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In Brief
- Traditional IQ tests miss some of the most important aspects of real-world intelligence. It is possible to test high in IQ yet to suffer from the logical-thought defect known as dysrationalia.
- One cause of dysrationalia is that people tend to be cognitive misers, meaning that they take the easy way out when trying to solve problems, often leading to solutions that are illogical and wrong.
- Another cause of dysrationalia is the mindware gap, which occurs when people lack the specific knowledge, rules and strategies needed to think rationally.
- Tests do exist that can measure dysrationalia, and they should be given more often to pick up the deficiencies that IQ tests miss.
No doubt you know several folks with perfectly respectable IQs who just don’t seem all that sharp. The behavior of such people tells us that we are missing something important by treating intelligence as if it encompassed all cognitive abilities. I coined the term “dysrationalia” (analogous to “dyslexia”), meaning the inability to think and behave rationally despite having adequate intelligence, to draw attention to a large domain of cognitive life that intelligence tests fail to assess. Although most people recognize that IQ tests do not measure important mental faculties, we behave as if they do. We have an implicit assumption that intelligence and rationality go together—or else why would we be so surprised when smart people do foolish things?
It is useful to get a handle on dysrationalia and its causes because we are beset by problems that require increasingly more accurate, rational responses. In the 21st century, shallow processing can lead physicians to choose less effective medical treatments, can cause people to fail to adequately assess risks in their environment, can lead to the misuse of information in legal proceedings, and can make parents resist vaccinating their children. Millions of dollars are spent on unneeded projects by government and private industry when decision makers are dysrationalic, billions are wasted on quack remedies, unnecessary surgery is performed and costly financial misjudgments are made.
This article was originally published with the title Rational and Irrational Thought: The Thinking That IQ Tests Miss.
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28 Comments
Add Commentdysrationalia (analogous to dyslexia ), meaning the inability to think and behave rationally despite having adequate intelligence.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAlso known in laymen's terms as: lacking common sense.
I agree with the article and sparcboy's comment. I am sure we all know of someone who has all of the necessary technical, mental prowess in a given field but a complete and utter lack of ability to cognitively apply those skills in a dynamic, real-world environment. They know all the ins and outs of the circuit board, but are clueless to do when it breaks. It sounds like this concept of dysrationalia is a reasonable explanation for this.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe flip side of this is Innovation which explains why it can be manifest, not though genius, but as a solution as seen by one with a very low dysrationalia and the merging of two or more physical domains. Cool!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat, nobody ever heard of a guy with high int who used wisdom as his dump stat?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"for these four cards, if a card [facing up] has a vowel on its letter side, it has an even number on its number side."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYour rational for the solution to this problem is wrong. You never indicated that which side is facing up matters, and it would be just as logical to assume it does as it is to assume it doesn't based on the information given, unless you add in the part I've added in brackets. Your answer is correct, but your logic leading up to it is flawed. Please correct this.
Actually, your solution is wrong as well. Without any information about whether or not the card facing up or down affects the rule, you would have to also flip over the 8 to be sure.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe majority of research on decision making and cognition in general has essentially shown that we are not rational decision makers. The better choice here is to train the parts of us that make decisions best in order to increase the proababilty that the outcome of a choice will be rational (if interested more in this read Educating Intuition by Robin Hogarth).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere have also been long standing debates in cognitive psychology about what makes "intelligence" again there are different proposed intelligences (many, again if interested refer to Garner's Multiple Intelligences actually a very nice easy read). There are actually many different variables to be consider when assuming that someone is intelligence so again the research and the experts vary.
This is all to prove a point that just because you act intelligently from the outside from a rational perspecitve does not actually make you intelligent (especially as measured by intelligence testing). I think that as a society we are better off to consider that there are different types of intelligence and even different mixes within the types. While someone with a Ph.D. may seem a little loopy and make crazy decisions they may also have the brain power to outthink most of us....You think Einstein seemed Sane??? Think about Carl Sagan or some of our smartest people....They rarely if ever come off as being sane or even rational...
