You Are Not So Smart: Why You Have Too Many Friends on Facebook, Why Your Memory Is Mostly Fiction, and 46 Other Ways You're Deluding Yourself

by David McRaney

The idea comes from a 1968 essay by geologist Garrett Hardin that suggested you aren’t very good at sharing.

THE MISCONCEPTION: You choose to accept or refuse an offer based on logic. THE TRUTH: When it comes to making a deal, you base your decision on your status.

In the lottery situation, the money you offer to the other person is interpreted as your estimation of his or her status in the social hierarchy. If the other person accepts less than 20 percent, he or she will feel inferior and disrespected. The person will lose status in the eyes of others. No matter how large or small the amount, in experiments with real people, offering less than 20 percent ensures that both parties lose.

THE MISCONCEPTION: You are skeptical of generalities. THE TRUTH: You are prone to believing vague statements and predictions are true, especially if they are positive and address you personally.

THE MISCONCEPTION: You are too smart to join a cult. THE TRUTH: Cults are populated by people just like you.

The sorts of people who join cults are not all insecure or emotionally weak. You’d like to think that you are not the sort of person who could be beguiled by a charismatic leader with a clear vision—but you are not so smart. According to psychologist David Myers, cults form around sparkly, interesting individuals—Jim Jones, David Koresh, L. Ron Hubbard, Charles Manson—but people don’t usually follow the leader, they follow the ideals the leader proclaims to be serving. These leaders seem to have things figured out, and you want to figure those things out too. Gandhi, Che Guevara, and Socrates are all great thinkers who seemed to have access to secrets, insights into something bigger. Naturally, people followed them, hoping to gain their mojo through osmosis. Were their followers in a cult? See, that’s where the definition falls apart. This is why you are susceptible to this sort of behavior.

If you have ever called yourself a fan of anyone—a musician, a director, a writer, a politician, a technological genius, a scientist—you are experiencing the first stage of cult indoctrination. If you were to meet the person you most admire and be offered the chance to hang out with him or her on a regular basis—would you? You would. What happens next would depend on a chaotic series of variables; sometimes the result is a cult, and sometimes those cults live on beyond their leaders. There is no agent behind it, no person deciding to form or join a cult. Cults aren’t designed. They form as a result of normal human tendencies going awry.

THE MISCONCEPTION: Problems are easier to solve when a group of people get together to discuss solutions. THE TRUTH: The desire to reach consensus and avoid confrontation hinders progress.

The recent housing market collapse, the failure to prevent the Chernobyl disaster, the sinking of the Titanic, the invasion of Iraq—all of these can be attributed to situations in which groupthink led to awful decisions.

THE MISCONCEPTION: Men who have sex with RealDolls are insane, and women who marry eighty-year-old billionaires are gold diggers. THE TRUTH: The RealDoll and rich old sugar daddies are both supernormal releasers.

For human ladies, a tux on a man who owns a private jet and three homes in Italy creates a powerful set of supernormal releasers. Most women wouldn’t hook up with a man who looks like the Crypt Keeper, but if he owns a publishing empire or a fortune equivalent to the gross domestic product of a small country, some will. For human guys, symmetry, big breasts, wide hips, narrow waists, lustrous hair, and voluptuous lips add up to a powerful supernormal releaser. Most men wouldn’t have sex with a plastic corpse, but the strength of RealDoll sales over the years shows some will. Both of these examples are the human equivalent of those sexy beer bottles.

THE MISCONCEPTION: You calculate what is risky or rewarding and always choose to maximize gains while minimizing losses. THE TRUTH: You depend on emotions to tell you if something is good or bad, greatly overestimate rewards, and tend to stick to your first impressions.

You boil down your initial judgment of just about everything in life to “this is good” or “this is bad” and then put the burden of proof on future experience to show you otherwise. You might like someone early on but learn of severe faults over time. You wait for your first impression to be chiseled away instead of promptly changing your opinion of that person’s character. Maybe the person dresses well and waxes poetic on the virtues of good hygiene but gets touchy-feely and hits on every person of the opposite sex who’s around for more than four minutes. Maybe the person beats his or her children but spends weekends at a nursing home teaching the elderly how to use computers. How much evidence would you need to move a new acquaintance from one category to the other?

