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The Yale Alumni Magazine is owned and operated by Yale Alumni Publications, Inc., a nonprofit corporation independent of Yale University. The content of the magazine and its website is the responsibility of the editors and does not necessarily reflect the views of Yale or its officers. |
When it comes to IQ, Bill Clinton ’73JD was clearly one of the most intelligent men ever to have occupied the Oval Office. And yet, looking back at a presidency continually wracked by moral lapses and subsequent scandals, even the most charitable observer might be moved to ask, “Bill, how could you have been so stupid?” Robert J. Sternberg, the IBM Professor of Psychology and Education and an expert on intelligence, has pondered that question about Clinton and many others in politics, business, education, and every other walk of life. “No one is immune from stupidity,” says Sternberg. “We all have our list of things we shouldn’t have done.” In Why Smart People Can Be So Stupid—a book published this month by Yale University Press—Sternberg has pulled together essays by himself and 13 other researchers that examine how even the best and the brightest can engage in breathtakingly dumb behaviors. The authors explore a host of topics—from Monica Lewinsky, Watergate, and the Challenger disaster (the Enron debacle occurred too late for inclusion) to dysrationalia and other important issues in personality, learning, and intelligence theory. But while the book may be the seminal document of a new academic endeavor that many have dubbed “stupidity studies,” Sternberg, who directs Yale’s Center for the Psychology of Abilities, Competencies, and Expertise (PACE), explains that the catchy designation is something of a misnomer. “The people we talk about are not, strictly speaking, stupid—in fact, many of them are quite brilliant,” the researcher says. “Rather, they behave in a way we call foolish.” According to Sternberg, being smart may actually predispose members of the higher IQ set to foolishness. In a society that rewards stellar grades and test scores, those at the top run a considerable risk of falling victim to three blinding fallacies: egocentrism, omnipotence, and invincibility. “You can come to believe that the world revolves around you, that you have all the answers and can outsmart anyone, and that nobody can get to you,” says Sternberg. “People like this may be very intelligent, but they’re not wise.” The professor defines wisdom as intelligence used for a common good. “The truly wise balance their own interests with those of others,” he explains, citing Martin Luther King, Mother Teresa, and UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan as exemplars of wisdom. Nor do they have to be so rare, says Sternberg. Recently, he and other PACE researchers began a three-year project with middle-school-aged children aimed at demonstrating that the skills of the wise, particularly such values as honesty and looking out for others, can be taught to anyone. “Wisdom is an attitude towards life,” says Sternberg, “and in the wake of September 11, inculcating it in our citizens has never been more important. Wise people are not haters; they know that hate is a stupid strategy that gets you nowhere.” |
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©1992–2012, Yale Alumni Publications, Inc. All rights reserved. Yale Alumni Magazine, P.O. Box 1905, New Haven, CT 06509-1905, USA. yam@yale.edu |
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