Or, and this is a bit of a stretch, as Tina Turner once asked, “What’s love got to do with it?”

Eranda Jayawickreme, professor of Psychology & Senior Research Fellow, Program for Leadership and Character, Wake Forest University, answers the question about humility and more in an October 25, 2023 essay for The Conversation, Note: Links have been removed,

What does it mean to be a good thinker? Recent research suggests that acknowledging you can be wrong plays a vital role.

I had these studies in mind a few months ago when I was chatting with a history professor about a class she was teaching to first-year students here at Wake Forest University. As part of my job as a psychology professor who researches character – basically, what it means to be a good person – I often talk to my colleagues about how our teaching can develop the character of our students.

In this case, my colleague saw her class as an opportunity to cultivate character traits that would allow students to respectfully engage with and learn from others when discussing contentious topics. Wanting to learn about and understand the world is a distinctive human motivation. As teachers, we want our students to leave college with the ability and motivation to understand and learn more about themselves, others and their world. She wondered: Was there one characteristic or trait that was most important to cultivate in her students?

I suggested she should focus on intellectual humility. Being intellectually humble means being open to the possibility you could be wrong about your beliefs.

But is being humble about what you know or don’t know enough?

I now think my recommendation was incorrect. It turns out good thinking requires more than intellectual humility [emphasis mine] – and, yes, I see the irony that admitting this means I had to draw on my own intellectual humility.

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One reason for my focus on intellectual humility was that without acknowledging the possibility that your current beliefs may be mistaken, you literally can’t learn anything new. While being open to being wrong is generally quite challenging – especially for first-year university students confronting the limits of their understanding – it is arguably the key first step in learning.

… was I right in recommending just a single trait? Is intellectual humility by itself enough to promote good thinking? When you zoom out to consider what is really involved in being a good thinker, it becomes clear that simply acknowledging that one could be wrong is not enough.

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While part of being a good thinker involves recognizing one’s possible ignorance, it also requires an eagerness to learn, curiosity about the world, and a commitment to getting it right.

What other traits, then, should people strive to cultivate? The philosopher Nate King writes that being a good thinker involves possessing multiple traits, including intellectual humility, but also intellectual firmness, love of knowledge, curiosity, carefulness and open-mindedness.

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Jayawickreme’s thought-provoking (word play!) October 25, 2023 essay doesn’t take long to read and it can also be found in an October 25, 2023 news item on phys.org.

I couldn’t resist,