Why do brilliant people sometimes make the most foolish decisions? Despite their intellectual prowess, highly intelligent people often fall prey to conspiracy theories, financial ruin, and irrational beliefs—sometimes even more than those with average intelligence.
In The Intelligence Trap, David Robson reveals how the very traits that make people smart can become their greatest weakness. Through research-backed insights, he exposes the hidden dangers of overconfidence, cognitive biases, and motivated reasoning that plague intelligent individuals, then offers practical strategies to think more wisely. Keep reading for a full overview of the book.
The Intelligence Trap: Why Smart People Make Dumb Mistakes
In The Intelligence Trap (2019), David Robson explores why intelligent people are sometimes more prone to misguided, wrong, or irrational thinking than people of average intelligence—and why the very traits that make them intelligent can lead them to fall for conspiracy theories, fake news, and misguided logic.
As a journalist, Robson has written about neuroscience and psychology for New Scientist, Men’s Health, The Atlantic, and The Guardian. He’s also the author of The Laws of Connection and The Expectation Effect.
Intelligence Doesn’t Guarantee Smart Thinking
Robson writes that traditional psychology defines intelligence as strength in certain abstract skills, such as memory, vocabulary, and analytical reasoning. The general belief is that the better you are at these abstract skills, the better you’ll be at learning, solving problems, being creative, and thinking rationally. Rationality is traditionally defined as the ability to make decisions that will best achieve your goals, and to draw correct conclusions based on evidence and logic. Rationality and intelligence are typically thought of as correlated, so that the more intelligent a person is, the more rational they are.
Robson notes, though, that it’s not uncommon for highly intelligent people to make irrational decisions and harbor irrational beliefs. For example, intelligent people are statistically more likely to smoke, drink alcohol, take drugs, miss mortgage payments, run up credit card debt, and fall into bankruptcy. There are also countless intelligent people who believe in unscientific, unproven ideas, from medically unsound advice to the existence of underground lizard people who secretly run the world.
Robson goes further to argue that intelligent people can be even more prone to irrational thinking than average people. This matters because intelligent people are often in positions of influence, so when they make mistakes, they can cause terrible consequences not just for themselves but for others—leading to calamities such as medical errors, economic crises, and plane crashes.
Why Do Smart People Think Poorly?
Robson writes that one reason highly intelligent people get caught in the intelligence trap is that they use their superior analytical abilities to rationalize incorrect beliefs rather than to seek truth. The trap, therefore, happens when the strength of high intelligence—the ability to reason and analyze—turns into a weakness.
Robson explores a few common reasons why intelligent people can be more prone to irrational thinking than average people, including overconfidence in their own expertise, cognitive biases, and motivated reasoning.
Overconfidence in Expertise
Robson argues that expertise is a double-edged sword: The very skills and characteristics that make people experts can paradoxically undermine them. In particular, the pattern-recognition that experts often rely on to understand a situation can blind them to changes in those patterns.
When mastering a skill or knowledge set, experts often develop schemas—mental scripts or templates that prepare them to respond to different situations. To create these schemas, they “chunk” individual details into sets so that they can see broad patterns over individual items. Schemas allow them to process information quickly and intuitively. This is how, for example, chess masters are able to quickly decide their moves: They don’t carefully consider each and every piece on the board individually, but instead, see templates of board layouts that they’ve already determined how to respond to.
Robson acknowledges that schemas are an effective tool for enabling quick responses, but people who rely on them can become inflexible and have difficulty adapting to changes. For example, doctors who have a set way of responding to certain symptoms may find it hard to adjust their response if presented with different symptoms, or if the recommendations for treating the condition change. In addition, because schemas are designed to see broad patterns rather than individual details, experts who rely on them can miss details and nuances that make some problems unique from others. They’ll then use solutions that aren’t well suited for the problem at hand.
Other Ways Overconfidence Leads to Irrational Decisions
Robson notes that overconfidence can lead to poor decision-making not just because it leads people to rely too much on schemas and patterns, but also because it makes smart people more resistant to negative feedback. People who are accustomed to being right grow to like that feeling and will often push back against feedback that suggests they may be wrong. They’re then less likely to admit mistakes, take advice, or own up to logical flaws in their arguments.
