Measuring intellectual humility through situated behavior: An alternative to dispositional self-reports

Although psychological theory views behavior as an interaction between person and situation, the measurement of metacognition often relies on situation-free, abstract self-views. To align measurement with interactionist frameworks, we proposed a situated approach, using Intellectual Humility (IH)—recognizing one’s limits and fallibility—as a proof of concept. We validated this approach across diverse populations: English- and Spanish-speaking North Americans (N = 633) and adults from 136 rural Honduran villages (N = 2,567). Rather than rating abstract tendencies, participants reconstructed three recent disagreements (freely chosen, wrong, and right) and reported specific behaviors via branching binary probes. This method demonstrated cross-cultural coherence of the IH construct while capturing substantial situational variability. Notably, 74–81% of variance occurred within persons: IH expression fluctuated significantly based on epistemic context (being wrong vs. right) and social dynamics (partner status). These situational effects also fully explained gender differences in the Honduran sample. The situated approach showed efficiency outside Western, educated contexts and helps overcome the humility paradox—wherein the least intellectually humble overclaim their humility. We discuss four principles for aligning measurement with theory—contextual specificity, sampling from actual experiences via event reconstruction, accessibility across diverse populations via branching probes, and modeling within-person variability—offering a framework for assessing metacognitive and self-regulatory constructs beyond the constraints of static dispositional measures.