The Intelligence Trap Review: How Smart Is Too Smart?

“…Yet in industrialized Western countries, where bravado is often mistaken for strength, a slower, humbler, more deliberative approach to decision-making tends to garner little respect. Our schools still prize innate abilities over other skills, and most students are encouraged to believe that speed (in answering questions and processing information) is an essential and even fateful sign of superiority. We also prefer “strong” leaders who stick to their convictions, even though closed-mindedness typically leads to more aggressive tactics and occasionally calamitous misunderstandings….”

Emily Bobrow, "‘The Intelligence Trap’ Review: How Smart Is Too Smart?"Wall Street Journal, August 5, 2019, https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-intelligence-trap-review-how-smart-is-too-smart-11565045370

‘The Intelligence Trap’ Review: How Smart Is Too Smart?

Every year brings more books about how stupid we are. Apparently humans are impulsive, gullible and prone to making all sorts of bad decisions. We are also fascinated by our shortcomings, if the shelves at airport bookstores are anything to go by. The latest contribution to the pile is from David Robson, a London-based science journalist, who offers an intriguing angle on our flawed habits of mind. In “The Intelligence Trap,” he argues not only that we are walking, talking, error-making machines, but also that the cleverest among us may make the biggest mistakes.

Anyone who has spent time on a college campus has probably intuited that innate intelligence and common sense don’t necessarily go hand in hand. But Mr. Robson bolsters his case with a raft of studies that show all the ways in which a fine mind can trip up. People with high SAT scores, for example, are less likely to either take advice or learn from their blunders. Folks with multiple degrees and professional expertise are often blind to their own biases. The consequences of these gaffes are often merely personal and embarrassing, but sometimes they are catastrophic. In American hospitals, one in 10 patient deaths appear to be the result of diagnostic mistakes.

To help distinguish between smarts and wisdom, Mr. Robson offers the analogy of a car. A fast engine can get you around quickly, but horsepower alone doesn’t guarantee you’ll arrive at your destination safely. Without a proper understanding of the rules of the road, a speedy driver is, in fact, a menace. Philosophers have perceived the shortcomings of sharp minds for millennia, but the pursuit of “evidence-based wisdom” really gained steam after the financial crash of 2008, when nearly everyone suffered from the costly mistakes of “experts.” New institutions such as Chicago’s Center for Practical Wisdom now apply scientific techniques, including randomized control trials, to explore and understand human reason. “The study of wisdom now seems to have reached a kind of tipping point,” Mr. Robson tells us.

In keeping with the driving comparison, this book is most entertaining when it allows readers to rubberneck at the collisions. The author’s anecdotes about the missteps of masterminds offer plenty of opportunities for schadenfreude—although the assumption that these problems only afflict other people is a perfect illustration of the blind spots intelligent people often have about themselves. Arthur Conan Doyle, for example, was easily hoodwinked by photographs of some fairies frolicking in Cottingley, England. In reality these sprites were cardboard cut-outs, but Conan Doyle, a devoted spiritualist in addition to being a doctor of medicine and the creator of Sherlock Holmes (the “perfect reasoning and observing machine”), claimed that they offered evidence of a supernatural world, and used his superior analytical reasoning to dismiss the skeptics and rationalize his beliefs. When the girls behind the photos finally confessed to the hoax, one of them admitted her surprise that adults would be so easily fooled—“they wanted to be taken in,” she observed.

Beliefs often arise from emotional needs, which we intellectually rationalize post hoc. Clever people are as prone to irrationality as everyone else—a phenomenon called “dysrationalia”—yet they are often even more skilled at justifying their superstitions. College graduates are more likely than those with less education to believe in extrasensory perception and “psychic healing.” High-IQ types are just as likely to have financial problems, even though they often have better jobs with higher salaries. Because many “brainiacs” expect to outsmart others, they are often more heedless of risks and less aware of their own flaws in thinking. As the 19th-century psychologist William James once said, “a great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.”

Mr. Robson offers some proven tricks for dodging these intellectual pratfalls. Many are familiar enough to be cliché: Be humble and keep an open mind; weigh opposing views with less emotion by taking a step back. These ideas may sound like common sense, but Mr. Robson convincingly shows us that they are not quite common enough. He cites the research of Eli Finkel at Northwestern University, who found that simply encouraging couples to view their conflicts from a more detached, dispassionate perspective helped them achieve greater intimacy and trust. Doctors who are pushed to analyze their gut responses and consider alternative hypotheses improve their diagnostic accuracy by up to 40%.

The good news is that wisdom, unlike intelligence, can be taught, and these lessons bear real fruit. People with superior reasoning skills are more content and generally happier with their relationships. Yet in industrialized Western countries, where bravado is often mistaken for strength, a slower, humbler, more deliberative approach to decision-making tends to garner little respect. Our schools still prize innate abilities over other skills, and most students are encouraged to believe that speed (in answering questions and processing information) is an essential and even fateful sign of superiority. We also prefer “strong” leaders who stick to their convictions, even though closed-mindedness typically leads to more aggressive tactics and occasionally calamitous misunderstandings.

What is fascinating is that IQ scores in industrialized countries have never been so high, rising the equivalent of 30 points in 80 years. Access to factual information has also never been so widespread. Yet we are no less susceptible to the allure of fake news and pseudoscience. We are as likely as ever to opportunistically prop up our own positions and take down those of our rivals. Clearly, we need to find new and better ways to teach critical thinking and measure good judgment. Reading David Robson’s book would be a good place to start.