Recent history provides many examples (think Wall Street, think Israeli policy, think the Iraq War Strategy, think of smart people you know personally) where very smart people make very unwise decisions in terms of meeting their/wider interests.
I have had dialogues on this subject with Professor Keith Stanovich at the University of Toronto, who invented the term Dysrationality for this phenomena. See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dysrationalia
He defines it as the inability to think and behave rationally despite adequate intelligence. Or put differently, variation in rational thinking skills is surprisingly independent of intelligence. One implication of this finding is that dysrationalia should not be rare. His relevant book is ‘What Intelligence Tests Miss‘.
Stanovich, by the way, estimates George W Bush’s IQ at 120 (smartish not that smart?) from various FOA disclosed Air Force test scores, and therefore equal to a similarly arrived estimate of his 2004 opponent John Kerry’s. Stanovich instead roots Bush’s dysfunctionality more in this quote:
‘I am also not very analytical. You know I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about myself, about why I do things’. (George W Bush June 4 2003 on Air Force One.)
I thought it would be good to post my own top ten ways in which supposedly smart people screw up conflict handling, covering a little of the causes of what might be called their ‘Conflict Dysrationality’, as well as the symptoms. It is partly based on people I have known personally, but recognizes that none of us is immune to this tendency, least of all me. Mea culpa, though I have to work hard to look smart. 🙂
- Many smart kids are often told they are innately smart, (rather than the smarts came from effort) and research suggests this makes them more likely to defend this innate smartness by rigging arguments, avoiding real contests that might disprove their smarts, and so they don’t work to become wise when they grow up. Always better to tell a smart kid they are smart through their hard work than their innate ability one suspects.
- Smart people often become consummate games players and they play to win, regardless of their own interests, which they define positionally as ‘winning’. And of course they have no interest in anyone else’s interests.
- They may not act as good Popperians, seeking data that contradicts their arguments, instead using their smarts to wall off their perspectives from contradiction by cherry-picking the data. Climate change denial is a perfect illustration of this: never have so many smart people denied so much data and scientific evidence/argument. Well actually no, Evolution is an even stronger case.
- Many smart people are a tad on the Asperger’s Syndrome side, unable to empathetically understand any theory of mind of the other side. This greatly limits the ability to think like the opponent, so as to predict their likely response, or creatively expand solution space to meet both sides interests. Robert McNamara before he resigned as Secretary of Defense illustrates this.
- They are not good at admitting they are wrong. Well I guess no one is, but smart people are just that much better at rigging things, so they don’t have to face their mistakes, and so don’t learn from them in conflict as in life.
- Smart people often use their creativity to ‘win’ and not to enlarge solution space. Henry Kissinger comes to mind.
- Smart people often process problems very fast, reaching a credible solution very quickly, without much process discipline, contrarian interrogation, and checking to see whether their unconscious biases are sabotaging their problem solving. As someone once said: ‘There is no problem no matter how complex for which there is not a very simple solution, that is wrong.’
- They often think they are Star Trek’s Dr. Spock and think that they have some how transcended emotions, and are supremely data rational: and their ‘solution’ is somehow ‘the solution’, rather than just one take on reality, often very biased.
- They have lots of knowledge that they can use to cover the inadequacy of their reasoning and even some evidence resistant bigotry. Guilty as charged myself, but I am working on it.
- They have some tendency to infantile grandiosity and think the world is amenable to their intellectually attractive, apparently ‘realpolitik’ solutions that have little bearing on the real world. Graham Green’s ‘The Quiet American’ illustrates this about the early stages of US Vietnam involvement.
I guess the Conflict Model of this blog is one attempt to produce a conflict discipline that while not proof against such smart asses, might help counter smarts with some wisdom.
This is Keith, a man who knows something interesting about wisdom: thanks Keith for your insights which inspired this posting:
Creativeconflictwisdom's Blog 
In my experience the way you keep smart people on their toes in mission critical applications it have a Red Team/ Blue Team Architecture, with equally smart people on both teams–I have used this approach to prevent many catastrophes and to get mission critical projects done fast, well and smart.
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Excellent thought: building some creative tension into the project, hopefully preventing group think, and ensuring at least two perspectives on what is important, what needs potential problem analysis. Still good to have some wise people on the two teams as well as the smarts. Smart is doing something well; wise is doing the right thing. You need both.
In the major re-engineering project I was part of in 1994, we actually used a structure for six months of full time functional teams (product development, marketing, manufacturing, finance etc.) meeting and working on stuff in their sub-teams, consulting with their parent organizations to gain consensus, then bringing their proposals to the total team of 28 in plenary sessions each afternoon. We then took their rough lump of clay and refined and aligned it with the overall vision.
We used an early version of the Creative Conflict Wisdom approach or something like it we called the Higher Level Solution approach, to ensure that cross-functional squabbling was minimized, and diverted into improving the recommendations, not turf wars. And of course strong process discipline, and good facilitation (though we kicked our facilitator after we had inhaled his messages and did it ourselves pretty well.) are essential.
Interestingly, the team of 28 was a mix of smarts, wise, subject matter experts, hard workers and even a few smart drones, who as von Clausewitz says can make good generals, because they focused us on the important because they are so lazy. 🙂
And I guess we approximated Scott Page’s ideal of cognitive diversity for complex problems. Einsteins can solve difficult problems but socially and otherwise complex issues like climate change, or world hunger require cognitive diversity balancing not only specialist knowledge but big picture/detail, technical/values, etc. Oh and a way they can integrate and work together without fighting.
There was a famous experiment that the Henley British Civil Service college apparently undertook many years ago. They tested the incoming course participants for their senior programs, and tried various ways to mix the task groups on the courses. When several times, they put all the smartest people in one group, this group was an unmitigated disaster, full of great insights, huge egos and conflict that paralyzed it. So going forward they simply roughly balanced the smart folk across the groups.
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