Overconfidence also leads intelligent people to believe that if they run into trouble, such as financial distress, their smarts will get them out of it. For this reason, they’re more likely to take risks that can lead to bankruptcy, credit card debt, and the like.
Cognitive Biases
Robson writes that people who fall victim to irrational thinking often do so because they rely on cognitive biases and heuristics (pattern-based rules that allow for quick decisions). Robson cautions that there’s little scientific evidence that intelligent people are inherently more prone to cognitive biases—everyone falls for them, at all levels of intelligence. However, research does confirm that intelligence doesn’t protect against cognitive biases—smart people are just as likely to fall for them as others. And, coupled with an intelligent person’s instinct to dismiss alternative views and overstate their own expertise, the result is an increased likelihood to think wrongly.
Some common biases that people fall prey to include:
Anchoring bias: When you’re presented with a number, any numbers you consider within a short time period afterward will be influenced by that first number. This is why salespeople start by mentioning a high number: to prompt you to subconsciously associate high value with their product.
Availability heuristic: People tend to overestimate the danger of risks based on how easily they can imagine them. This is why people are more afraid of flying than driving; though driving is more statistically dangerous, plane crashes are more memorable.
Sunk cost fallacy: When we’ve invested a lot of time, effort, or money into a venture, we’re reluctant to abandon it, even if it’s clearly failing.
Blind spot: Smart people typically know that they’re intelligent and are accustomed to being more “right” than others. This overconfidence leads them to ignore flaws in their thinking, making them blind to their own blind spots. (This is one cognitive bias in particular that Robson does suggest smart people are more prone to, as it aligns with expertise overconfidence.)
Motivated Reasoning
Another driver of irrational thinking that Robson names is motivated reasoning—emotionally driven thinking designed to defend a belief rather than seek objective truth. You’ll often see people using motivated reasoning to defend political or religious beliefs—they’ll ignore data that counters their already-held convictions while they tout data that confirms those ideas. Another term for this tendency is confirmation bias—the inclination to defend and confirm existing beliefs by selectively interpreting information.
Robson says that people typically engage in motivated reasoning when the irrational idea they’re defending in some way reflects their identity. For example, people who identify as conservative will defend conservative policies even if data shows they’re ineffective—and likewise, progressive-identifying people will defend progressive policies regardless of provable results.
Studies have demonstrated the extent to which people will go to defend their identity beliefs: When presented with data that, for example, shows links between guns and crime, conservatives will interpret it to mean gun control doesn’t work while progressives will see it as proof gun control does work. If the data is manipulated so that the details are reversed, conservatives will still interpret it to mean gun control doesn’t work, using alternative rationales, and progressives will do the same.
Robson argues that highly intelligent people can be susceptible to motivated reasoning because of the very traits that make them intelligent—they’re able to come up with creative arguments that follow streams of logic, even if that logic isn’t sound. They then use their intelligence selectively to promote their own interests, prove their beliefs true, and dismiss alternative arguments.
How to Avoid the Intelligence Trap
Robson writes that to avoid the intelligence trap, you must aim not just to be smart, but to be wise. Wisdom is different from straightforward intelligence: While intelligence means you can reason analytically and remember things well, wisdom means you can accurately assess a situation and come up with effective solutions that lead to long-term benefits.
Additionally, Robson notes that wisdom is not strictly correlated with intelligence. A person can struggle with some of the abstract skills that traditionally define intelligence but still reason wisely, and vice versa: A person can be highly intelligent in the traditional sense but not make wise decisions that effectively solve problems.
Robson also argues that although some people are naturally more inclined to wise thinking, it’s a skill anyone can learn, and he recommends a number of techniques that can help you do so. In the following sections, we’ll review a few of them:
- Be actively curious.
- Deliberately seek out and consider alternative perspectives.
- Know when to listen to your emotions.
- Learn to recognize fake news.
Be Actively Curious
Robson argues that curiosity is one of the most important traits a person can have; curious people learn better, remember things better, and are more likely to achieve their goals than people who may be more technically intelligent but less curious.
