What Intelligence Tests Miss: The Psychology of Rational Thought

325 Pages·2010·1.01 MB·English

by  Keith E. Stanovich

WHAT INTELLIGENCE TESTS MISS
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What Intelligence
Tests Miss
The Psychology of Rational Thought
K E I T H E . S T A N O V I C H
YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS NEW HAVEN AND LONDON
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Published with assistance from the Mary Cady Tew Memorial Fund.
Copyright © 2009 by Keith Stanovich.
All rights reserved.
This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any form
(beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and
except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the publishers.
Set in Electra type by Tseng Information Systems, Inc..
Printed in the United States of America.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Stanovich, Keith E., 1950–
What intelligence tests miss : the psychology of rational thought / Keith E. Stanovich.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-300-12385-2 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Intelligence tests.
2. Thought and thinking. I. Title.
BF431.S687 2009
153.9—dc22 2008037325
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper).
It contains 30 percent postconsumer waste (PCW) and is certified
by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC).
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For Paula,
who has never measured a person’s worth in IQ points
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C O N T E N T S
Preface ix
Acknowledgments xiii
ONE
Inside George W. Bush’s Mind: Hints at What IQ Tests Miss 1
TWO
Dysrationalia: Separating Rationality and Intelligence 8
THREE
The Reflective Mind, the Algorithmic Mind,
and the Autonomous Mind 20
FOUR
Cutting Intelligence Down to Size 45
FIVE
Why Intelligent People Doing Foolish Things Is No Surprise 59
SIX
The Cognitive Miser: Ways to Avoid Thinking 70
vii
CONTENTS
SEVEN
Framing and the Cognitive Miser 86
EIGHT
Myside Processing: Heads I Win—Tails I Win Too! 101
NINE
A Different Pitfall of the Cognitive Miser:
Thinking a Lot, but Losing 115
TEN
Mindware Gaps 129
ELEVEN
Contaminated Mindware 152
TWELVE
How Many Ways Can Thinking Go Wrong? A Taxonomy of Irrational
Thinking Tendencies and Their Relation to Intelligence 172
THIRTEEN
The Social Benefits of Increasing Human Rationality—and
Meliorating Irrationality 195
Notes 213
Bibliography 243
Index 303
viii
P R E FA C E
I n 2002, cognitive scientist Daniel Kahneman of Princeton University won
the Nobel Prize in Economics for work done with his longtime collabora-
tor Amos Tversky (who died in 1996). The press release for the award from the
Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences drew attention to the roots of the award-
winning work in “the analysis of human judgment and decision-making by
cognitive psychologists.” Kahneman was cited for discovering “how human
judgment may take heuristic shortcuts that systematically depart from basic
principles of probability. His work has inspired a new generation of research-
ers in economics and finance to enrich economic theory using insights from
cognitive psychology into intrinsic human motivation.”
In short, Kahneman and Tversky’s work was about how humans make
choices and assess probabilities, and they uncovered some very basic errors
that are typical in decision making. Their work includes some of the most
influential and highly cited studies in all of psychology, and it deserved to
be honored with the Nobel Prize. One reason that this work was so influen-
tial was that it addressed deep issues concerning human rationality. As the
Nobel announcement noted, “Kahneman and Tversky discovered how judg-
ment under uncertainty systematically departs from the kind of rationality
postulated in traditional economic theory.” The thinking errors uncovered
by Kahneman and Tversky are thus not trivial errors in a parlor game. Being
rational means acting to achieve one’s own life goals using the best means
possible. To violate the thinking rules examined by Kahneman and Tversky
ix