| Clever sillies: why high IQ people tend to be deficient in common sense. | |
| | |
MedLine Citation:
|
PMID: 19733444 Owner: NLM Status: In-Process |
Abstract/OtherAbstract:
|
In previous editorials I have written about the absent-minded and socially-inept 'nutty professor' stereotype in science, and the phenomenon of 'psychological neoteny' whereby intelligent modern people (including scientists) decline to grow-up and instead remain in a state of perpetual novelty-seeking adolescence. These can be seen as specific examples of the general phenomenon of 'clever sillies' whereby intelligent people with high levels of technical ability are seen (by the majority of the rest of the population) as having foolish ideas and behaviours outside the realm of their professional expertise. In short, it has often been observed that high IQ types are lacking in 'common sense'--and especially when it comes to dealing with other human beings. General intelligence is not just a cognitive ability; it is also a cognitive disposition. So, the greater cognitive abilities of higher IQ tend also to be accompanied by a distinctive high IQ personality type including the trait of 'Openness to experience', 'enlightened' or progressive left-wing political values, and atheism. Drawing on the ideas of Kanazawa, my suggested explanation for this association between intelligence and personality is that an increasing relative level of IQ brings with it a tendency differentially to over-use general intelligence in problem-solving, and to over-ride those instinctive and spontaneous forms of evolved behaviour which could be termed common sense. Preferential use of abstract analysis is often useful when dealing with the many evolutionary novelties to be found in modernizing societies; but is not usually useful for dealing with social and psychological problems for which humans have evolved 'domain-specific' adaptive behaviours. And since evolved common sense usually produces the right answers in the social domain; this implies that, when it comes to solving social problems, the most intelligent people are more likely than those of average intelligence to have novel but silly ideas, and therefore to believe and behave maladaptively. I further suggest that this random silliness of the most intelligent people may be amplified to generate systematic wrongness when intellectuals are in addition 'advertising' their own high intelligence in the evolutionarily novel context of a modern IQ meritocracy. The cognitively-stratified context of communicating almost-exclusively with others of similar intelligence, generates opinions and behaviours among the highest IQ people which are not just lacking in common sense but perversely wrong. Hence the phenomenon of 'political correctness' (PC); whereby false and foolish ideas have come to dominate, and moralistically be enforced upon, the ruling elites of whole nations. |
| | |
Authors:
|
Bruce G Charlton |
Related Documents
:
|
16262464 - Socially desirable responding and the factorial stability of the neo pi-r. 16261734 - Intralocus sexual conflict and the genetic architecture of sexually dimorphic traits in... 8214404 - Attention allocation: effects of alcohol and information salience on attentional proces... 1813674 - Personality traits of patients with anxiety neurosis. 951174 - Aristotelianism, newtonianism and the physics of the layman. 9250344 - Relation of parental affective illness to family, dyadic, and individual functioning: a... |
Publication Detail:
|
Type: Editorial Date: 2009-09-04 |
Journal Detail:
|
Title: Medical hypotheses Volume: 73 ISSN: 1532-2777 ISO Abbreviation: Med. Hypotheses Publication Date: 2009 Dec |
Date Detail:
|
Created Date: 2009-11-27 Completed Date: - Revised Date: - |
Medline Journal Info:
|
Nlm Unique ID: 7505668 Medline TA: Med Hypotheses Country: United States |
Other Details:
|
Languages: eng Pagination: 867-70 Citation Subset: IM |
Export Citation:
|
APA/MLA Format Download EndNote Download BibTex |
| MeSH Terms | |
Descriptor/Qualifier:
|
|
From MEDLINE®/PubMed®, a database of the U.S. National Library of Medicine
Previous Document: Premature ovarian failure, menopause and ovarian cancer, three nodes on the same string: Pten and ot...
Next Document: Comparison Between Perfusion Computed Tomography and Dynamic Contrast-Enhanced Magnetic Resonance Im...