By Keith E. Stanovich
Yale University Press
288pp
£16.00
ISBN 9780300123852
Published 3 February 2009
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Books by academics reviewed by academics
Book of the week: - What Intelligence Tests Miss
20 August 2009
A high IQ doesn't always make for smart choices, Wendy Johnson finds
We all know what Keith Stanovich is talking about in this book, and we all have our anecdotal examples: the economics professor who repeatedly bounces cheques; the theoretical physicist who is convinced her house is haunted; or the surgeon who goes out for fish and chips right after completing a heart bypass. And of course, there's that recent US President who can't seem to express a coherent thought yet reportedly has an IQ of 120. Intelligence tests don't seem to pick up either good judgment or the ability to think clearly and consistently, and people with high IQs often do very stupid things.
Stanovich thinks he can tell us why, and goes a long way towards doing so. Using evocative language such as "myside bias" and "infected mindware", he demonstrates, using vivid examples, how lazily we often use our minds and what this apathy costs us. He also shows how the way we test for educational potential and teach even those we deem most educable has not kept up with our modern probabilistic and relativistic world.
Anyone interested in human intelligence and how we assess its individual differences should pay close attention to what he says, which is that intelligence tests don't measure rationality. Rationality is the mental ability to organise behaviour to use the available physical resources to maximise the probability of achieving the most desirable outcome in a situation. This isn't exactly Stanovich's definition, but it is pretty close and it's the one that matters. He tells us that intelligence tests simply measure accumulated knowledge and the ability to apply algorithms or mental simulations of hypothetical outcomes.
Of course, accumulated knowledge often closely reflects previous opportunities to have engaged in such simulations in the past, including, although Stanovich doesn't say so, chances to have learnt how to engage in such simulations and to have become good at them purely through practice.
And the testing situation is contrived: the problems the tests present are artificial, involve limited numbers of possible simulations, and we know that it is in our interests, for the duration of the test at least, to carry out as many of these simulations as well as we possibly can. So we all do so, being good little soldiers who want to prove our merit and get the job or the university admission we want. There are big individual differences in the ability and knowledge that is measured, and Stanovich knows this matters.
But once we leave the examination room, Stanovich says, no matter how well we did there, the situations and problems we are presented with in real life are much more open-ended. We often don't even know where to look for the best possible outcome. With the context not clearly defined and many goals and behavioural options in front of us at any given time, most of us don't apply our abilities to run through those hypothetical simulations.
We are generally all too willing to rely on automated, habitual responses or cognitive shortcuts that ignore possibilities that are not glaringly obvious. Or we let emotional responses, such as fear of one outcome or desire for another, dictate our behavioural responses so that we end up with the very outcome we fear the most. In other words, we don't behave rationally and we suffer for it as individuals, and we suffer for it as a society because, over and over, the people in charge of things are not necessarily the ones most likely to behave rationally, whatever their ability to do so.
Stanovich complains about society's overreliance on intelligence tests at the expense of tools that measure rationality. But he misses the fact that, were we to teach rationality and measure it systematically in the way he suggests, the very people who do well on intelligence tests would also do well on his kind of rationality tests. That's what rationality is: the ability to organise behaviour to maximise outcomes.
We have a window now where people with high IQ scores aren't always the most rational by Stanovich's lights, but it wouldn't last long if the measurement shifted overtly to include his measures of rationality.
However, he misses something else that may be even more important. Stanovich expresses surprise at our failures of rationality and bemoans them, as if we ought to do better because we are rational humans and not irrational animals. I think he is right that we can do better, and that with appropriate educational approaches we would. But is there really something uniquely human about our occasional flashes of rationality? Duane Rumbaugh and David Washburn think not. In their book Intelligence of Apes and Other Rational Beings (2003), they address many of the same definitions of rational behaviour as Stanovich - but they describe these behaviours in non-human primates. Indeed, that book is ideal companion reading to What Intelligence Tests Miss. It is written for the same audience - namely, anyone interested in human intelligence and its manifestations - and its examples are equally vivid. But for Rumbaugh and Washburn, the surprise is the expressions of rationality they see. Where Stanovich gripes about our failure to see beyond the ends of our own noses, they celebrate glimpses of wisdom, insight and understanding that can be used as tools to manipulate the world. Both are, of course, correct.