The card solution is in the initial statement "for the four cards..." proof would require ALL four to be turned over and nothing is said about select the fewest number to achieve the proof!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI ask my daughter (10 yrs old) "What causes global warming?" Her response "The big orange ball in the sky; dah!"
Jeffery Daumer acted and responded quite logically to his stimulus however the methodology was based upon a wrong premise. He then repeated the experiment over and over expecting improvement or different outcomes. Both of these are often referred to as acts of the insane. His IQ was about 140.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI think it would also include turning over the 5 in case it has an even number on the back. So the answer is all four cards (see above for why, but know that I've changed my opinion from all 3 to all 4). The person who wrote this article must have used this problem as a stretch to lengthen their publication and hoped nobody really thought the wording through.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAlso, note that I am intoxicated. My wording may not be perfect, but my logic is.
Jeffery Domer acted and responded quite logically to his stimulus however the methodology was based upon a wrong premise. He then repeated the experiment over and over expecting improvement or different outcomes. Both of these are often referred to as acts of the insane. His IQ was over 130.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSounds like your daughter hasn't turned over all the cards. :)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIQ tests more often give low values to us who have a brain that simply cannot make sense out of all those squares, boxes, triangles, and other symbols that are so frequently found (you know, "which one is missing" etc, blah). Yet, we score high on "verbal logic" and even higher for "inventiveness". At the end of the day, IQ tests do not really test much.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGenius and super-intelligent are separate things but I noticed super-intelligent people always get described as "genius".
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this(Because super-intelligent people almost never approach the success level of a genius in their field.)
From this difference it is already easy to conclude IQ tests are not really "complete".
The deficits described in the article are fairly subtle and rare compared to the two really big problems:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI like it, so it is true; I don't like it, so it is a lie.
I have no idea what you are talking about, so what you just said is stupid.
("I have an MBA, and the economy is NOT about to crash. You don't know what you are talking about."
"Real estate is not about to pop because it is not a bubble."
2007 quotes three people actually said to me.)
There is no other source of Global Warming than the sun all be it some geothermal and other miniscule contributors. Certain folks assume quite incorrectly that multipliers and modifiers are a source. Thats why this story is so appropriate and interesting explaining why even smart people say such stupid stuff. Smart people often exercise contempt before investigation. The problem with this is everything they know...particularly if critical of a basic unarguable statement, must be based on an equally wrong premise that they are right.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thistraditional tests don't pick it up dysrationalia because the construct you're trying to describe fall more into the realm of personality disorder, not intelligence! actually, there are traditional tests that pick up poor decision making (see Comprehension subtests of Weschler's). disappointing article.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBTW, Gardner himself was a nut! And, you can see C-H-C theory for the best, up to date, description of intelligence and all it's best known facets.
I have read the entire article and comments yet see no clear definition of intelligence. How can intelligence be intelligetly discussed if it is not defined? Can an idiot be or have intelligence?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI've always
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI've always wondered when they were going to test for personal skills. The ability to influence others, and to get them to work together as a team towards a common goal takes a higher level of intelligence, that as far as I can tell, is not measured by these word games or tests. Maybe this is why scientists are frequently portrayed as lonely and weak physically. (flame war on!)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBut seriously, 'sales' ability, 'entrepreneurialism', and true 'leadership' don't seem to be counted in intelligence tests (at least the common ones). And I don't think it is so much because they are hard to test for, but probably because they use the kind of intelligence that typically would turn someone away from science and into more social pursuits.
Ten years ago I was very shy and did not know how to sell. I now can go to a party without knowing anyone, and can leave with 2 new friends, and 3 new business contacts. My life is far richer now, and I love presenting to, interacting with and leading others. How about an article on the soft skills?
For those confused by the 4-card problem, here's some help:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI loved this article, but this problem was rather poorly explained by the author/editor. In fact the explanation of the solution was far more confusing than the card problem itself.
