by David Robson
Moral algebra: Benjamin Franklin’s strategy to weigh up the pros and cons of an argument, often over several days. By taking this slow and systematic approach, you may avoid issues such as the availability bias – our tendency to base judgements on the first information that comes to mind – allowing you to come to a wiser long-term solution to your problem.
Pre-mortem: Deliberately considering the worst-case scenario, and all the factors that may have contributed towards it, before making a decision. This is one of the most well-established ‘de-biasing’ strategies.
Reflective competence: 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.
Socrates effect: A form of perspective taking, in which we imagine explaining our problem to a young child. The strategy appears to reduce ‘hot’ cognition and reduce biases and motivated reasoning.
Tolerance of ambiguity: A tendency to embrace uncertainty and nuance, rather than seeking immediate closure on the issue at hand.
Notes
Chapter 1
1 These quotes can all be found in Mullis’s autobiography: Mullis, K. (1999), Dancing Naked in the Mind Field, London: Bloomsbury. He also expresses them on his website: https://www.karymullis.com/pdf/On_AIDS_and_Global_Warming.pdf. They are frequently quoted on web pages and forums discussing astrology, climate change and HIV/AIDS conspiracy theories. For instance, he is quoted on the website of the prominent AIDS denialist, Peter Duesberg: http://www.duesberg.com/viewpoints/kintro.html. And numerous video interviews of him describing AIDS conspiracy theories can be seen on YouTube: e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IifgAvXU3ts&t=7s and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rycOLjoPbeo.
2 Graber, M.L. (2013), ‘The Incidence of Diagnostic Error in Medicine’, BMJ Quality and Safety, 22(Suppl. 2), 21?7.
3 It’s worth noting that Edward de Bono has described an ‘intelligence trap’ in his books on learning. Similarly, the Harvard University psychologist David Perkins refers, in passing, to ‘intelligence traps’ in his book Outsmarting IQ (Simon & Schuster, 1995). Perkins’ ideas, in particular, have informed some elements of my argument, and I would thoroughly recommend reading his work.
4 According to the classicist Christopher Rowe, these details of Socrates’ appearance and life are broadly consistent across multiple sources. All of the quotations have also been taken from Rowe’s translation of Plato’s Apology contained in this volume: Rowe, C. (2010), The Last Days of Socrates, London: Penguin (Kindle Edition). The parallels between Socrates’ trial and the research on the bias blind spot may not be the only instance in which Greek philosophy pre-empted behavioural economics and psychology. In an article for the online magazine Aeon, the journalist Nick Romeo finds examples of framing, confirmation bias and anchoring in Plato’s teaching. See Romeo, N. (2017), ‘Platonically Irrational’, Aeon, https://aeon.co/essays/what-plato-knew-about-behavioural-economics-a-lot.
5 Descartes, R. (1637), A Discourse on the Method, trans. Maclean, I. (2006), Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. 5.
6 Shurkin, J. (1992), Terman’s Kids: The Groundbreaking Study of How the Gifted Grow Up, Boston, MA: Little, Brown, p. 122.
7 Shurkin, Terman’s Kids, pp. 51?3.
8 Shurkin, Terman’s Kids, pp. 109?16.
9 Shurkin, Terman’s Kids, pp. 54?8.
10 Terman, L.M. (1922), ‘Were We Born That Way?’ World’s Work, 44, 657?9. Quoted in White, J. (2006), Intelligence, Destiny and Education: The Ideological Roots of Intelligence Testing, London: Routledge, p. 24.
11 Terman, L.M. (1930), ‘Trails to Psychology’, in Murchison, C. (ed.), History of Psychology in Autobiography, Vol. 2, p. 297.
12 Terman, ‘Trails to Psychology’, p. 303.
13 Nicolas, S., et al. (2013), ‘Sick Or Slow? On the Origins of Intelligence as a Psychological Object’, Intelligence, 41 (5), 699?711.
14 For more information on Binet’s views, see White, S. H. (2000), ‘Conceptual Foundations of IQ Testing’, Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, 6, 33?43.
15 Binet, A. (1909), Les idées modernes sur les enfants, Paris: Flammarion.
16 Perkins, D. (1995), Outsmarting IQ: The Emerging Science of Learnable Intelligence, New York: Free Press, p. 44.
17 Terman, L.M. (1916), The Measurement of Intelligence: An Explanation of and a Complete Guide for the Use of the Stanford Revision and Extension of the Binet-Simon Intelligence Scale, Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, p. 46.