Robson says this is because curiosity is linked to happiness: A person who’s curious enjoys pursuing knowledge. When a person enjoys an activity, their brain’s dopamine-producing system is activated, releasing happiness hormones. These particular hormones do more than just improve a person’s mood—they also improve learning and memory retention on a neurological level. This means a curious person will not only pursue knowledge enthusiastically and proactively, but also that they’ll more easily retain what they learn.
In addition, people who have curiosity also tend to:
- Be more creative, because they ask questions others haven’t thought of
- Have better social relationships, because they’re genuinely interested in listening to others
- Have more professional success, because they look for unspoken motivations in business interactions, which helps them negotiate better deals
- Resist the intelligence trap, because they’re more willing to challenge their own beliefs and engage with information that contradicts their preconceptions
In fact, people who approach the world from a position of curiosity enjoy being challenged with new perspectives, insights, and questions.
How to Ignite Your Curiosity
Robson offers two ideas on how to foster your curiosity so that you become more interested in the world:
Play: Kids are naturally curious. It’s when we age that our curiosity dries up. Robson encourages you to find the fun in your work—see problems as puzzles to be solved, and find ways to add game-like qualities to your pursuits.
Purposefully look for gaps in your knowledge: When you’re studying a new topic, whether it’s for an exam or a professional project, write down everything you already know about it, then write down any details you’re missing or questions you want to answer. When you consciously identify things you don’t know, you create a mystery your brain wants to solve. This sparks the release of dopamine, making the experience more enjoyable and interesting while boosting your recall and learning abilities.
Seek Out Alternative Perspectives
Robson argues that one of the hallmarks of wise thinking is the ability to consider alternate perspectives, viewpoints, arguments, and possibilities. When a person understands how other people are thinking, they can imagine different ways a conflict might play out, which empowers them to come up with workable compromises to resolve disputes.
Robson recommends using “moral algebra” to help you weigh all possible angles of a problem.
Calculate Moral Algebra
Moral algebra is a technique championed by American statesman and polymath Benjamin Franklin, who advised that you approach decision-making with a mathematical, quantitative mindset. His technique allows you to carefully consider your problem from all perspectives.
To use moral algebra, make a list of the pros and cons of your potential decision, then assign a number to each based on its importance. Cross off pros and cons whose values cancel each other out, and then see which side is left with the higher score. Franklin added another step, which is to take a day or so to consider what your analysis revealed. Once you’ve had time to think it over, make your decision.
Robson notes that moral algebra is more than a simple pro/con list. There are two crucial differences:
- It accounts for the significance of each factor: When you carefully measure the importance of each element of a decision, you’re more likely to see its nuances.
- It encourages slow consideration of the issue: When you ponder a problem for several days before making a decision, you’re less likely to react quickly to the facts that were the first to flit across your mind.
Listen to Your Emotions—Sometimes
Robson then addresses a contradiction regarding emotions. He notes that most experts on rational thinking advise that you quell your emotions. This is usually valid advice, as our emotions often lead us to ignore rational reasoning and make us susceptible to influences like those discussed earlier: overconfidence, cognitive biases, and motivated reasoning. In addition, our emotions are sometimes influenced by factors unrelated to the choices we make, but which nevertheless affect our decisions—such as bad weather, loud background noises, stress, fatigue, or the like.
However, Robson argues that you shouldn’t discount your emotions entirely. When they’re properly understood and analyzed, emotions can be valuable sources of information. Emotions, he explains, are designed to help us recognize important signals quickly so that we can respond to dangers and opportunities without needing to consciously think about them. When you perceive an experience, your body reacts immediately with a physical response, which may include heart rate changes, increased sweating, or the like. These signals tell our conscious brains to watch out for something, resulting in “gut feelings” or intuition.
Although sometimes gut feelings can lead us astray, they can also indicate that your subconscious mind is picking up something about a situation that your conscious mind hasn’t clued into yet. The key is to know when to pay attention to your emotions and when to ignore them. Robson writes that this is the primary difference between people who think wisely and people who don’t. The good news is that it’s a skill that can be learned.
Find Emotional Distance
Robson writes that to determine which emotions you should pay attention to and which you should override, you can use a technique called “self-distancing.” To do this, when you find yourself in a situation that upsets you, pause and imagine you’re watching the scene unfold from a distance, as if you’re watching it in a movie. Then describe the situation to yourself.
