Why smart minds get it wrong

History is full of intelligent people who have made stupid decisions. Consider Arthur Conan Doyle, the medical doctor and bestselling novelist, who frequently visited mediums.

His friend, the illusionist Harry Houdini, tried to persuade him they were tricksters; rather than taking his arguments seriously, Conan Doyle constructed an elaborate theory that Houdini himself must be a paranormal being who was lying to hide his own magical powers.

Steve Jobs refused life-saving surgery for pancreatic cancer, instead falling for health scams and fad diets. Even Einstein was guilty of some highly flawed thinking. He continued to support communism while turning a blind eye to the atrocities in the USSR - and wasted the final years of his life indulging in theories that his colleagues had already debunked.

Could greater intelligence, rather than protecting us from error, sometimes make us more stupid? In my book, The Intelligence Trap, I argue that this is indeed the case.

Measures of intelligence - such as IQ tests or SAT scores - correlate with many valuable outcomes in life, including your academic achievement, your income, and your performance in many jobs. But the latest psychological research shows that they do not always contribute to wiser judgment in many areas of life.

WHAT IS THE REASON SMART PEOPLE MAKE MISTAKES?

Consider a process called “motivated reasoning”.

When we feel emotional about an issue, we tend to apply our intelligence in a one-sided, biased way that serves our own beliefs and preconceptions, so that we always get the answer we want to see.

That may involve only searching for evidence that backs up your point of view while also using elaborate reasoning to explain away any criticisms or disagreements (even if they are perfectly valid).

And the more intelligent you are, the easier it is to build more creative arguments that support your own beliefs.

We can see this with many politically charged topics: studies show that we often use our intelligence to protect our existing political identities, even if that means ignoring the facts - a phenomenon that can explain the polarisation on issues such as global warming and gun control.

WHY MOTIVATED REASONING CAN BE FLAWED

The same kind of one-sided application can also harm our personal life: studies have shown that we are less able to think well about our own dilemmas, since they trigger “hot” emotional reasoning that can blind you to the truth. For instance, if you are married and too busy chasing a career at the expense of nurturing your relationship, motivated reasoning allows you to dismiss the hurt you are causing your spouse.

If your business is failing, it may blind you to the warning signs and allow you to rationalise your existing plan.

Such flawed thinking might explain why greater intelligence appears to have only a very small effect on our emotional wellbeing - despite the material benefits it brings.

THERE’S HELP AND IT’S CALLED EVIDENCE-BASED WISDOM

Fortunately, the latest science provides a cognitive toolkit to help us think more wisely. There is even a new scientific discipline - evidence-based wisdom - that aims to develop this way of thinking.

One technique involves deliberately arguing against yourself. For whatever issue you are considering, you must first of all note down your initial gut response. Now act like your fiercest critic and try to think from the opposite point of view.

Imagine you are thinking about leaving your job, and your friend has offered their advice. Ask yourself: “Would I have given the same weight to their opinion if they had taken the opposite view?”

Imagine you are trying to lose weight. You believe you are choosing the right diet but your best friend warns you that it’s an extreme form of food restriction. You can turn the tables by asking yourself: ‘If my friend had been going on this very diet, would I have said the same thing?”

In each case, the aim is to determine whether you are accepting or dismissing evidence due to your own preconceptions. Studies have shown that it results in wiser, more balanced reasoning. As a result, you begin to evaluate the arguments on their merit rather than simply using them to support your viewpoint.

SELF DISTANCING: HOW DOES IT WORK?

Another strategy is known as “self-distancing” — which involves considering your dilemma from an outside perspective. There are many ways to do this. You might describe it in the third person. “Jack was thinking about buying a house...”

Or you might engage in “mental time travel” — imagining yourself in a week, a month, or a year’s time looking back at your decision. Or, if you are thinking about political rather than personal issues, you might imagine how someone from another (more neutral) country would view the problem.

Studies have shown that this simple practice can calm that “hot”, emotive reasoning to create a more open-minded, less biased attitude.

Igor Grossmann, at the University of Toronto, has shown that self-distancing can reduce political polarisation and increase participants’ willingness to join a bipartisan group.

HOW TO FINE TUNE EMOTIONAL RESPONSES

Finally, you might consider fine-tuning your emotional awareness: financial traders who have a richer and more precise emotional vocabulary have been shown to make wiser investments, for instance. Being able to label our feelings helps us to control them.

Fortunately, there is evidence that this is a learnable skill - just a few moments of deliberate emotional reflection could have a lasting effect on your decision-making.

The aim is to pick apart and define the various feelings - whether you feel happy, joyous or excited, for instance; or sad, melancholic or bored — using precise language, rather than the vague terms (“good” or “bad”) that we often use to describe our mood.

Philosophers have long considered that greater brainpower may be a burden as well as a benefit.

In the 17th century, Rene Descartes wrote: “The greatest minds are capable of the greatest vices as well as the greatest virtues; those who go forward but very slowly can get further, if they always follow the right road, than those who are in too much of a hurry and stray off it.”

With these simple tools, we can all ensure that our thinking remains on the correct path.

— The Daily Telegraph