Exploring Intellectual Humility, Achievement Goals, and Grades Among High School Students

• In Event: 56.042 - Intellectual Character Development in Adolescents: Promoting Learning and Success

Abstract

Objectives
Adolescence is a fascinating time for intellectual development. On the one hand, adolescents are known for being know-it-all contrarians (Nucci, 2005). On the other hand, adolescence is marked by intense questioning and openness to learning from varied sources (Richert, 2002). How might these tendencies affect adolescents’ achievement in school?

This study addresses this question by examining intellectual humility - acknowledging the limitations of one’s current knowledge and valuing others’ intelligence - and its relation to high school students’ motivation in school and math grades. We also examine how teens’ know-it-all proclivities, or intellectual defensiveness, relates to math achievement and motivation.

Theoretical framework
The current research draws from two theoretical traditions. The first is intellectual virtue theory, which holds that intellectual character strengths such as intellectual humility promote love of learning, allowing individuals to attain greater understanding and academic success (Baehr, 2012).

The second is achievement goal theory, which argues that individuals approach achievement contexts with different goals, some focused on learning and mastery (i.e., learning goals), and some focused on performing well relative to others (i.e., performance goals) (Hulleman et al., 2010). Both types of goals can boost achievement, but learning goals may be more hearty, particularly when students encounter difficult material that can compromise their ability to perform, and, therefore, more adaptive long-term (Hulleman et al., 2010).

Joining these two theories, we predicted that intellectual humility and intellectual defensiveness would both enhance students’ achievement, but in different ways. Specifically, we thought intellectual humility would increase achievement by promoting a strong motivation to learn. By contrast, we thought intellectual defensiveness would boost achievement by promoting a strong motivation to out-perform others.

Participants
88 students attending a public high school in the Midwestern United States participated in this research (14 – 16 years old, Mage = 14.52, SD = .57).

Procedure
Students were surveyed in their math class (see Table 1 for measures). Students’ grades were collected from school records. Correlations, step-wise multiple regression, and bootstrapping analysis to test mediation were used in this study.

Results
As predicted, intellectual humility was positively associated with learning goals, but not with performance goals. Intellectual defensiveness was positively associated with performance goals, but not with learning goals. Both types of goals were positively associated with achievement (Table 2), and explained unique variance in achievement even when controlling for student gender and parent education (Table 3).

A bias-corrected bootstrap mediation model (5000 bootstrap re-samples) supported the role of learning goals in mediating the association between intellectual humility and achievement; a separate bootstrapping analysis supported the role of performance goals in mediating the association between intellectual defensiveness and achievement (Figure 1).

Significance
To our knowledge, this is the first empirical test of the relation between intellectual humility, achievement goals and achievement in high school. Although the analyses do not prove causality, the findings provide initial support that intellectual humility may enhance achievement by boosting a strong motivation to learn, whereas intellectual defensiveness may also enhance achievement, but by boosting a motivation to out-perform others.

Authors

• Tenelle Porter, University of California - Davis

• Karina Schumann, University of Pittsburgh