The Intelligence Trap: Revolutionise your Thinking and Make Wiser Decisions

by David Robson

If you are really serious about fine-tuning your emotional compass, many of the researchers also suggest that you spend a few minutes to jot down your thoughts and feelings from the day and the ways they might have influenced your decisions. Not only does the writing process encourage deeper introspection and the differentiation of your feelings, which should naturally improve your intuitive instincts; it also ensures you learn and remember what worked and what didn’t, so you don’t make the same mistakes twice.

As Nelson Mandela once said: ‘If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart.’

Today, so-called ‘fake news’ is more prevalent than ever. One survey in 2016 found that more than 50 per cent of the most shared medical stories on Facebook had been debunked by doctors, including the claim that ‘dandelion weed can boost your immune system and cure cancer’ and reports that the HPV vaccine increased your risk of developing cancer.2

‘The most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly and with unflagging attention,’ Adolf Hitler noted in Mein Kampf. ‘It must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over.’

In line with the work on motivated reasoning, our broader worldviews will almost certainly determine how susceptible we are to misinformation – partly because a message that already fits with our existing opinions is processed more fluently and feels more familiar. This may help to explain why more educated people seem particularly susceptible to medical misinformation: it seems that fears about healthcare, in general, are more common among wealthier, more middle-class people, who may also be more likely to have degrees. Conspiracies about doctors – and beliefs in alternative medicine – may naturally fit into that belief system.

The same processes may also explain why politicians’ lies continue to spread long after they have been corrected – including Donald Trump’s theory that Barack Obama was not born in the United States. As you might expect from the research on motivated reasoning, this was particularly believed by Republicans – but even 14 per cent of Democrats held the view as late as 2017.18

For one thing, organisations hoping to combat misinformation should ditch the ‘myth-busting’ approach where they emphasise the misconception and then explain the facts.

Instead, Cook and Lewandowsky argue that any attempt to debunk a misconception should be careful to design the page so that the fact stands out. If possible, you should avoid repeating the myth entirely. When trying to combat fears about vaccines, for instance, you may just decide to focus on the scientifically proven, positive benefits. But if it is necessary to discuss the myths, you can at least make sure that the false statements are less salient than the truth you are trying to convey. It’s better to headline your article ‘Flu vaccines are safe and effective’ than ‘Myth: Vaccines can give you the flu’.

To give me a flavour of the course, Shermer describes how many conspiracy theories use the ‘anomalies-as-proof’ strategy to build a superficially convincing case that something is amiss. Holocaust deniers, for instance, argue that the structure of the (badly damaged) Krema II gas chamber at Auschwitz-Birkenau doesn’t match eye-witness accounts of SS guards dropping gas pellets through the holes in the roof. From this, they claim that no one could have been gassed at Krema II, therefore no one would have been gassed at Auschwitz-Birkenau, meaning that no Jews were systematically killed by the Nazis – and the Holocaust didn’t happen.

One common theme is the idea that the intelligence trap arises because we find it hard to pause and think beyond the ideas and feelings that are most readily accessible, and to take a step into a different vision of the world around us; it is often a failure of the imagination at a very basic level.

As Feynman’s biographer James Gleick wrote in a New York Times obituary: ‘He was never content with what he knew, or what other people knew . . . He pursued knowledge without prejudice.’7

Feynman, in contrast, claimed to have started out with a ‘limited intelligence’,8 but he then applied it in the most productive way possible, as he continued to grow and expand his mind throughout adulthood.

By encouraging us to engage and stretch our minds, these characteristics can boost our learning and ensure that we thrive when we face new challenges, ensuring that we make the most of our natural potential. Crucially, however, they also provide an antidote to the cognitive miserliness and one-sided thinking that contributes to some forms of the intelligence trap – meaning that they also result in wiser, less biased reasoning overall. These insights may be of particular interest to parents and people working in education, but they can also empower anyone to apply their intelligence more effectively.

It is difficult to imagine that Darwin could have ever conducted his painstaking work on the Beagle – and during the years afterwards – if he had not been driven by a hunger for knowledge and understanding. He certainly wasn’t looking for immediate riches or fame: the research took decades with little payoff. But his desire to learn more caused him to look further and question the dogma around him.

The neurotransmitter dopamine is usually implicated in desire for food, drugs or sex – suggesting that, at a neural level, curiosity really is a form of hunger or lust. But the neurotransmitter also appears to strengthen the long-term storage of memories in the hippocampus, neatly explaining why curious people are not only more motivated to learn, but will also remember more, even when you account for the amount of work they have devoted to a subject.16

The most interesting discovery has been the observation of a ‘spill-over effect’ – meaning that once the participants’ interest has been piqued by something that genuinely interests them, and they have received that shot of dopamine, they subsequently find it easier to memorise incidental information too. It primes the brain for learning anything.

For this reason, some psychologists now consider that general intelligence, curiosity and conscientiousness are together the ‘three pillars’ of academic success; if you lack any one of these qualities, you are going to suffer.

