"Why Smart People Can Be So Stupid," by Robert J. Sternberg

"Well," Sternberg says, "actually, they're separate research topics ..."

"OK, 'You're Stupid' and 'I Hate You.' Two books. Let's hear about the first one."

You have to watch out for these flashy crossover titles, basically. But "Why Smart People Can Be So Stupid" is a serious book. We're having lots of fun with it, but it's a serious book.

Contributor Carol S. Dweck believes that stupidity is located in the beliefs of certain smart people about the nature of intelligence -- false beliefs, including that "intelligence is a fixed trait rather than a potential that can be developed," that "learning is risky," and that "effort is only for the incompetent." Which is unconvincing: I'm a smart person who does a lot of stupid things, and I've never believed that intelligence is a fixed trait, et cetera.

Richard K. Wagner gets into managerial theory in his chapter, "Smart People Doing Dumb Things," treading on territory claimed by Mortimer R. Feinberg and John J. Tarrant in their 1995 treatment of Wall Street incompetence, "Why Smart People Do Dumb Things." (Note to prospective authors: Despite the combined efforts of Ostrom, Feinberg/Tarrant, Wagner and Sternberg, the title "Why Smart People Can Be So Dumb" remains unclaimed.)

Then we start to really get rolling with David N. Perkins' fleetly written, deftly argued chapter. Stupidity, for Perkins, is best thought of as a failure of adaptiveness -- as "folly." And folly "in a strong sense involves recurrent foolishness that seems, in principle, within the intellectual reach of the person to discern" -- a matter of faulty switching in one's mental processes. Basically, Perkins says, you can be really smart but not know when to engage your smartness, and the extent to which this happens is "stupidity."

Perkins lists eight deadly sins of the stupid smart person, which seem to sum it all up rather elegantly: impulsiveness (doing something rash), neglect (ignoring something important), procrastination (actively avoiding something important), vacillation (dithering), backsliding (capitulating to habit), indulgence (allowing oneself to fall into excess), overdoing (like indulgence, but with positive things) and walking the edge (tempting fate). That sounds like my entire life, actually. Yes, that explains a lot.

Diane Halpern contributes a study of the Clinton/Lewinsky scandal, which has (apparently) preoccupied stupidity researchers since the writing of Ostrom's book, and Keith Stanovich gets into a whole game-theory thing that is fascinating if jargonesque. Game theory has long recognized that people habitually make suboptimal decisions when confronted with choices that work out cleanly on paper. But, says Stanovich:

"A substantial research literature -- one comprising literally hundreds of empirical studies conducted over nearly four decades -- has firmly established that [...] people assess probabilities incorrectly, they display confirmation bias, they test hypotheses inefficiently, they violate the axioms of utility theory, they do not properly calibrate degrees of belief," and so on for another several lines.

After reading Stanovich, the proper utility of game theory seems to be, not the study of human interactions, but the study of why game theory doesn't work in real life -- to wit: the study of human stupidity, including the stupidity of those who keep trying to apply game theory to real human behavior. Stanovich also contributes the excellent term "dysrationalia." A word to keep and to use.

Elena Grigorenko and Donna Lockery's chapter, called "Smart Is as Stupid Does," spins the whole thing into a discussion of historical attitudes toward the learning-disabled, including attitudes toward their sexuality, as expressed in popular films. The sort of thing second-string academics are always doing. The first chapter note reads: "1. Cockney refers to lower-level working class in Great Britain." Oh. Wait, in certain parts of London, you mean? A combination of "overdoing" and "neglect," it looks like (pace Perkins). But whatever.

Are you getting tired now, too? It's not supposed to be fun: This is a serious book.

But it's difficult not to train the lens on Sternberg himself. Sternberg downplays the notion of "stupidity," equating smart people's unsmart behavior with "foolishness" (as opposed to "wisdom") -- which torpedoes the whole premise from the get-go (suggesting that the Yale University Press book editor really did have his thumb in the pie the whole time). (Next Sternberg book: "Why Assholes Think They Can Shit All Over You: The Psychology of Evil Motherfuckers.")

Next Page: Administering forbidden aptitude tests in seventh grade

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