Rationality may be, to our minds, the sine qua non of human intelligence. We don't expect non-human primates from bonobos to rhesus monkeys to display the kinds of sentient, synergistic behaviour that maximise the probabilities of the most desirable outcomes. But with appropriate environmental stimulation and the right knowledge background, Rumbaugh and Washburn show that they can and do.
These non-human primates learn to manipulate arbitrary linguistic and numeric symbols, comprehend speech, and form cognitive maps of conceptual as well as spatial relations. Moreover, like us, they learn how to learn: the first tasks they master come with difficulty, but subsequent tasks are mastered much more quickly, even immediately, because the primates have learnt how to approach them. Most importantly, however, they learn to pay attention to stimuli they would likely otherwise never have even noticed, and they come to put their skills to use in ways they haven't been taught, to achieve goals of their own choosing. In other words, at least with appropriate training, they display rationality. Rumbaugh and Washburn focus on non-human primates because they know them best, but they also make it clear that it's not just primates. We aren't unique in this rationality stuff, after all.
But like us, primates and other animals aren't rational all the time. They suffer from Stanovich's "myside bias": they rely on instinctive and automated responses whether they actually think they can get away with them or not, and they get swept up by their emotions, just like we do.
Maybe we would better understand ourselves and the animals with which we share our world if we stopped thinking we were so different from them, and realised how often we behave like irrational (yet sophisticated) automatons who can only make up stories to justify their behaviour after the fact. Maybe the surprise is not our failures of rationality, but that we are able to be rational at all.
The Author
Keith E. Stanovich is professor of human development and applied psychology at the University of Toronto. He is the author of more than 175 scientific articles, six books and is a fellow of the American Psychological Association and the Association for Psychological Science.
Stanovich is perhaps best known for his work on the psychology of reading and reasoning, and his research has been recognised by a host of awards.
He has twice won the Albert J. Harris Award from the International Reading Association and has also been elected to its Reading Hall of Fame, the youngest person admitted.
Besides drinking draft Smithwick's Ale, Stanovich's greatest pleasure is walking coastal paths with his wife. He claims to have no quirks, but his wife, who has been walking exclusively on his right side for 36 years, disagrees.
What Intelligence Tests Miss: The Psychology of Rational Thought
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Reviewer
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Wendy Johnson is a Research Council UK fellow in the School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences at the University of Edinburgh, and a member of the Medical Research Council Centre for Cognitive Ageing and Cognitive Epidemiology.
Readers' comments
This book, not least because of its determinist animalist-behaviouralist model, sounds like a textbook example of that keen stereotyping of the cleverest human beings as `stupid in actual life`. The stereotype is ridiculous, and would be simply laughed at if there were not too many less-intelligent persons with a self-interest in believing it, Since the stereotype is so ubiquitous anyway, does anyone need a book to peddle it to the converted....!
Janet - You seem to be setting up a dichotomy of Either rational Or behaviourist-determinist; or maybe you're following on from the tenor of the book (I haven't read it). Now I agree with you that the big problem with behaviourism is determinism; once one has become indeterminate enough in one's philosophy to incorporate ANY examples of flexible behaviour, there seems to be nothing left of the mechanical 'push causality' that could underpin behaviourism. But I don't agree with your dichotomy, since one can easliy postulate organisms that can, for some situations, behave in relatively simple mechanical ways, yet when the need arises display much more complex behaviours. But that doesn't mean that rationality is the candidate for explaining all of these behaviours. Many things we (and many other species) do are not obviously rational - like play (alright, could be training) music, humour, artistic inspiration, flashes of insight etc - and these aren't easily explained within the behaviourist / rational dichotomy. And they're not easily measured by IQ tests, either. In fact, I'm just not sure of the phrase (in the article) "...Rationality may be, to our minds, the sine qua non of human intelligence" regards
To DQ: nope, I wasn`t the person setting up a behaviourist/rationalist dichotomy - it`s the review and book that seem to have that agenda
Beg ' pardon, then. But you see my point?
