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Abstract
The current study examined how intellectual humility (IH) relates to political extremity. Previous research and the present results show that when instructed to explain the mechanics of policies, attitudes tended to become less extreme. However, although not statistically significant, participants' political views tend to be more extreme after listing reasons for their policy preferences. A significant interaction between pre-test vs post-test extremity and intellectual humility was also reported, suggesting that intellectual humility may increase sensitivity to extremity with awareness of the limitations of one's knowledge. Furthermore, although lack of statistical significance, perhaps due to the small sample size, participants with lower intellectual humility tended to hold more extreme views during reasoning, but this extremity decreased when they provided explanations. Conversely, the high intellectual humility group primarily showed a main effect of timing, indicating a consistent reduction in the extremity of their views, regardless of whether they were reasoning or providing explanations. The present results suggest that intellectual humility may be important in reducing political extremity either as a characteristic attitude or by the effect of trying to explain something that is poorly understood.