Why Smart People Act So Stupid
Common sense is not so common. -Voltaire
Shane Frederick at Yale University was among the first to conduct research that explained why rational thinking and intelligence don’t tend to go hand in hand. In his studies, Frederick gave people simple problems to solve, like this one: A bat and ball cost $1.10. The bat costs a dollar more than the ball. How much does the ball cost? Frederick found that some people have the tendency to confidently blurt out the wrong answer, stating that the ball costs 10 cents. The correct answer of course is the ball costs 5 cents and the bat costs $1.05. You’re completely justified if you’re wondering if the, well, less-than-smart people were the ones blurting out the wrong answer.
However, researchers found that smart people were more likely to blurt out the wrong answer because they actually make more mental mistakes when problem-solving. Smart people are more prone to silly mistakes because of blind spots in how they use logic. These blind spots exist because smart people tend to be overconfident in their reasoning abilities. That is, they’re so used to being right and having quick answers that they don’t even realize when they’re blowing it by answering without thinking things through.
Perhaps the scariest thing about the errors that highly intelligent people make is how unaware they are of them. People of all levels of intelligence succumb to what’s called the “bias blind spot.” That is, we’re great at spotting other people’s mistakes and terrible at recognizing our own. The sillier the mistake, the harder it is for an intelligent person to accept that they’ve made it. Consider some of the most common ways in which smart people manage to shoot themselves in the foot.
Smart people are overconfident. A lifetime of praise and pats on the back leads smart people to develop an unflappable faith in their intelligence and abilities. But this is a dangerous expectation. Smart people often fail to recognize when they need help, and when they do recognize it, they tend to believe that no one else is capable of providing it.
They always need to be right. It’s hard for anyone to graciously accept the fact that they’re wrong. It’s even harder for smart people because they grow so used to being right all the time that it becomes a part of their identity.
They give up when they fail. Have you ever watched a sporting event and seen the stunned look on the face of an athlete whom everyone expected to win, but didn’t? Smart people can easily fall into the trap of seeing failure as the end of the world because frequent success creates expectations that make failure hard to tolerate.
They multitask. Smart people think really quickly, which can make them impatient. They think so quickly that, when they multitask, it feels like it’s working and they’re getting more done, but research shows that this isn’t the case.
They have a hard time accepting feedback. Smart people tend to undervalue the opinions of others, which means they have trouble believing that anyone is qualified to give them useful feedback.
CLJ, January 2016
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