The fact is that for a person of incredibly high IQ, the answer to 'how do I manage my budget' is easy but the practice of it is so mind-numbingly uninteresting that it is difficult to do; for an intelligent person, once the intellectual problem is solved, the brain wants to move onto another problem. One of the worst things in modern society and employment is how often intelligent and talented people are not recognised or exploited because stupid people have been given the right.. by other stupid people...to make decisions on employment. Inelligent behaviour is often seen as problematic, precisely because it is in advance of where less intlliegent people feel comfortable in dealing with someone., I'm sure we have all been in the situation where an outstandingly stupid person gets more and more frustrated when there is subtelty and will lose their temper and thinks they are being ridiculed.. I worked for one person who couldn't understand my choice to take two small bags to work, one with lunch, one with clothes change. He was pretty darn thick and kept asking my 'why don't you bring one bag' as though i were stupid. When I explained as carefully as I could that a) it was my choice anyway and b) the bags would be used at different times he got a bit annoyed. When I said that they store better in the work area, he got really angry and went around telling everyone I 'thought I was better than everyone else'. You can see this behaviour all over the place, and my concern is that this book will feed this idea, that intelligence is a problem. Actually a lot of the time it is that the person sees more challenge and importance in other intellectual tasks than simple ones. Ascribing a high value to say cleaning the kitchen, may not be the choice of an intelligent person - to say that intelligent people can't understand how to clean a kitchen would be incorrect but that is the leap a lot of people make.
Godfrey - I see what you mean. Bear in mind thta many people get to be middle managers because of their proven ability to Get Things Done. Clearly, someone in a such a position that regularly replies to the question from an even higher manager "did you get that thing done" with "well, you see, it's more complicated than we thought..." will be off down the job centre in no time. So the ability to cut the Gordian Knot is a prerequisite for the job - it's seen as the antithesis of getting bogged down in negatives, can't see the wood for the trees, etc. Now, of course, no middle manager is going to survive if they go around saying that they slashed the gordian knot, and now the whole bloody edifice is coming unravellled. But of course, that's what happens, so they simply have to divert attention and blame - otherwise - off down the job centre again. there's simply no way to admit mistakes safely in a large organisation. Hence, the middle manager in turn must devolve blame downwards, to whoever is apparently making things more complicated than they should be - in other words, they shoot the messenger. Now, having siad all that, your contention that sometimes a person with a high IQ apparently can't manage a relatively simple task because it's just not interesting enough - this is an interesting contention, reminiscent of the archetype of the absent-minded professor. But, interestingly, it also reminds me of some of my students who are dyslexic - one, whose insights I enjoy greatly, is very obviously seriously bright, very fast... apart from when he's not - and then he's bordering on cretinous (I mean that in a caring way, possums) - when it's a task that he doesn't like, he really, really can't focus on it. It's been really instructive for me as a teacher - I try all sorts to try to help, try to trick him into taking interest - he's as slippery as teflon! Senior dyslexia researchers tell me that this 'spiky profile' is not atypical, and that it may be that it's simply more obvious in a very bright individual than a 'norm'. My point is that he's always going to have trouble fitting in to certain kinds of institution - so much so that he may be better to avoid those particular ones. In particular, this means avoiding the kind of organisation where it's almost inevitable that the person managing him will probably be less intelligent, though more effective within the constraints of that particular context. He'll just be frsutrated, and will probably get the sack. I've come to realise that there are many more of these 'oddballs' than we realise - I'm not saying that they are the majority, but they area a very, very sizable minority, without whom we would all be a lot worse off. Many of them end up being self-employed, or in odd positions where they are left alone. I suspect that, in the past, some ended up as academics but now, with the new corporate-think, they are increasingly hard for the organisation to accommodate. I don't think anyone has the answer just yet, but would be pleased to hear if someone's making progress, not least because I have one or two students every year that I worry about because of this. regards
