"Intellectual humility is a personality trait; may influence people's decision-making abilities in many arenas.

The topic of dealing with what you don’t know brings up a very important:topic of  intellectual humility.


“Intellectual humility” has been something of a wallflower among personality traits, receiving far less scholarly attention than such brash qualities as egotism or hostility. Yet this little-studied characteristic may influence people’s decision-making abilities in politics, health and other arenas, says new research from Duke University.



Intellectual Humility is the Opposite of Intellectual Arrogance or Conceit

As defined by the authors, intellectual humility is the opposite of intellectual arrogance or conceit. In common parlance, it resembles open-mindedness.  Intellectually humble people can have strong beliefs, but recognize their fallibility and are willing to be proven wrong on matters large and small, Leary said. (Alison Jones, Duke Today, March 17, 2017, emphasis added)


To get a little more technical, here are a couple of useful paragraphs from a discussion of the paper cited above:

The term, intellectual humility (IH), has been defined in several ways, but most definitions converge on the notion that IH involves recognizing that one’s beliefs and opinions might be incorrect. . . . 

Some definitions of IH include other features or characteristics – such as low defensiveness, appreciating other people’s intellectual strengths, or a prosocial orientation . . .



Core Characteristic of Intellectual Humility is Recognizing that one's belief maybe wrong

One conceptualization defines intellectual humility as

• recognizing that a particular personal belief may be fallible, 
• accompanied by an appropriate attentiveness to limitations in the evidentiary basis of that belief and 
• to one's own limitations in obtaining and evaluating relevant information. 

This definition qualifies the core characteristic (recognizing that one’s belief may be wrong) with considerations that distinguish IH from mere lack of confidence in one’s knowledge or understanding.



Distinguishing Intellectual Humility from Uncertainty or Low Self-Confidence

IH can be distinguished from uncertainty or low self-confidence by the degree to which people hold their beliefs tentatively specifically because they are aware that

• the evidence on which those beliefs are based could be limited or flawed, 
• that they might lack relevant information, or 
• that they may not have the expertise or ability to understand and evaluate the evidence. 

(The Psychology of Intellectual Humility, Mark Leary, Duke University, emphasis added)

Reference:

In investing, uncertainty is a given – how we deal with it will be critical. Read Howard Marks’s latest memo, in which he discusses the value of understanding the limitations of our foresight and “investing scared.”

https://www.oaktreecapital.com/docs/default-source/memos/uncertainty.pdf