‘Curiosity is contagious, and it’s very difficult to encourage curiosity in kids if you don’t have any experience of curiosity in your own life,’

Engel’s research paints an even bleaker picture of our education systems. Toddlers may ask up to twenty-six questions per hour at home (with one child asking 145 during one observation!) but this drops to just two per hour at school. This disengagement can also be seen in other expressions of curiosity – such as how willing they are to explore new toys or interesting objects – and it becomes even more pronounced as the child ages. While observing some fifth-grade lessons, Engel would often go for a two-hour stretch without seeing a single expression of active interest.

Over the last decade, a series of striking experiments has suggested that our mindsets can also explain why apparently smart people fail to learn from their errors, meaning that Dweck’s theory is essential for our understanding of the intelligence trap.

By enhancing our learning and pushing us to overcome failures in these ways, curiosity and the growth mindset would already constitute two important mental characteristics, independent of general intelligence, that can change the path of our lives. If you want to make the most of your intellectual potential, they are essential qualities that you should try to cultivate.

‘If you have the fixed mindset, you are all the time trying to find out where you stand in the hierarchy; everyone’s ranked. If you’re at the top, you don’t want to fall or be taken down from the top, so any sign or suggestion that you don’t know something or that someone knows more than you – it’s threatening to dethrone you.’ And so, to protect your position, you become overly defensive. ‘You dismiss people’s ideas with the notion that “I know better so I don’t have to listen to what you have to say.” ’ In the growth mindset, by contrast, you’re not so worried about proving your position relative to those around you, and your knowledge doesn’t represent your personal value. ‘What’s more, you are motivated to learn because it makes you smarter, so it is a lot easier to admit what you don’t know. It doesn’t threaten to pull you down from any kind of hierarchy.’

Feynman, with his curiosity and growth mindset, certainly saw no shame in admitting his own limitations – and welcomed this intellectual humility in others. ‘I can live with doubt, and uncertainty,

and not knowing. I think it’s much more interesting to live not knowing anything than to have answers which might be wrong,’ he told the BBC in 1981. ‘I have approximate answers, and possible beliefs, and different degrees of certainty about different things, but I’m not absolutely sure of anything.’44

And Darwin? His hunger to understand did not end with the publication of On the Origin of Species, and he maintained a lengthy correspondence with sceptics and critics. He was capable of thinking independently while also always engaging with and occasionally learning from others’ arguments.

‘Successful bright people rarely experience failure, and so they don’t learn how to learn from that failure,’ he added. ‘They, instead, commit the fundamental attribution error, which is if something good happens, it’s because I’m a genius. If something bad happens, it’s because someone’s an idiot or I didn’t get the resources or the market moved . . . What we’ve seen is that the people who are the most successful here, who we want to hire, will have a fierce position. They’ll argue like hell. They’ll be zealots about their point of view. But then you say, “here’s a new fact”, and they’ll go, “Oh, well, that changes things; you’re right.” ’

The wonderful thing about this research is that learning seems to beget learning: the more you learn, the more curious you become, and the easier it becomes to learn, creating a virtuous cycle. For this reason, some researchers have shown that the best predictor of how much new material you will learn – better than your IQ – is how much you already know about a subject. From a small seed, your knowledge can quickly snowball. As Feynman once said, ‘everything is interesting if you go into it deeply enough’.

The latest neuroscience, however, shows that we learn best when we are confused; deliberately limiting your performance today actually means you will perform better tomorrow. And a failure to recognise this fact is another primary reason that many people – including those with high IQs – often fail to learn well.

Stigler has now been researching these ideas for decades, and he suggests his findings can be distilled to three stages of good teaching:11 Productive struggle: Long periods of confusion as students wrestle with complex concepts beyond their current understanding. Making connections: When undergoing that intellectual struggle, students are encouraged to use comparisons and analogies, helping them to see underlying patterns between different concepts. This ensures that the confusion leads to a useful lesson – rather than simply ending in frustration. Deliberate practice: Once the initial concepts have been taught, teachers should ensure that students practise those skills in the most productive way possible. Crucially, this doesn’t involve simply repeating near identical problems ad nauseam, as you might find in the Western maths classroom, but means adding additional variety and challenges – and yet more productive struggle.

If you don’t immediately understand something, the answer is not to ignore it and reinforce your own beliefs, but to look further and to explore its nuances. And the extra thinking that involves is not a sign of weakness or stupidity; it means that you are capable of ‘eating bitterness’ to come to a deeper understanding. If you initially fail, it’s fine to admit your mistakes, because you know you can improve later.