THE MISCONCEPTION: There is a Rolodex in your mind with the names and faces of everyone you’ve ever known. THE TRUTH: You can maintain relationships and keep up with only around 150 people at once.

THE MISCONCEPTION: Both consumerism and capitalism are sustained by corporations and advertising. THE TRUTH: Both consumerism and capitalism are driven by competition among consumers for status.

THE MISCONCEPTION: You evaluate yourself based on past successes and defeats. THE TRUTH: You excuse your failures and see yourself as more successful, more intelligent, and more skilled than you are.

THE MISCONCEPTION: When you are around others, you feel as if everyone is noticing every aspect of your appearance and behavior. THE TRUTH: People devote little attention to you unless prompted to.

THE MISCONCEPTION: You believe your opinions and decisions are based on experience and facts, while those who disagree with you are falling for the lies and propaganda of sources you don’t trust. THE TRUTH: Everyone believes the people they disagree with are gullible, and everyone thinks they are far less susceptible to persuasion than they truly are.

THE MISCONCEPTION: Venting your anger is an effective way to reduce stress and prevent lashing out at friends and family. THE TRUTH: Venting increases aggressive behavior over time.

The hydraulic model of anger is just what it sounds like—anger builds up inside the mind until you let off some steam. If you don’t let off this steam, the boiler will burst. It sounds reasonable. You may even look back on your life and remember times when you went batshit, punched a wall or broke a plate, and it made things better. But you are not so smart.

THE MISCONCEPTION: Memories are played back like recordings. THE TRUTH: Memories are constructed anew each time from whatever information is currently available, which makes them highly permeable to influences from the present.

Neurologist Oliver Sacks wrote in The Island of the Colorblind about a patient who became colorblind after a brain injury. Not only could he not see certain colors, he couldn’t imagine them or remember them.

Memories of cars and dresses and carnivals were suddenly drained, washed down. Even though this patient’s memories were first imprinted when he could see color, they now could be conjured up only with the faculties of his current imagination. Each time you build a memory, you make it from scratch, and if much time has passed you stand a good chance of getting the details wrong. With a little influence, you might get big things wrong.

THE MISCONCEPTION: You are a strong individual who doesn’t conform unless forced to. THE TRUTH: It takes little more than an authority figure or social pressure to get you to obey, because conformity is a survival instinct.

THE MISCONCEPTION: If you stop engaging in a bad habit, the habit will gradually diminish until it disappears from your life. THE TRUTH: Any time you quit something cold turkey, your brain will make a last-ditch effort to return you to your habit.

THE MISCONCEPTION: When you are joined by others in a task, you work harder and become more accomplished. THE TRUTH: Once part of a group, you tend to put in less effort because you know your work will be pooled together with others’.

THE MISCONCEPTION: When your emotions run high, people can look at you and tell what you are thinking and feeling. THE TRUTH: Your subjective experience is not observable, and you overestimate how much you telegraph your inner thoughts and emotions.

If you are trying to communicate something complex, if you have vast knowledge of a subject and someone else does not, realize it is going to be difficult to get it across the gulf between your brain and theirs. The explanation process may become thorny, but don’t take it out on the other person. Just because that person can’t see inside your mind doesn’t mean he or she is not so smart. You don’t suddenly become telepathic when you are angry, anxious, or alarmed. Keep calm and carry on.

THE MISCONCEPTION: If you are in a bad situation, you will do whatever you can do to escape it. THE TRUTH: If you feel like you aren’t in control of your destiny, you will give up and accept whatever situation you are in.

THE MISCONCEPTION: Your opinions of people and events are based on objective evaluation. THE TRUTH: You translate your physical world into words, and then believe those words.

THE MISCONCEPTION: You rationally analyze all factors before making a choice or determining value. THE TRUTH: Your first perception lingers in your mind, affecting later perceptions and decisions.

