Transparency Triumphs: The Influence of Intellectual Transparency in Love and Work

Some character strengths are referred to as “other-regarding intellectualvirtues” because they focus on aiding other people to gain epistemic goods such asknowledge or understanding. Research on the associations between other-regardingintellectual virtues and important outcomes in the domains of love and work hasbeen extremely limited. In the present research, we conducted two studies focusedon Intellectual Transparency (IT) – an other-regarding intellectual virtue that involvesfaithfully sharing one’s perspective with others to help them gain knowledge. InStudy 1, using actor-partner interdependence models with 134 romantic couples, wefound that an individual’s self-rated IT predicted multiple indicators of relationshipquality for the partner when controlling for Big Five personality traits. In Study 2,using hierarchical regressions with 126 worker-supervisor dyads, we found that aworker’s self-rated IT predicted supervisor ratings of the worker’s job performanceand organizational citizenship when controlling for Big Five traits and the worker’shonesty and love of learning. We discuss whether IT promotes positive outcomes forothers more than oneself in love and work.