The Intelligence Trap Read online

  The Intelligence Trap

  Why Smart People Make Stupid Mistakes – and How to Make Wiser Decisions

  David Robson

  www.hodder.co.uk

  First published in Great Britain in 2019 by

  Hodder & Stoughton

  An Hachette UK company

  Copyright © David Robson 2019

  The right of David Robson to be identified as the Author of the

  Work has been asserted by her in accordance with

  the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,

  stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any

  means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be

  otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that

  in which it is published and without a similar condition being

  imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library

  ISBN 9781473669864

  Hodder & Stoughton Ltd

  50 Victoria Embankment

  London

  EC2Y 0DZ

  www.hodder.co.uk

  To my parents, and to Robert

  Contents

  Introduction

  Part 1 - The downsides of intelligence

  1 The rise and fall of the Termites

  2 Entangled arguments

  3 The curse of knowledge

  Part 2 - Escaping the intelligence trap

  4 Moral algebra

  5 Your emotional compass

  6 A bullshit detection kit

  Part 3 - The art of successful learning

  7 Tortoises and hares

  8 The benefits of eating bitter

  Part 4 - The folly and wisdom of the crowd

  9 The makings of a ‘dream team’

  10 Stupidity spreading like wildfire

  Epilogue

  Appendix: Taxonomies of Stupidity and Wisdom

  Notes

  Acknowledgements

  Picture Credits

  Introduction

  Venture into the darker recesses of the internet, and you may come across the views of a man named Kary. If he is to be believed, he has some unique insights that could change the world order.1

  He suspects he was abducted by an alien near the Navarro River, California, for instance, after encountering a strange being who took the form of a glowing raccoon with ‘shifty black eyes’. He can’t actually remember what happened ‘after the little bastard’ gave him a ‘courteous greeting’; the rest of the night is a complete blank. But he strongly suspects it involved extra-terrestrial life. ‘There are a lot of mysteries in the valley’, he writes, cryptically.

  He’s also a devoted follower of astrology. ‘Most [scientists] are under the false impression that it is non-scientific and not a fit subject for their serious study’, he huffs in a long rant. ‘They are dead wrong.’ He thinks it’s the key to better mental health treatment and everyone who disagrees has ‘their heads firmly inserted in their asses’. Besides these beliefs in ET and star signs, Kary also thinks that people can travel through the ether on the astral plane.

  Things take a darker turn when Kary starts talking about politics. ‘Some of the big truths voters have accepted have little or no scientific basis’, he claims. This includes ‘the belief that AIDS is caused by HIV virus’ and ‘the belief that the release of CFCs into the atmosphere has created a hole in the ozone layer’.

  Needless to say, these ideas are almost universally accepted by scientists – but Kary tells his readers that they are just out for money. ‘Turn off your TV. Read your elementary science textbooks’, he implores. ‘You need to know what they are up to.’

  I hope I don’t have to tell you that Kary is wrong.

  The web is full of people with groundless opinions, of course – but we don’t expect astrologers and AIDS denialists to represent the pinnacle of intellectual achievement.

  Yet Kary’s full name is Kary Mullis, and far from being your stereotypically ill-informed conspiracy theorist, he is a Nobel Prize-winning scientist – placing him alongside the likes of Marie Curie, Albert Einstein and Francis Crick.

  Mullis was awarded the prize for his invention of the polymerase chain reaction – a tool that allows scientists to clone DNA in large quantities. The idea apparently came to him during a flash of inspiration on the road in Mendocino County, California, and many of the greatest achievements of the last few decades – including the Human Genome Project – hinged on that one moment of pure brilliance. The discovery is so important that some scientists even divide biological research into two eras – before and after Mullis.

  There can be little doubt that Mullis, who holds a PhD from the University of California, Berkeley, is incredibly intelligent; his invention can have only come from a lifetime dedicated to understanding the extraordinarily complex processes inside our cells.

  But could the same genius that allowed Mullis to make that astonishing discovery also explain his beliefs in aliens and his AIDS denialism? Could his great intellect have also made him incredibly stupid?

  This book is about why intelligent people act stupidly – and why in some cases they are even more prone to error than the average person. It is also about the strategies that we can all employ to avoid the same mistakes: lessons that will help anyone to think more wisely and rationally in this post-truth world.

  You don’t need to be a Nobel Prize winner for this to apply to you. Although we will discover the stories of people like Mullis, and Paul Frampton, a brilliant physicist who was fooled into carrying two kilograms of cocaine across the Argentinian border, and Arthur Conan Doyle, the famed author who fell for two teenagers’ scams, we will also see how the same flaws in thinking can lead anyone of more than average intelligence astray.

