The Intelligence Trap: Revolutionise your Thinking and Make Wiser Decisions

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The title makes it sound a little bit like the DaVinci code but actually, it’s full of actionable information. The book looks at traps that people fall into when trying to describe intelligence as well as offers advice on how to get around those traps. It is a talk about the scientific data on what makes us think and why people make decisions in certain ways. The author of this book takes you through a journey of science experiments that we have done to understand the human brain, and how these experiments have led to many discoveries in relation to human thinking and decision making. Each chapter in this book talks about an experiment or discovery, and then it moves on to explain the implications of this discovery on our day-to-day lives, as well as its impact. The writing is very easy to follow and the pace on how the book is presented makes a lot of sense - it is divided into four parts. The first explains the downsides of intelligence on how a high IQ, education and expertise can fuel stupidity. The second part goes over how to escape the intelligence trap going over reasoning and decision making. Third part presents how wisdom can improve memory and principles of deep learning, and finally the last part presents how teams and organizations could avoid disasters and how to create a dream team for success. Once a perception has been broadened in this way, the thinker cannot unthink what is now in front of them.” Overview of the PMI Technique Moving on, the author recaps a good deal of the content of Surely you must be joking, Mr. Feynman? which would be great if I hadn't read it, but I had. This makes me think that he has similarly recapped the content of other books which I have not read and which are referred to in the text. So the value of this volume will depend on one's prior reading.

Starting with a look at the Intelligence Quotient (IQ), the author then introduces the reader to other measures of understanding such as an Emotional and Wisdom Quotient. Next the author ruminates on the important concepts of curiosity and growth mindset and how these relate to brain power. The author also explains the different forms of memory and how these affect overall intelligence.We assume that smarter people are less prone to error. But greater education and expertise can often amplify our mistakes while rendering us blind to our biases. This is the 'intelligence trap'. I bought it because of the intriguing title (and it was on promotion!). As someone who was a part of the Malaysian National Gifted Center (and apparently, one of the brightest students there), this book hit me close to home, particularly Part 1 of the book - The downsides of intelligence: How a high IQ, education and expertise can fuel stupidity. Overall, this book was fine – and certainly worth reading if you have not read any of the books I’ve mentioned above, although, I would probably recommend Thinking: Fast and Slow over this, and perhaps any of the others too, now I think about it – but that might just be because I read those first, if you know what I mean. In fact, the book I would really recommend on this topic is The Psychology of Judgment and Decision Making – it contains all the stuff you need to learn with none of the crappy case study examples of people being idiots - often in aeroplanes, for some reason. Grit is the combination of passion and perseverance that allows us to overcome obstacles and achieve our goals. Part 2 presents solutions to these problems by introducing the new discipline of ‘evidence-based wisdom’ (EBW), which outlines those other thinking dispositions and cognitive abilities crucial for good reasoning. It offers some practical techniques to cultivate EBW. We discover why our intuitions often fail and the ways we can correct those errors to fine-tune our instincts. We explore strategies to avoid falling for misinformation and fake news so that we can be sure that our choices are based on solid evidence rather than wishful thinking.

Resistance to change and new ideas by intelligent people, is one of the main reasons change management and improvement initiatives don’t always get traction. We don’t help things along either as we have a strong tendency to defer to the views of those who can mount a convincing critical argument. Critical assessment however is only a part of the thinking that we need to embrace and use going forward. Criticism is a powerful weapon in the hands of those who suffer the intelligence trap. Criticism however is easy, it’s a simple matter to pull a new idea to pieces or critique an as yet unproven concept. To minimise such vulnerabilities Robson devotes chapter 4 to evidence-based wisdom. This wisdom involves intellectual humility, with the ability to seek out information that runs counter to one's original point of view, coupled with an awareness of the inherent uncertainty in our judgements. When strong emotions interfere with this approach Robson suggests various forms of self-distancing. Such wisdom may be related to health and happiness but is poorly correlated with intelligence, though it does tend to increase with age in Western cultures.