18 Terman, The Measurement of Intelligence, p. 6.
19 Terman, The Measurement of Intelligence, p. 11.
20 Shurkin, Terman’s Kids.
21 Shurkin, Terman’s Kids, pp. 196?292.
22 Honan, W. (9 March 2002), ‘Shelley Mydans, 86, author and former POW’, New York Times.
23 McGraw, C. (29 December 1988), ‘Creator of ‘‘Lucy’’ TV show dies’, Los Angeles Times.
24 Oppenheimer, J. and Oppenheimer, G. (1996), Laughs, Luck ? and Lucy: How I Came to Create the Most Popular Sitcom of All Time. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, p. 100.
25 Terman, ‘Trails to Psychology, p 297.
26 In China, for instance, most schools maintain records of each child’s performance on non-verbal reasoning tests. See Higgins, L.T. and Xiang, G. (2009), ‘The Development and Use of Intelligence Tests in China’, Psychology and Developing Societies, 21(2), 257–75.
27 Madhok, D. (10 September 2012), ‘Cram Schools Boom Widens India Class Divide’, Reuters, https://in.reuters.com/article/india-cramschools-kota/cram-schools-boom-widens-indias-class-divide-idINDEE8890GW20120910.
28 Ritchie, S.J., et al. (2015), ‘Beyond a Bigger Brain: Multivariable Structural Brain Imaging and Intelligence’, Intelligence, 51, 47?56.
29 Gregory, M.D., Kippenhan, J.S., Dickinson, D., Carrasco, J., Mattay, V.S., Weinberger, D.R. and Berman, K.F. (2016), ‘Regional Variations in Brain Gyrification are Associated with General Cognitive Ability in Humans, Current Biology, 26(10), 1301?5.
30 Li, Y., Liu, Y., Li, J., Qin, W., Li, K., Yu, C. and Jiang, T. (2009), ‘Brain Anatomical Network and Intelligence’, PLoS Computational Biology, 5(5), e1000395.
31 For further discussion of this, see Kaufman, S. (2013), ‘Ungifted: Intelligence Redefined, New York: Basic Books (Kindle Edition). See, in particular, his review of the research by the Posse Foundation (pp. 286?8), who selected university students based on a wide variety of measures besides traditional, abstract intelligence – including in-depth interviews and group discussions that measure qualities such as leadership, communication, problem solving and collaborative skills. Although their SAT scores are well below the norm for their university, their subsequent success at university is roughly equal to the average of other students.
32 The following paper, written by some of the most prominent IQ researchers, explicitly makes this point: Neisser, U., et al. (1996), ‘Intelligence: Knowns and Unknowns’ American Psychologist, 51(2), 77?101. See also the following paper, which provides a further analysis of this idea, including the following statement: ‘Over one hundred years of research on intelligence testing has shown that scores on standardized tests of intelligence predict a wide range of outcomes, but even the strongest advocates of intelligence testing agree that IQ scores (and their near cousins such as the SATs) leave a large portion of the variance unexplained when predicting real-life behaviors.’ Butler, H.A., Pentoney, C. and Bong, M.P. (2017), ‘Predicting Real-world Outcomes: Critical Thinking Ability Is a Better Predictor of Life Decisions than Intelligence’, Thinking Skills and Creativity, 25, 38?46.
33 Schmidt, F.L. and Hunter, J. (2004), ‘General Mental Ability in the World of Work: Occupational Attainment and Job Performance’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 86(1), 162?73.
34 Neisser, U., et al., ‘Intelligence’. Strenze, T. (2007), ‘Intelligence and Socioeconomic Success: A Meta-Analytic Review of Longitudinal Research’, Intelligence, 35, 401?26.
35 For a discuss
ion of the difficulties with linking IQ to job performance, see: Byington, E. and Felps, W. (2010), ‘Why Do IQ Scores Predict Job Performance? An Alternative, Sociological Explanation’, Research in Organizational Behavior, 30, 175?202. Richardson, K. and Norgate, S.H. (2015), ‘Does IQ Really Predict Job Performance?’ Applied Developmental Science, 19(3), 153?69. Ericsson, K.A. (2014), ‘Why Expert Performance Is Special and Cannot Be Extrapolated From Studies of Performance in the General Population: A Response to Criticisms’, Intelligence, 45, 81?103.
36 Feldman, D. (1984), ‘A Follow-Up of Subjects Scoring Above 180 IQ in Terman’s Genetic Studies of Genius’, Exceptional Children, 50(6), 518?23.
37 Shurkin, Terman’s Kids, pp. 183?7.
38 Shurkin, Terman’s Kids, p. 190.
39 For a more recent analysis coming to broadly the same conclusions, see also Dean Simonton’s analysis of the Terman studies of genius. ‘Not only do differences in general intelligence explain little variance in achieved eminence, but the explanatory power of intelligence is apparently also contingent on having intelligence defined in more domain specific terms. In essence, intellectual giftedness must be reconceived as the degree of acceleration in expertise acquisition within an individually chosen domain. Furthermore, personality differences and early developmental experiences have an even bigger part to play in the emergence of genius, although these influential factors must also be tailored to the specific domain of achievement.’ Simonton, D.K. (2016), ‘Reverse Engineering Genius: Historiometric Studies of Superlative Talent’, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1377, 3–9.
