[MUSIC] In this lecture, we're going to look at measuring humility more as a general construct than specifically intellectual humility. As mentioned in the last lecture, a group of colleagues and I recently reviewed the literature, and we found 16 measures that we believe are good measures of humility. Most of the measures are published and are currently in use by researchers. Many of these measures look at humility as a general characteristic and are not specifically measures of intellectual humility. Some, however, are designed specifically with intellectual humility in mind, and I will be sure to emphasize these measures in particular in the next lecture. There's no way that I can provide, in a couple of brief lectures, an exhaustive review of all 16 measures that we found. Furthermore, the field is rapidly expanding, and much effort is currently underway in developing even more new measures, some of which I don't even know much about. So, here I will provide only a brief description of some of the measures. Now, measurement is not the most exciting topic. Believe me, I know this. I've spent a good portion of my career focusing on issues of measurement, and perhaps that tells you something about how exciting my life is. But good measurement is absolutely vital for scientific progress. Before I mention some specific measures, let me explain what I mean by saying that these are "good" measures. As you may recall from the previous lecture, measurement in psychology often involves reports. And as I mentioned in that lecture, for better or worse, these reports are usually self-reports of multiple items. Measurement of anything in psychology, including humility, must meet acceptable scientific standards in terms of two basic psychometric considerations: reliability and validity. Reliability is the extent to which a scale is consistent in its measurement. If you are a humble person today, then you will likely be a humble person two weeks from now, all things being equal. A measure should show such consistency. There are several ways to determine a scale's reliability. The most common is called Cronbach's alpha, ad it's an indicator of the extent to which the scale's items are measuring the same thing. But sometimes we do measure consistency over time. We call that test-retest reliability, and it's frequently around two weeks apart that we tend to administer the test. A scale's validity is the extent to which a scale actually measures what it is intended to measure. Validity is often determined by the correlation between a given scale and some other standard or measure, the extent to which a given scale correlates with measures or related constructs. In the case of humility, we might expect it to correlate closely with a measure of modesty. And if it does, we say that there is convergent validity. We might also expect it to negatively correlate with a measure of narcissism. And this too is a notion of convergent validity. Sometimes, we expect a given scale to not be correlated with a measure to which it should be independent. And we refer to that as divergent validity. For example, a measure of humility we would expect to be unrelated to a measure of extraversion. There are minimal criteria for determining if a scale is sufficiently reliable and valid, and that is beyond our concern here. For our concern, all of the scales reported here show good reliability and validity. So now we are going to look at three self-report measures of humility as a general dispositional characteristic. The first measure that we're going to look at is called the Honesty-Humility Subscale, and it's a subscale of a six-factor personality inventory that's called HEXACO. Now the word HEXACO is an acronym, where each letter refers to some aspect of personality. And the 'H' in HEXACO is the one that refers to honesty and humility. And the Honesty-Humilty subscale of this personality inventory is among the first and most widely used measures of dispositional humility. It is a ten-item measure that consists of four components: sincerity, fairness, greed avoidance, and modesty. Respondents rate each item on a five point Likert Scale. Now, as a side note, you might sometimes hear that reported as a "Li-kert Scale." Now, I want to be intellectually humble here, But I do believe that the correct pronunciation is "Likert." And the reason why I think that is that I happen to know a person, now who's quite old, but who was a student of Dr. Likert. And he told me it should be pronounced "Likert" and not "Li-kert." At any rate, some of the sample honesty-humility items include: "I wouldn't use flattery to get a raise or promotion at work, even if I thought it would succeed." That would be an example item of the sincerity dimension. Or another example item: "If I knew that I could never get caught, I would be willing to steal $1 million." Now, that item is reverse-scored. In other words, a person who agrees with that item is indicating a low sense of humility. And that is an example item of the greed avoidance scale. The scale overall, the Honesty-Humility Scale, meets the criteria for good reliability and validity. But the combination of honesty and humility in the scale raises some questions about whether it is a good measure of humility as we have talked about it here. In fact, you may have been surprised by the two sample items provided here. However, it should be pointed out that people who score high on greed avoidance are not especially motivated by monetary or social status considerations, which, if you may recall, we thought of as a possibly important dimension of both intellectual humility and humility as a general construct. Similarly, high scorers on modesty view themselves as ordinary people without any claim to special treatment. So, there is certainly some overlap with our conception of humility. However, it is probably not the best available measure, even though it is the most widely used measure. Often, the first measure of a construct that is published is the one that gets the most action, regardless of whether it is the best measure or not. The second scale that we'll talk about is called the general humility scale. This scale is a 13-item, self-report scale based upon the conceptualization of humility presented in these lectures. It is currently unpublished, but its development is part of a study that will soon be submitted for publication. It is rated on a five-point Likert Scale, strongly disagree to strongly agree, with higher scores indicating greater levels of humility. The scale has three factors. The first factor is a low concern for status; five items make up that scale. The second factor is an other-orientation, also consisting of five items. And the third scale is an accurate assessment of self, or it could be an awareness of limitation, that is comprised of three items. Sample items include, for low concern for status: "Getting special attention from others is not that important to me." For other-orientation: "It is important that my work benefits others as much as it benefits me." And, for accurate assessment of self, "To view myself more honestly, I am willing to face things I don't like about myself." So, here are just a few measures of humility as a general dispositional characteristic. In the next lecture, we will look at measures that specifically attempt to measure intellectual humility.
