize. I think we've lost the ability to do the method of the dialectic of saying, okay, let me give you old Earth, new Earth. Let me give you God used evolution, he didn't use... The Canaanite issue, was it literal or was it hyperbole? I think we sometimes view that as compromise, where I think that's what we should train students and ourselves. No, what are the good sides. And if Zondervan's right, there's maybe four views when it comes on issue.

Erin Smith: So when you asked me about listening and can we listen too much, I think about in Luke 2 when 12-year-old Jesus stays behind his parents found him in the synagogue asking questions. That's what it describes him as doing is asking questions. But then if you read the next verse, it says, and they were all amazed at his teaching. And so I wonder about the role of asking questions as a way of understanding people to invite our response and to invite our teaching. And so I don't think that there is necessarily a tension between asking questions and standing up for our convictions. But I do think that listening is often the gateway by which we are invited to share what we think.

Tim Muehlhoff: Erin, thank you. That's awesome.

Erin Smith: You're very welcome. Good luck with the rest of your podcast.

Tim Muehlhoff: So hey, thank you so much for introducing us to intellectual humility and something we need to cultivate within ourselves and within others, and really appreciate the thinking that you both have done on this issue. Liz, you really have shaped my view on so many different issues, and your husband's amazing as well when it comes to a book called Relational Spirituality, one of the best books I've read in the last, gosh, 20 years.

Well, thank you both for being here, and thank you for listening to the Winsome Conviction Project. We do not take that for granted. We so appreciate you tuning in. And so go to our website, Winsomeconviction.com, and you can listen to past episodes, including Erin and Liz talking about a marvelous project from the Templeton Religious Trust on how do we think about science and maybe do it in a more charitable way. So thank you so much. Goodbye.