Here's what the author was trying to say:
• The A card AND the 5 card must be flipped to prove the rule either true or false.
• The K card and the 8 card are irrelevant to the rule.
Once you decipher his explanation, it's a pretty basic puzzle.
Good luck.
I agree that the card problem as stated is confusing, and I thought it was wrong at first, too. The author states in his explanation that the rule states "a vowel must have an even number on the back, but it says nothing about whether an even number must have a vowel on the back..." Actually, the rule says that "if a card has a vowel ON ITS LETTER SIDE, it has an even number ON ITS NUMBER SIDE." Whether the card is number side up or vowel side up is irrelevant -- each card pairs a number and a vowel. The puzzle asks us to determine which card(s) must be turned over to decide is this is true or false. The hypothesis to be tested is that if there is a vowel on its letter side, then there must be an even number on its number side. But the hypothesis would still be true if there is a CONSONANT on the letter side and an even number on the number side. In other words, all vowels must be paired with an even number to make the hypothesis true. But all even numbers do NOT need to be paired with vowels... So you do need to flip A and 5 -- card A to ensure that the vowel is in fact paired withan even number and card 5 to ensure that a vowel is NOT on the other side. If K has an even number, it doesn't matter.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI agree with your comments. The card solution given is not consistant with the question. The question does not state "with the fewest number of cards" but the solution given shows that the fewest number of cards is part of the objective. The way the question is stated, I should turn over all 4 cards, there's no penalty. The question must be rewritten to include "with the fewest number of cards".
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFinally an article that explains why the world is in the trouble it is caused by lawyer thinking!!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisi cant remmember the iq question from the lastes issue about jack is looking and diane , diane is looking at george i'm not sure if it goes like this and what the rest is can some one please help thank you
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thistest
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisKeith E. Stanovich’s article brings up an important deficiency in testing but in it gave examples of questions which still test more for logic than rationalizing ability which is the shortcoming of IQ tests. A complication with IQ not realized is if ones IQ is very high (approaching or at or past genius level – IQ about 160), there may be some compromising of the ability to rationalize. The ‘IQ component’ of actual intelligence is really mostly logical ability and this may take over and be overly dominant as compared to the ability to rationalize. This may explain the difficulty gifted students have by actually never seeming to achieve the level of success expected of them in their chosen fields. It may be that there is a trade-off in the brain where if IQ is too high, the ability to rationalize is ‘over ridden’ (or overwhelmed) to a greater extent and plays a lesser role than it should in the thought processes. The optimum IQ (logical ability) for humans may be say in the 130 – 150 range before this impediment starts to significantly come into play.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLogic is more of a robotic type of thought process – akin to algorithms. Whereas rationalizing is more like simultaneously accessing or drawing upon different pieces of relevant information that is linked and processing it.
Harinder S. Sandhu
Vancouver, B.C.
If the problem is "we are not rational" the solution is not "we shouldn't even try to be rational and instead do only what we 'feel' to be right." The solution is to teach logic, critical thinking, philosophy and ethics to children as they are gaining the capacity for rational thought (around the age of 10-13).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe problem is that this cannot be trusted to be done by the public school system... or even home school! The reason is simple, if you are benefiting from some form of corruption or from an irrational policy, you have no incentive to teach others to recognize that corruption and/or irrationality. If a parent can better control their child because they can convince them that they are right, even when they are wrong, why teach them to realize this faulty logic? Parent and Government are interchangeable in the above argument. In short, people are easier to control when they are irrational. While the more rational person may be more difficult to control, they are also better people because of it.
The solution is private (and secular) schooling that manages to teach logic, critical thinking, philosophy and ethics at a fairly early level. We shouldn't just give up and fall back on irrationality, we should work hard to get rid of irrationality through education. Irrationality, I would argue, is the cause of a great many terrible things such as crime and corruption. I have always believed that people do what they believe to be right, if they come to a conclusion about what is right based on an irrational thought process, then they are likely to do something unethical. Teach reason and you teach right.