Book SummaryThe Intelligence Trap, by David Robson

1-Page Summary1-Page Book Summary of The Intelligence Trap

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...

The Intelligence Trap Summary 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...

The Intelligence Trap Summary 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.

(Shortform note: The ability to rationalize isn’t the only personal strength that can turn into a weakness if it’s taken to an extreme. Characteristics like confidence, attention to detail, persistence, and independence are also positive traits that can, when unbalanced, turn negative: becoming, in these examples, arrogance, inefficient perfectionism,...

The Intelligence Trap Summary 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.

(Shortform note: Other psychologists echo Robson’s view that wisdom is a different skill than straightforward intelligence, though most view intelligence as being an important piece of the puzzle. Some define it as a psychological characteristic that combines intellectual ability with prior knowledge, experience, and virtue. This aligns with Robson’s argument that wisdom is more about assessing a real-world situation than merely...

Shortform Exercise: Find Emotional Distance

Robson suggests that to determine when to follow or ignore your emotional reactions, you should distance yourself from whatever situation is triggering your response by envisioning it as a movie.

Think of a recent time you had a disagreement with someone and reacted emotionally. What was the argument about?