THE MISCONCEPTION: You see everything going on before your eyes, taking in all the information like a camera. THE TRUTH: You are aware only of a small amount of the total information your eyes take in, and even less is processed by your conscious mind and remembered.

THE MISCONCEPTION: In all you do, you strive for success. THE TRUTH: You often create conditions for failure ahead of time to protect your ego.

THE MISCONCEPTION: Predictions about your future are subject to forces beyond your control. THE TRUTH: Just believing a future event will happen can cause it to happen if the event depends on human behavior.

Research shows you are highly susceptible to this phenomenon because you are always trying to predict the behavior of others. The future is the result of actions, and actions are the result of behavior, and behavior is the result of prediction. This is called the Thomas Theorem. The sociologist W. I. Thomas postulated in 1928, “If men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences.” Thomas noticed when people are trying to predict future events, they make a lot of assumptions about the present. If those assumptions are powerful enough, the resulting actions will lead to the predicted future.

The sociologist Robert K. Merton coined the term “self-fulfilling prophecy” in 1968. By his estimation, the initial phase is always a false interpretation of an ongoing situation. The behavior that follows assumes the situation is real, and when enough people act as if something is real it can sometimes make it so. What was once false becomes true, and in hindsight it seems as if it always was.

THE MISCONCEPTION: You are one person, and your happiness is based on being content with your life. THE TRUTH: You are multiple selves, and happiness is based on satisfying all of them.

The psychologist Daniel Kahneman has much to say on this topic. He says the self that makes decisions in your life is usually the remembering one.

Kahneman’s research suggests there are two channels through which you decide whether or not you are happy. The current self is happy when experiencing nice things. The remembering self is happy when you look back on your life and pull up plenty of positive memories. As Kahneman points out, a two-week holiday may yield only a handful of lifelong memories. You will pull those memories out every once and a while and use them to be happy. There is a serious imbalance between the time you spend creating these memories and the time you spend enjoying them later.

THE MISCONCEPTION: You know how your opinions have changed over time. THE TRUTH: Unless you consciously keep tabs on your progress, you assume the way you feel now is the way you have always felt.

But people naturally change over time. Consistency bias is the failure to admit it.

THE MISCONCEPTION: Knowing a person’s history makes it easier to determine what sort of person they are. THE TRUTH: You jump to conclusions based on how representative a person seems to be of a preconceived character type.

Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky published a paper in 1973 that ferreted out the representative heuristic from the cluster of cognitive biases squirming in your mind. The following example is a mishmash of their research and others into the behavior: Donald is a very intelligent student and does well in all his classes, but he lacks creativity. He is extraordinarily tidy and feels compelled to bring order to every aspect of his life. When he writes, it lacks emotion and is filled with science fiction references. He doesn’t like people but has high moral standards. In their study, subjects read a paragraph like the one above and were told the description came from one of a set of interviews with thirty engineers and seventy lawyers.

THE MISCONCEPTION: Wine is a complicated elixir, full of subtle flavors only an expert can truly distinguish, and experienced tasters are impervious to deception. THE TRUTH: Wine experts and consumers can be fooled by altering their expectations.

THE MISCONCEPTION: You know how much control you have over your surroundings. THE TRUTH: You often believe you have control over outcomes that are either random or are too complex to predict.

THE MISCONCEPTION: Other people’s behavior is the reflection of their personality. THE TRUTH: Other people’s behavior is more the result of the situation than their disposition.

Decades later, Zimbardo would reject the U.S. government’s claims about the sadism displayed at the Abu Ghraib prison as being the result of the behavior of a few bad apples. The government was committing the fundamental attribution error, ignoring the power of the situation, turning the perpetrators into easy-to-dismiss characters. Although he doesn’t absolve those who tortured and humiliated Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib, Zimbardo suggests whenever people are put into a situation like the one he created in his experiment, the same results will unfold, as they did in 2004 in the Baghdad Correctional Facility and as they have in other prisons throughout history. People are not good at heart, Zimbardo says, but because their environment encourages it. Anyone, he believes, is capable of becoming a monster if given the power and opportunity.