  Like most people, I once believed that intelligence was synonymous with good thinking. Since the beginning of the twentieth century, psychologists have measured a relatively small range of abstract skills – factual recall, analogical reasoning and vocabulary – in the belief that they reflect an innate general intelligence that underlies all kinds of learning, creativity, problem solving and decision making. Education is then meant to build on that ‘raw’ brainpower, furnishing us with more specialised knowledge in the arts, the humanities and the sciences that will also be crucial for many professions. The smarter you are – according to these criteria – the more astute your judgement.

  But as I began working as a science journalist, specialising in psychology and neuroscience, I noticed the latest research was revealing some serious problems with these assumptions. Not only do general intelligence and academic education fail to protect us from various cognitive errors; smart people may be even more vulnerable to certain kinds of foolish thinking.

  Intelligent and educated people are less likely to learn from their mistakes, for instance, or take advice from others. And when they do err, they are better able to build elaborate arguments to justify their reasoning, meaning that they become more and more dogmatic in their views. Worse still, they appear to have a bigger ‘bias blind spot’, meaning they are less able to recognise the holes in their logic.

  Intrigued by these results, I began looking further afield. Management scientists, for example, have charted the ways that poor corporate cultures – aimed to increase productivity – can amplify irrational decision making in sports teams, businesses and government organisations. As a result, you can have whole teams built of incredibly intelligent people, who nevertheless make incredibly stupid decisions.

  The consequences are serious. For the individual, these
errors can influence our health, wellbeing and professional success. In our courts it is leading to serious miscarriages of justice. In hospitals, it may be the reason that 15 per cent of all diagnoses are wrong, with more people dying from these mistakes than diseases like breast cancer. In business, it leads to bankruptcy and ruin.2

  The vast majority of these mistakes cannot be explained by a lack of knowledge or experience; instead, they appear to arise from the particular, flawed mental habits that come with greater intelligence, education and professional expertise. Similar errors can lead spaceships to crash, stock markets to implode, and world leaders to ignore global threats like climate change.

  Although they may seem to be unconnected, I found that some common processes underlie all these phenomena: a pattern that I will refer to as the intelligence trap.3

  Perhaps the best analogy is a car. A faster engine can get you places more quickly if you know how to use it correctly. But simply having more horsepower won’t guarantee that you will arrive at your destination safely. Without the right knowledge and equipment – the brakes, the steering wheel, the speedometer, a compass and a good map – a fast engine may just lead to you driving in circles – or straight into oncoming traffic. And the faster the engine, the more dangerous you are.

  In exactly the same way, intelligence can help you to learn and recall facts, and process complex information quickly, but you also need the necessary checks and balances to apply that brainpower correctly. Without them, greater intelligence can actually make you more biased in your thinking.

  Fortunately, besides outlining the intelligence trap, recent psychological research has also started to identify those additional mental qualities that can keep us on track. As one example, consider the following deceptively trivial question:

  Jack is looking at Anne but Anne is looking at George. Jack is married but George is not. Is a married person looking at an unmarried person?

  Yes, No, or Cannot Be Determined?

  The correct answer is ‘yes’ – but the vast majority of people say ‘cannot be determined’.

  Don’t feel disheartened if you didn’t initially get it. Many Ivy League students get it wrong, and when I published this test in New Scientist magazine, we had an unprecedented number of letters claiming that the answer was a mistake. (If you still can’t see the logic, I’d suggest drawing a diagram, or see p. 270.)

  The test measures a characteristic known as cognitive reflection, which is the tendency to question our own assumptions and intuitions, and people who score badly on this test are more susceptible to bogus conspiracy theories, misinformation and fake news. (We’ll explore this some more in Chapter 6.)

  Besides cognitive reflection, other important characteristics that can protect us from the intelligence trap include intellectual humility, actively open-minded thinking, curiosity, refined emotional awareness and a growth mindset. Together, they keep our minds on track and prevent our thinking from veering off a proverbial cliff.

  This research has even led to the birth of a new discipline – the study of ‘evidence-based wisdom’. Once viewed with scepticism by other scientists, this field has blossomed in recent years, with new tests of reasoning that better predict real-life decision-making than traditional measures of general intelligence. We are now even witnessing the foundation of new institutions to promote this research – such as the Center for Practical Wisdom at the University of Chicago, which opened in June 2016.

  Although none of these qualities are measured on standard academic tests, you don’t need to sacrifice any of the benefits of having high general intelligence to cultivate these other thinking styles and reasoning strategies; they simply help you to apply your intelligence more wisely. And unlike intelligence, they can be trained. Whatever your IQ, you can learn to think more wisely.

  This cutting-edge science has a strong philosophical pedigree. An early discussion of the intelligence trap can even be found at Socrates’ trial in 399 bc.

