The smarter they are , Harder they fail Day-05 Reading Challenge- Think Again Adam Grant

The smarter they are , Harder they fail  

Mental horsepower doesn’t guarantee mental dexterity. No matter

how much brainpower you have, if you lack the motivation to change

your mind, you’ll miss many occasions to think again. Research

reveals that the higher you score on an IQ test, the more likely you

are to fall for stereotypes, because you’re faster at recognizing patterns. And recent experiments suggest that the smarter you are,the more you might struggle to update your beliefs.

One study investigated whether being a math whiz makes you

better at analyzing data. The answer is yes—if you’re told the data are

about something bland, like a treatment for skin rashes. But what if

the exact same data are labeled as focusing on an ideological issue

that activates strong emotions—like gun laws in the United States?

Being a quant jock makes you more accurate in interpreting the

results—as long as they support your beliefs. Yet if the empirical

pattern clashes with your ideology, math prowess is no longer an

asset; it actually becomes a liability. The better you are at crunching

numbers, the more spectacularly you fail at analyzing patterns that

contradict your views. If they were liberals, math geniuses did worse

than their peers at evaluating evidence that gun bans failed. If they

were conservatives, they did worse at assessing evidence that gun

bans worked.

In psychology there are at least two biases that drive this pattern.

One is confirmation bias: seeing what we expect to see. The other is

desirability bias: seeing what we want to see. These biases don’t just

prevent us from applying our intelligence. They can actually contort

our intelligence into a weapon against the truth. We find reasons to

preach our faith more deeply, prosecute our case more passionately,

and ride the tidal wave of our political party. The tragedy is that

we’re usually unaware of the resulting flaws in our thinking.

My favorite bias is the “I’m not biased” bias, in which people

believe they’re more objective than others. It turns out that smart

people are more likely to fall into this trap. The brighter you are, the

harder it can be to see your own limitations. Being good at thinking

can make you worse at rethinking.

When we’re in scientist mode, we refuse to let our ideas become

ideologies. We don’t start with answers or solutions; we lead with

questions and puzzles. We don’t preach from intuition; we teach

from evidence. We don’t just have healthy skepticism about other

people’s arguments; we dare to disagree with our own arguments.

Thinking like a scientist involves more than just reacting with an

open mind. It means being actively open-minded. It requires

searching for reasons why we might be wrong—not for reasons why

we must be right—and revising our views based on what we learn.

That rarely happens in the other mental modes. In preacher

mode, changing our minds is a mark of moral weakness; in scientist

mode, it’s a sign of intellectual integrity. In prosecutor mode,

allowing ourselves to be persuaded is admitting defeat; in scientist

mode, it’s a step toward the truth. In politician mode, we flip-flop in

response to carrots and sticks; in scientist mode, we shift in the face

of sharper logic and stronger data.