After disappointing results in the Euro 2012 championships, the coach, Louis van Gaal, reassembled the team — reducing the percentage of ‘top talent’ from 73 percent to 43 percent. It was an extraordinary move, but it seems that he had judged the dynamics correctly: as Galinsky and his co-authors point out in their paper, the Netherlands did not lose a single game in the qualifying rounds of the 2014 World Cup. The unconscious tendency to apply our brainpower only when the conclusions will suit our predetermined goal. It may include the confirmation or myside bias (preferentially seeking and remembering information that suits our goal) and discomfirmation bias (the tendency to be especially sceptical about evidence that does not fit our goal). In politics, for instance, we are far more likely to critique evidence concerning an issue such as climate change if it does not fit with our existing worldview. This is a good book describing the most common mistakes and biases in our decision making progress. Author focuses on highly intelligent people, but I think similar mistakes are committed by average Joe. Most presented studie results can be probably extrapolated to the general population. The greater brain a man has, and the better he is educated,” Harry Houdini once warned Arthur Conan Doyle, “the easier it has been to mystify him.” It could be the motto of this startling, provocative and potently useful book. It is targeted at those of us who feel we are particularly clever — and most of us believe we are above average, the statistics say. Why? Because our intelligence can be the very thing that makes us prone to stupidity. To understand his results, we need some basic statistical theory. In psychology and other sciences, the relationship between two variables is usually expressed as a correlation coefficient between 0 and 1. A perfect correlation would have a value of 1—the two parameters would essentially be measuring the same thing; this is unrealistic for most studies of human health and behavior (which are determined by so many variables), but many scientists would consider a “moderate” correlation to lie between 0.4 and 0.59.

For teamwork, in chapter 9 Robson considers a variety of work and sport situations. He cites studies indicating that collective intelligence is only moderately related to average IQ. One of the strongest predictors of group success seems related to the social sensitivity of the team members, and the most destructive dynamic is when team members compete against each other instead of working together. In team sports there seems an optimum proportion of 'star' players. Graphs are shown of success in football and in basketball plotted against the percentage of top talent in the team. Robson notes, from Galansky's analysis of over 5000 Himalayan expeditions, that teams likely to have had a hierarchical style of leadership were more likely to reach the summit but were also more likely to lose team members in the attempt. For selecting an ideal team Robson concludes that there should be less emphasis on outstanding individual abilities and more attention to interpersonal skills that enhance the team's functioning. Although some executives feel that personal humility undermines their authority, Robson argues that employees under a humble leader are more likely to share information and work together. The mismatch between intelligence and rationality, as seen in the life story of Arthur Conan Doyle. This may be caused by cognitive miserliness or contaminated mindware. While decades of psychological research have documented humanity’s more irrational tendencies, it is only relatively recently that scientists have started to measure how that irrationality varies between individuals, and whether that variance is related to measures of intelligence. They are finding that the two are far from perfectly correlated: it is possible to have a very high IQ or SAT score, while still performing badly on these new tests of rationality—a mismatch known as “dysrationalia.” Indeed, there are some situations in which intelligence and education may sometimes exaggerate and amplify your mistakes. David Robson’s new book The Intelligence Trap is on sale now. Courtesy of W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

Step 4. Make Your Decision

So far, attention has been devoted to individuals. However, man is a social animal and much that is important depends on teamwork and in the collective output of large organisations. The author David Robson suggests we’re not always as smart as we think we are. Psychological research suggests that greater intelligence, education, and expertise might amplify our errors. Here are some key reasons why high IQ people fall under the intelligence trap: Cognitive Miserliness Worse still, they appear to have a bigger ‘bias blind spot’, meaning they are less able to recognize the holes in their logic.

Intelligence is not something that can be measured with an IQ test or with numbers. It’s more likely to be able to measure someone’s intelligence based on their field of study or profession, or based on how they’ve chosen to spend their life.

Stanovich hopes his test may also be a useful tool to assess how students’ reasoning changes over a school or university course. “This, to me, would be one of the more exciting uses,” Stanovich said. With that data, you could then investigate which interventions are most successful at cultivating more rational thinking styles. The final stage of expertise, when we can pause and analyse our gut feelings, basing our decisions on both intuition and analysis. See also Mindfulness. Be more curious: When you’re curious, you’ll want to seek out new information and challenge yourself. Curiosity can help us overcome motivated reasoning because it leads us to a sea of knowledge, where we can discover facts that support our beliefs and also those that challenge them. Nisl libero ullamcorper id ipsum viverra mauris non pellentesque placerat lorem lacinia sagittis non pretium. If I asked you who you think would win a chess match between Magnus Carlson and Elon Musk, you’d probably select Mangus, the five-time chess champion. If I were to ask you who you think would be a better person to lead a space company, you’d probably choose….. Jeff Bezos.