  According to Plato’s account, Socrates’ accusers claimed that he had been corrupting Athenian youth with evil ‘impious’ ideas. Socrates denied the charges, and instead explained the origins of his reputation for wisdom – and the jealousy behind the accusations.

  It started, he said, when the Oracle of Delphi declared that there was no one in Athens who was wiser than Socrates. ‘What can the god be saying? It’s a riddle: what can it mean?’ Socrates asked himself. ‘I’ve no knowledge of my being wise in any respect, great or small.’

  Socrates’ solution was to wander the city, seeking out the most respected politicians, poets and artisans to prove the oracle wrong – but each time, he was disappointed. ‘Because they were accomplished in practising their skill, each one of them claimed to be wisest about other things too: the most important ones at that – and this error of theirs seemed to me to obscure the wisdom they did possess . . .

  ‘Those with the greatest reputations,’ he added, ‘seemed to me practically the most deficient, while others who were supposedly inferior seemed better endowed when it came to good sense.’

  His conclusion is something of a paradox: he is wise precisely because he recognised the limits of his own knowledge. The jury found him guilty nonetheless, and he was sentenced to death.4

  The parallels with the recent scientific research are striking. Replace Socrates’ politicians, poets and artisans with today’s engineers, bankers and doctors, and his trial almost perfectly captures the blind spots that psychologists are now discovering. (And like Socrates’ accusers, many modern experts do not like their flaws being exposed.)

  But as prescient as they are, Socrates’ descriptions don’t quite do the new findings justice. After all, none of the researchers would deny that intelligence and education are essential for good thinking. The problem is that we often don’t use that brainpower correctly.

  For this reason, it is René Descartes who comes closest to the modern understanding of the intelligence trap. ‘It is not enough to possess a good mind; the most important thing is to apply it correctly’, he wrote in his Discourse on the Method in 1637. ‘The greatest minds are capable of the greatest vices as well as the greatest virtues; those who go forward but very slowly can get further, if they always follow the right road, than those who are in too much of a hurry and stray off it.’5

  The latest science allows us to move far beyond these philosophical musings, with well-designed experiments demonstrating the precise reasons that intelligence can be a blessing and a curse, and the specific ways to avoid those traps.

  Before we begin this journey, let me offer a disclaimer: there is much excellent scientific research on the theme of intelligence that doesn’t find a place here. Angela Duckworth at the University of Pennsylvania, for instance, has completed ground-breaking work on the concept of ‘grit’, which she defines as our ‘perseverance and passion for long-term goals’, and she has repeatedly shown that her measures of grit can often predict achievement better than IQ. It’s a hugely important theory, but it’s not clear that it could solve the particular biases that appear to be exaggerated with intelligence; nor does it fall under the more general umbrella of evidence-based wisdom that guides much of my argument.

  When writing The Intelligence Trap, I’ve restricted myself to three particular questions. Why do smart people act stupidly? What skills and dispositions are they missing that can explain these mistakes? And how can we cultivate those qualities to protect us from those errors? And I have examined them at every level of society, starting with the individual and ending with the errors plaguing huge organisations.

  Part 1 defines the problem. It explores the flaws in our understanding of intelligence and the ways that even the brightest minds can backfire – from Arthur Conan Doyle’s dogged beliefs in fairies to the FBI’s flawed investigation into the Madrid bombings of 2004 – and the reasons that knowledge and expertise only exaggerate those errors.

  Part 2 presents solutions to these problems by introducing the new dis
cipline of ‘evidence-based wisdom’, which outlines those other thinking dispositions and cognitive abilities that are crucial for good reasoning, while also offering some practical techniques to cultivate them. Along the way, we will discover why our intuitions often fail and the ways we can correct those errors to fine-tune our instincts. We will also explore strategies to avoid misinformation and fake news, so that we can be sure that our choices are based on solid evidence rather than wishful thinking.

  Part 3 turns to the science of learning and memory. Despite their brainpower, intelligent people sometimes struggle to learn well, reaching a kind of plateau in their abilities that fails to reflect their potential. Evidence-based wisdom can help to break that vicious cycle, offering three rules for deep learning. Besides helping us to meet our own personal goals, this cutting-edge research also explains why East Asian education systems are already so successful at applying these principles, and the lessons that Western schooling can learn from them to produce better learners and wiser thinkers.

  Finally, Part 4 expands our focus beyond the individual, to explore the reasons that talented groups act stupidly – from the failings of the England football team to the crises of huge organisations like BP, Nokia and NASA.

  The great nineteenth-century psychologist William James reportedly said that ‘a great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices’. The Intelligence Trap is written for anyone, like me, who wants to escape that mistake – a user’s guide to both the science, and art, of wisdom.

  Part 1

  The downsides of intelligence: How a high IQ, education and expertise can fuel stupidity