Epilogue

We began this journey with the story of Kary Mullis – the brilliant chemist who has dabbled in astrology and astral projection, and even defended AIDS denialism. It should now be clear how factors such as motivated reasoning could have led him to ignore every warning sign.

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.

Interviewing so many brilliant scientists for this book, I came to notice that each expert seemed, in some way, to embody the kind of intelligence or thinking that they’ve been studying. David Perkins was unusually thoughtful, frequently pausing our conversation to reflect before we continued; Robert Sternberg, meanwhile, was tremendously pragmatic in conveying his message; Igor Grossmann was extremely humble and took extra care to emphasise the limits of his knowledge; and Susan Engel was animated with endless curiosity.

Perhaps they were attracted to their field because they wanted to understand their own thinking better; or perhaps their own thinking came to resemble the subject of their study. Either way, to me it was one more illustration of the enormous range of potential thinking styles available to us, and the benefits they bring.

James Flynn describes the rise in IQ over the twentieth century as our ‘cognitive history’; it shows the ways our minds have been moulded by the society around us. But it strikes me that if each of these scientists had been able to present and promote their work in the early nineteenth century, before the concept of general intelligence came to determine the kind of thinking that was considered ‘smart’, our cognitive history might have been very different. As it is, the abstract reasoning measured by IQ tests, SATs and GREs still dominates our understanding of what constitutes intelligence.

We don’t need to deny the value of those skills, or abandon the learning of factual knowledge and expertise, to accept that other ways of reasoning and learning are equally deserving of our attention. Indeed, if I have learnt anything from this research, it is that cultivating these other traits often enhances the skills measured by standard tests of cognitive ability, as well as making us more rounded and wiser thinkers.

Study after study has shown that encouraging people to define their own problems, explore different perspectives, imagine alternative outcomes to events, and identify erroneous arguments can boost their overall capacity to learn new material while also encouraging a wiser way of reasoning.1

I found it particularly encouraging that learning with these methods often benefits people across the intelligence spectrum. They can reduce motivated reasoning among the highly intelligent, for instance, but they can also improve the general learning of people with lower intelligence. One study by Bradley Owens at the State University of New York in Buffalo, for instance, found that intellectual humility predicted academic achievement better than an IQ test. Everyone with higher intellectual humility performed better, but – crucially – it was of most benefit for those with lower intelligence, completely compensating for their lower ‘natural’ ability.2 The principles of evidence-based wisdom can help anyone to maximise their potential.

This new understanding of human thinking and reasoning could not have come at a more important time.

As Robert Sternberg wrote in 2018: ‘The steep rise in IQ has bought us, as a society, much less than anyone had any right to hope for. People are probably better at figuring out complex cell phones and other technological innovations than they would have been at the turn of the twentieth century. But in terms of our behaviour as a society, are you impressed with what 30 points has brought us?’3

Although we have made some strides in areas such as technology and healthcare, we are no closer to solving pressing issues such as climate change or social inequality – and the increasingly dogmatic views that often come with the intelligence trap only stand in the way of the negotiations between people with different positions that might lead to a solution. 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.

This may sound like wishful thinking, but remember that American presidents who scored higher on scales of open-mindedness and perspective taking were far more likely to find peaceful solutions to conflict. It’s not unreasonable to ask whether, given this research, we should be actively demanding those qualities in our leaders, in addition to more obvious measures of academic achievement and professional success.

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. As the philosopher Valerie Tiberius, who is now working with psychologists at the Chicago Center for Practical Wisdom, points out, we often spend huge amounts of time trying to boost our self-esteem and confidence. ‘But I think that if more people had some humility about what they know and don’t know, that would go a tremendous distance to improving life for everyone.’

To this end, I have included a short ‘taxonomy’ of definitions in the appendix, outlining the most common errors at the heart of the intelligence trap and some of the best ways to deal with them. Sometimes, just being able to put a label on your thinking opens the door to a more insightful frame of mind. I have found that it can be an exhilarating experience to question your own intelligence in these ways, as you reject many of the assumptions you have always taken for granted. It allows you to revive the childlike joy of discovery that drove everyone from Benjamin Franklin to Richard Feynman.

It is easy, as adults, to assume that we have reached our intellectual peak by the time we finish our education; indeed, we are often told to expect a mental decline soon after. But the work on evidence-based wisdom shows that we can all learn new ways of thinking. Whatever our age and expertise, whether a NASA scientist or a school student, we can all benefit from wielding our minds with insight, precision and humility.5