Why Can Smart People Be So Stupid Sometimes?
Having a high IQ doesn’t mean being smart. You don’t have to go too far to discover incredible acts of stupidity by intelligent, even brilliant, people. Thus, many of the tests that “measure” IQ only capture one type of intelligence, analytical intelligence. This skill recognizes patterns and solves analytical problems. Most IQ tests do not cover the other two aspects of human intelligence: creative and practical intelligence.
Creative intelligence is our ability to deal with new situations. Practical intelligence is our ability to do things. In the first 20 years of life, people are rewarded for their analytical intelligence: we have a structured educational system to train in this regard.
Today emotions have risen to the level of emotional intelligence. Now the time has come for values, for so-called ethical intelligence.
Why do smart people act silly?
Excess ego is one of the causes that make intelligent people not act like such. Their fortunate results on other occasions have served as a breeding ground for an omniscience, omnipotence or invulnerability that prevents them from seeing the real consequences of their actions.
With intelligence we generate solutions to any problem. The more intelligence we have, we are supposed to create more and better solutions, since we have a greater perspective, reality of the problem and knowledge of the circumstances that determine it. We cannot forget that we are talking about global intelligence, according to the RAE, it is:
1. Ability to understand or comprehend.
2. Ability to solve problems.
3. Knowledge, understanding, act of understanding.
For this, intelligence uses knowledge, skills and attitudes or, as the RAE says, ability, dexterity and experience.
How are values and intelligence related?
People have our intelligence and our values, among other resources, to make many of our decisions. In this way, if we do not develop both, our behavior, derived from decision-making, can be negatively affected. One of the qualities that a good choice of values and their use gives us is avoiding stupid solutions, knowing how to distinguish between means and ends, and intuiting the consequences that different solutions can generate.
The stupid solutions, which many intelligent people choose, are born of not having analyzed the consequences of those actions. When we have to make a decision in complex or stressful environments, we do not know how to properly assess which solution is the best, and with the rush, we choose the one dictated by analytical intelligence, without taking into account the consequences.
. In this way, reality will become simpler, more understandable and making stupid decisions will be more difficult.
Intelligence without values loses resolution capacity; values without intelligence can be misapplied. Therefore, values and intelligence are two complementary ways that enhance our results, making them productive and valuable.
Images courtesy of Sonja Flemming / CBS