40 Elements of this interview first appeared in an article I wrote for BBC Future in 2016: http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20160929-our-iqs-have-never-been-higher-but-it-hasnt-made-us-smart
41 Clark, C.M., Lawlor-Savage, L. and Goghari, V.M. (2016), ‘The Flynn Effect: A Quantitative Commentary on Modernity and Human Intelligence’, Measurement: Interdisciplinary Research and Perspectives, 14(2), 39–53. In line with the idea of scientific spectacles, recent research has shown that the Flynn Effect can largely be accounted for in the time people take to answer the questions. Younger generations do it more rapidly, as if abstract thinking has been automated and become second nature: Must, O. and Must, A. (2018), ‘Speed and the Flynn Effect’, Intelligence, 68, 37–47.
42 Some modern IQ researchers have in fact suggested that training in these abstract thinking skills could be a way of closing the social divide between low- and high-IQ individuals. But the Flynn Effect would suggest that this would be of limited benefit for things such as creative thinking. See, for instance, Asbury, K. and Plomin, R. (2014), G Is for Genes, Oxford: Wiley Blackwell, pp. 149–87.
43 In fact, there is some evidence that creativity has actually decreased over the same period, both in terms of lab-based measures of creative problem solving and real-world measures of innovation, such as the average number of patents per person. See Kim, K.H. (2011), ‘The Creativity Crisis: The Decrease in Creative Thinking Scores on the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking’, Creativity Research Journal, 23(4), 285–95. Kaufman, J. (2018), ‘Creativity as a Stepping Stone toward a Brighter Future’, Journal of Intelligence, 6(2), 21. Huebner, J. (2005), ‘A Possible Declining Trend for Worldwide Innovation’, Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 72(8), 980–6.
44 Flynn, J.R. (1998), ‘IQ Gains Over Time: Toward Finding the Causes’, in Neisser, U. (ed.), The Rising Curve: Long-Term Changes in IQ and Related Measures, Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, pp. 25?66.
45 Harms, P.D. and Credé, M. (2010), ‘Remaining Issues in Emotional Intelligence Research: Construct Overlap, Method Artifacts, and Lack of Incremental Validity’, Industrial and Organizational Psychology: Perspectives on Science and Practice, 3(2), 154–8. See also Fiori, M., Antonietti, J.P., Mikolajczak, M., Luminet, O., Hansenne, M. and Rossier, J. (2014), ‘What Is the Ability Emotional Intelligence Test (MSCEIT) Good For? An Evaluation Using Item Response Theory’, PLOS One, 9(6), e98827.
46 See Waterhouse, L. (2006), ‘Multiple Intelligences, the Mozart Effect, and Emotional Intelligence: A Critical Review’, Educational Psychologist, 41(4), 207–25. And Waterhouse, L. (2006), ‘Inadequate Evidence for Multiple Intelligences, Mozart Effect, and Emotional Intelligence Theories’, Educational Psychologist, 41(4), 247?55.
47 In the following paper, Robert Sternberg contrasts his theories to multiple intelligences and EQ: Sternberg, R.J. (1999), ‘Successful Intelligence: Finding a Balance’, Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 3(11), 436?42.
48 Hagbloom, S.J., et al. (2002), ‘The 100 Most Eminent Psychologists of the 20th Century’, Review of General Psychology, 6(2), 139?52.
49 Sternberg describes this journey in more detail in the following web post: http://www.cdl.org/articles/the-teachers-we-never-forget/.
50 For a more in-depth discussion, see Sternberg, R.J. and Preiss, D.D. (eds) (2010), Innovations in Educational Psychology: Perspectives on Learning, Teaching, and Human Development. New York: Springer, pp. 406?7.
51 Sternberg, ‘Successful Intelligence’.
52 See, for instance, Hedlund, J., Wilt, J.M., Nebel, K.L., Ashford, S.J. and Sternberg, R.J. (2006), ‘Assessing Practical Intelligence in Business School Admissions: A Supplement to the Graduate Management Admissions Test’, Learning and Individual Differences, 16(2), 101–27.
53 See the following PBS interview with Sternberg for a more in-depth discussion of these ideas: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/sats/interviews/sternberg.html.