From a more managerial perspective, the comments made above are interesting - but I think that is quite a pessimistic view (that organisations will sack/ Oddball/'end up'etc). Poor utilization of staff = poor management. In your example of a student who seems to be very bright at some things but not others, please try to remember that intelligence is very rarely completely uniform - being frustrated at a violinist for not being able to play guitar is ridiculous - only a very dumb manager would think that someone is 'musical' therefore can do anything musical without practice. Almost everyone has trouble fitting into a certain type of organisation - creative people in very formal uncreative environments, people people in isolated roles, isolated theorists in people roles etc etc. To get the sack from say a filing role because you really can't stay focussed on endless tedium is common amonst all intelligences, being a leader in an environment where to be led is the success criteria similarly. This is added to in teaching environments by the fact that people may like the subject, but not being taught, may hate the subject but is doing it under duress, or may have a plan for their own understanding that you don't get and can't help with (eg I did a business degree and tuned out on two categories of subject - those that I could do well already, and those which were alien and irrelevant to where I felt I was going (accountancy) - in the latter category I easily had the ability to learn the accountancy (physics and maths a-levels and now a strong personal interest in financial management and economic policy) but then and now saw it as something I would pay to be done. If my teaching staff were pulling their hair out at why I didn't get it more fool them for not asking my agenda! My second point is not to worry unduly about people who don't fit in with you - you may be not the right environment for them too.
To Hero. You are talking codswallop. " Many few" lines should provide focus.
The review is rather disappointing. The second half of the article is unrelated to the book it purports to review. "But is there really something uniquely human about our occasional flashes of rationality?" Nowhere in the book is Stanovich concerned with that question. It is beside his point. Wendy Johnson makes an interesting statement but fails to back it up. She says that if, as Stanovich advocates, society would start measuring rationality and distributing privilege at least in part on that measure, rather than on IQ alone, it wouldn't matter because those who score high on IQ tests would figure out how to score high on RQ tests. That at least is how I interpret her argument although it is somewhat vague. She might have a point here. It is easy to imagine that children from privileged backgrounds would be trained in passing RQ tests. Their capacity for rational behavior wouldn't necessarily improve. Stanovich makes it clear that rationality is not the ability to perform certain cognitive tasks in test situations when the test taker has been cued as to what is expected of him or her. Rationality is the ability to act rationally in open ended real life situations. Stanovich believes that this nevertheless can be measured and cites a multitude of studies where this has been done. The problem is of course that these studies work only insofar as the subjects are not aware what is being studied. Once they become standard tests, subjects, especially privileged ones, will be able to train for them. That is a dilemma that Stanovich doesn't even mention. I would therefore agree with Johnson that attempting to test for rationality is not the way to go. I agree with Stanovich that rationality can and should be taught and that the education system could do a lot better in that respect. I should also point out that the U.S. is rather unique in sorting individuals according to measures of IQ. A German subject for example will never see anything resembling an IQ test, or one of its proxies such as SAT etc., during his or her whole career. The criteria for sorting that are used in the German educational system might very well to some extent correlate with IQ but they are never based on standardized, decontextualized tests. I wonder what American IQ researchers find when they look to other countries - if they ever do so.
@ "to Hero" - ah, I recognise that style, you're still lurking. Look, you might think you've been the epitome of brevity - but that's actually because you haven't said anything! - I mean, you've just attacked Hero, but brought nothing to the debate. You're a sniper in the bushes, picking random targets. A few more lines might have provided something to focus on
I don't know if this book mentions that all intelligence tests are seriously flawed in that someone who has intelligence comparable to that of the people whom he is testing, is not able to do testing with any satisfactory accuracy. The ramifications of this limitation are numerous.