You can: Space out your studies, using shorter chunks distributed over days and weeks. Like the postmen in Baddeley’s initial experiment, your progress may feel slow compared with the initial head-start offered by more intensive study. But by forcing yourself to recall the material after the delay between each session, you will strengthen the memory trace and long-term recall. Beware of fluent material. As discussed previously, superficially simple textbooks can lead you to believe that you are learning well, while, in fact, they are reducing your long-term recall. So try to study more nuanced material that will require deeper thinking, even if it is initially confusing. Give yourself a pre-test. As soon as you begin exploring a topic, force yourself to explain as much as you already know. Even if your initial understanding is abysmally wrong, experiments show that this prepares the mind for deeper learning and better memory overall, as you correct for your errors in your subsequent studies. Vary your environment. If you tend to study in the same place for too long, cues from that environment become associated with the material, meaning that they can act as non-conscious prompts. By ensuring that you alter the places of learning, you avoid becoming too reliant on those cues – and like other desirable difficulties, this reduces your immediate performance but boosts your long-term memory. In one experiment, simply switching rooms during studying resulted in 21 per cent bet...

Sure enough, Woolley has shown that – at least in her experiments in the USA – teams with a greater proportion of women have a higher collective intelligence, and that this can be linked to their higher, overall, social sensitivity, compared to groups consisting of a larger proportion of men.

Unfortunately, Ou says that CEOs themselves tend to be very split in their opinions on the virtue of humility, with many believing that it can undermine their team’s confidence in their abilities to lead. This was true even in China, she says, where she had expected to see greater respect for a humble mindset. ‘Even there, when I’m talking to those high-profile CEOs, they reject the term humility,’ she told me. ‘They think that if I’m humble, I can’t manage my team well. But my study shows that it actually works.’

We can also see this philosophy in Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai, who argues that the leader’s single role is to ‘let others succeed’. As he explained in a speech to his alma mater, the Indian Institute of Technology-Kharagpur: ‘[Leadership is] less about trying to be successful (yourself), and more about making sure you have good people, and your work is to remove that barrier, remove roadblocks for them so that they can be successful in what they do.’

The German language, incidentally, has a word for this: the Fachidiot, a one-track specialist who takes a single-minded, inflexible approach to a multifaceted problem.

Various experiments from social psychology suggest that this is a common pattern: groups under threat tend to become more conformist, single-minded and inward looking. More and more members begin to adopt the same views, and they start to favour simple messages over complex, nuanced ideas. This is even evident at the level of entire nations: newspaper editorials within a country tend to become more simplified and repetitive when it faces international conflict, for instance.

Take one of the car manufacturer Toyota’s biggest disasters. In August 2009, a Californian family of four died when the accelerator pedal of their Lexus jammed, leading the driver to lose control on the motorway and plough into an embankment at 120 miles per hour, where the car burst into flames. Toyota had to recall more than six million cars – a disaster that could have been avoided if the company had paid serious attention to more than two thousand reports of accelerator malfunction over the previous decades, which is around five times the number of complaints that a car manufacturer might normally expect to receive for this issue.16

Refining these findings to a set of core characteristics, Karl Weick and Kathleen Sutcliffe have shown that high-reliability organisations all demonstrate:27 Preoccupation with failure: The organisation complacent with success, and workers assume ‘each day will be a bad day’. The organisation rewards employees for self-reporting errors. Reluctance to simplify interpretations: Employees are rewarded for questioning assumptions and for being sceptical of received wisdom. At Deepwater Horizon, for instance, more engineers and managers may have raised concerns about the poor quality of the cement and asked for further tests. Sensitivity to operations: Team members continue to communicate and interact, to update their understanding of the situation at hand and search for the root causes of anomalies. On Deepwater Horizon, the rig staff should have been more curious about the anomalous pressure tests, rather than accepting the first explanation. Commitment to resilience: Building the necessary knowledge and resources to bounce back after error occurs, including regular ‘pre-mortems’ and regular discussions of near misses. Long before the Deepwater Horizon explosion, BP might have examined the underlying organisational factors leading to previous, less serious accidents, and ensured all team members were adequately prepared to deal with a blowout. Deference to expertise: This relates to the importance of communication between ranks of the hierarchy, and the intellectual humili...

The intelligence trap often emerges from an inability to think beyond our expectations – to imagine an alternative vision of the world, where our decision is wrong rather than right.

But I hope it has become clear that The Intelligence Trap is so much more than the story of any individual’s mistakes. The trap is a phenomenon that concerns us all, given the kinds of thinking that we, as a society, have come to appreciate, and the ones we have neglected.

The World Economic Forum has listed increasing political polarisation and the spread of misinformation in ‘digital wildfires’4 as two of the greatest threats facing us today – comparable to terrorism and cyber warfare.

The twenty-first century presents complex problems that require a wiser way of reasoning, one that recognises our current limitations, tolerates ambiguity and uncertainty, balances multiple perspectives, and bridges diverse areas of expertise. And it is becoming increasingly clear that we need more people who embody those qualities.

If you want to apply this research yourself, the first step is to acknowledge the problem. We have now seen how intellectual humility can help us see through our bias blind spot, form more rational opinions, avoid misinformation, learn more effectively, and work more productively with the people around us.