54 For summaries of these results, see Sternberg, R.J., Castejón, J.L., Prieto, M.D., Hautamäki, J. and Grigorenko, E.L. (2001), ‘Confirmatory Factor Analysis of the Sternberg Triarchic Abilities Test in Three International Samples: An Empirical Test of the Triarchic Theory of Intelligence’, European Journal of Psychological Assessment, 17(1), 1?16. Sternberg, R.J. (2015), ‘Successful Intelligence: A Model for Testing Intelligence Beyond IQ Tests’, European Journal of Education and Psychology, 8(2), 76?84. Sternberg, R.J. (2008), ‘Increasing Academic Excellence and Enhancing Diversity Are Compatible Goals’, Educational Policy, 22(4), 487?514. Sternberg, R.J., Grigorenko, E.L. and Zhang, L.F. (2008), ‘Styles Of Learning and Thinking Matter in Instruction and Assessment’, Perspectives on Psychological Science, 3(6), 486?506.
55 Sternberg, R.J. (2000), Practical Intelligence in Everyday Life, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 144?200. See also Wagner, R.K. and Sternberg, R.J. (1985), ‘Practical Intelligence in Real-world Pursuits: The Role of Tacit Knowledge’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 49(2), 436?58. See also Cianciolo, A.T., et al. (2006), ‘Tacit Knowledge, Practical Intelligence and Expertise’, in Ericsson, K.A. (ed.), Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. For an independent discussion of Sternberg’s studies, see Perkins, D. (1995), Outsmarting IQ: The Emerging Science of Learnable Intelligence, New York: Free Press, pp. 83?4. And Nisbett, R.E., Aronson, J., Blair, C., Dickens, W., Flynn, J., Halpern, D.F. and Turkheimer, E. (2012), ‘Intelligence: New Findings and Theoretical Developments’, American Psychologist, 67(2), 130. And Mackintosh, N.J. (2011), IQ and Human Intelligence, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 222–43.
56 In 1996, the APA’s comprehensive report on ‘Intelligence: Known and Unknowns’ concluded that ‘although this work is not without its critics, the results to this point tend to support the distinction between analytic and practical intelligence’. Neisser, et al., ‘Intelligence’.
57 See, for instance: Imai, L. and Gelfand, M.J. (2010), ‘The Culturally Intelligent Negotiator: The Impact of Cultural Intelligence (CQ) on Negotiation Sequences and Outcomes’, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 112(2), 83–98. Alon, I. and Higgins, J.M. (2005), ‘Global Leadership Success through Emotional and Cultural Intelligences’, Business Horizons, 48(6), 501–12. Rockstuhl, T., Seiler, S., Ang, S., Van Dyne, L. and Annen, H. (2011), ‘Beyond General Intelligence (IQ) and Emotional Intelligence
(EQ): The Role of Cultural Intelligence (CQ) on Cross-Border Leadership Effectiveness in a Globalized World’, Journal of Social Issues, 67(4), 825–40.
58 Marks, R. (2007), ‘Lewis M. Terman: Individual Differences and the Construction of Social Reality’, Educational Theory, 24(4), 336?55.
59 Terman, L.M. (1916), The Measurement of Intelligence: An Explanation of and a Complete Guide for the Use of the Stanford Revision and Extension of the Binet-Simon Intelligence Scale. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin.
60 Lippmann, W. (25 October 1922), ‘The Mental Age of Americans’, New Republic, p. 213.
61 Terman, L.M. (27 December 1922), ‘The Great Conspiracy or the Impulse Imperious of Intelligence Testers, Psychoanalyzed and Exposed By Mr Lippmann’, New Republic, p. 116.
62 Shurkin, Terman’s Kids, p. 190.
63 Minton, H.L. (1988), Lewis M. Terman: Pioneer in Psychological Testing, New York, New York University Press.
Chapter 2
1 These passages draw on the following material: Ernst, B.M.L. and Carrington, H. (1933), Houdini and Conan Doyle: The Story of a Strange Friendship, London: Hutchinson. Conan Doyle, A.C. (1930), The Edge of the Unknown, London: John Murray. Kalush, W. and Sloman, L. (2006), The Secret Life of Houdini: The Making of America’s First Superhero, New York: Atria. Sandford, C. (2011), Houdini and Conan Doyle, London: Duckworth Overlook. Gardner, L. (10 August 2015), ‘Harry Houdini and Arthur Conan Doyle: A Friendship Split by Spiritualism’, Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2015/aug/10/houdini-and-conan-Conan Doyle-impossible-edinburgh-festival.
2 Wilk, T. (2 May 2012), ‘Houdini, Sir Doyle Do AC’, Atlantic City Weekly, http://www.atlanticcityweekly.com/news_and_views/houdini-sir-doyle-do-ac/article_a16ab3ba-95b9-50e1-a2e0-eca01dd8eaae.html.
3 In Of Miracles, the eighteenth-century philosopher David Hume put it like this: ‘No testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind, that its falsehood would be more miraculous, than the fact, which it endeavours to establish.’ In other words, an extraordinary claim requires extraordinary evidence that discounts any physical explanations.