This simple process can have a profound influence on how you perceive and react to the world. It can help you see clearly what other people are doing so that you better understand where they’re coming from. People who regularly practice self-distancing have less anxiety and can confront scary situations—such as public speaking—with more ease and confidence. Research has even shown that married couples going through difficult periods are able to revitalize their relationships to a far greater degree when asked to describe their disputes through the eyes of an observer.
Learn to Describe Your Emotions Accurately
Robson observes that people who are able to describe their emotions with clear, precise words are better able to distinguish emotions that convey important information from emotions that reflect background influences like cognitive biases or stress—factors we’re not consciously aware of but that have significant impacts on our thinking. He argues that this is because background feelings are influential only if they stay in the background—once we become consciously aware of our emotions, they lose their power to influence our decisions. Thus, when we consciously name them, we deprive them of power.
The specificity with which we name our feelings seems to matter: Stock market investors who describe their emotions simply as “happy” don’t pick stocks as well as those who describe their emotions with more specific language, like “optimistic” or “excited.” Investors with more precise emotional language are also better able to bounce back after setbacks—they’re less likely to be overcome by negative emotions and then gamble on increasingly risky investments.
Robson therefore advises that you practice describing your emotions accurately. Ask yourself what emotions you’re feeling at different times of the day as you encounter different stimuli. For example, if you pass a car accident, ask yourself to describe your emotional reaction. Also keep a journal about the decisions you make throughout the day. Write down the thoughts and feelings you experience that impacted your choices.
Robson also recommends that you learn a second language. Studies suggest that people who can speak more than one language can better regulate their emotions—the theory is that when people think about words more purposefully, it lessens their automatic emotional responses to them.
Learn to Recognize Fake News
Another danger of the intelligence trap that Robson discusses is the tendency of smart people to fall for fake news—misinformation and disinformation. Apparently, intelligence doesn’t protect against fake news, and Robson writes that it also seems to make some people more susceptible to it. For example, studies show that university graduates tend to be more accepting of false medical information.
Robson emphasizes that everyone, regardless of intelligence, is susceptible to fake news, and he reviews some characteristics that will make information (fake or not) seem more believable:
Familiarity: When you’ve heard facts or beliefs repeatedly, you’re more likely to accept them as true. When messages are repeated frequently, it indicates others have decided these facts are true, and we tend to trust the group. Marketers leverage this tendency, repeating their message frequently and using familiar people to spread it.
Fluency: When something is easier to understand, it seems more likely to be true. Robson explains that when something seems simple and straightforward, it feels like the other person isn’t hiding anything. Marketers leverage this phenomenon when creating ads by using easy-to-read fonts and focusing on one message at a time.
Fluency can also be enhanced by making a message easier to visualize—if you can “picture” the subject of a message, you’ll feel it’s easier to understand, and you’ll accept it more readily. Peddlers of fake news stories take advantage of this in a number of ways:
- They add photos—adding an image makes a message easier to visualize, and thus makes it more believable. Notably, the visuals don’t have to be relevant—as long as they’re somewhat related to the topic, the message will seem true. For example, if an article about a housing-market scam includes a picture of a house, it will seem more believable, even though a photo of a random house proves nothing.
- They include small details, even if those details are irrelevant—for example, a fake news story about the death of a celebrity seems more believable if the story mentions where she was born and what movies she was famous for. Again, this makes a message easier for people to visualize, which makes it more believable.
How to Combat Fake News
Robson notes that it’s hard to curtail the spread of disinformation, and if you’re trying to correct a falsehood, it’s important that you don’t repeat it as you do so. Attempts to debunk misinformation can backfire because the mere act of repeating a false claim can reinforce it. False claims are memorable, but true statements can fade from memory quickly if they’re boring. This can result in people paying attention to and remembering the false claims even when those claims are being actively debunked. Thus, if you’re trying to correct a falsehood, highlight only the correct information, and mention the incorrect information as little as possible.
Inoculate people against fake news: Research has shown that you can prime people to be better at detecting fake news by showing them fake stories and revealing why they’re fake. This helps to inoculate them against misinformation by teaching them to recognize warning signs.
