We present experimental findings from a study (N=99) examining how intellectual humility (IH), i.e., the metacognitive awareness of epistemic limitations, affects the evaluation of AI-generated health dialogues varying in scientific rigor. Participants were randomly assigned to evaluate one of three dialogues about exercise and mental health: scientifically accurate, moderately pseudoscientific, or strongly pseudoscientific. Results reveal that IH functions as a selective cognitive filter. Individuals with higher humility scores rated pseudoscientific content as significantly less credible, while showing no correlation with credibility assessments of accurate content. Crucially, humility did not predict the ability to identify AI as the source of dialogues, suggesting that epistemic vigilance operates on content quality rather than source attribution. We interpret these findings through an evolutionary lens, proposing that IH represents an ancestral adaptation for navigating informationally uncertain environments. It remains effective at detecting exploitation attempts in AI-generated content, despite humans lacking evolved mechanisms for detecting AI sources. The study contributes to understanding how foundation models might improve or undermine human epistemic defenses, especially in health communication contexts.

翻译：我们展示了来自一项实验研究（N=99）的结果，探讨智力谦逊（IH，即对认知局限的元认知意识）如何影响对科学严谨性各异的AI生成健康对话的评价。参与者被随机分配评估三段关于运动与心理健康的对话：科学准确型、中度伪科学型和高度伪科学型。结果显示，IH起到了选择性认知过滤器的作用。谦逊得分较高的个体对伪科学内容的可信度评估显著降低，而对准确内容的可信度评估则无显著关联。关键的是，谦逊未能预测识别对话来源为AI的能力，表明认知警觉性作用于内容质量而非来源归因。我们从演化视角解读这些发现，提出IH代表一种祖先适应机制，用于应对信息不确定性环境。尽管人类尚未演化出识别AI来源的机制，但在检测AI生成内容中的利用企图时，该机制依然有效。本研究有助于理解基础模型可能如何增强或削弱人类的认知防御机制，特别是在健康传播情境中。